Science vs. Literature

Sometimes, the lines between science and literature get a little fuzzy.  How?  Check these out: Literature as a graph and one that cracks me up: Fictional Physicists (the titles were slightly paraphrased).  What do you think?  Has science become literature or has literature become scientific?

Got Science?

I was just watching Bill Nye on the news, talking about the Gulf oil spill, and he started talking about how we need more of America's youth to go into concrete science, rather than economics or banking or whatnot. And so, I decided that now is a good time to truly discuss what the question box is about, as its purpose, I feel, is beginning to drown amongst the goodie bags, extra credit, and other frilly stuff.

The Question Box wasn't meant as a way for me to get rid of all of my Halloween candy, even if that's what it seems. Nor was it meant as a quick and easy way to boost your grades. It isn't even about the ultra-cool bulletin board that is now wallpapered in pictures and articles. It's about getting you interested in science, and hopefully swaying some of you to pursue science careers in the future. Science isn't boring, even if you fall asleep in science class. It's the field of curiosity, where you think of questions- and try to answer them. It's the field of creation, where our techno-people think of neat gadgets like the iPhone for the rest of us to enjoy. It's the field of solutions, where our greatest minds try to solve the problems of today, like BP's oil spill. I'm not saying that you have to become a scientist or engineer, but that it's not as boring as you think. In fact, here's how E. Robert Schulman put the purpose of science in his comical How to Write a Scientific Paper:

The purpose of science is to get paid for doing fun stuff if you're not a good enough programmer to write computer games for a living (Schulman et al. 1991).

While it's meant to be a joke, that's what scientists do: they research "stuff" that they want to find out, and they get paid for doing it. Just watch the Discovery Channel. Those people are getting paid for living an adventure! No one is more fun, or funny than the Myth Busters and all they do all day is experiment. Having someone pay you to sit around and ask questions is a wonderful career. Want to know why clouds break up? Or why people have a tendency to eat the ears off of marshmallow peeps first? Scientists are the ones who get paid to find the answer: they research the topic, come up with a guess to the answer, and try out their guess in a made up scenario, an experiment. Then, they try to figure out what just happened and whether or not they were right. But you don't need me to tell you this, this is what every science teacher is telling you! Hypothesis: I think people like to eat the ears of marshmallow peeps. Observation: watching people vote on my marshmallow peep poll. Data: The results of my poll (scroll down to see). Conclusion: it's either always or never, but rarely in between. This is what science teachers are constantly telling you, but it's simpler than they make it seem (sorry Sunnyd). This big vocabulary, observation, analysis, etc. is scaring people away from science, if you ask me. And that's what the question box is about: going back to the root of science so that we don't forget the essence of it. It's here to remind you that science is an explanation for simple things in life, facts about our world. And when we put facts together, we come up with all sorts of interesting stuff: the same concept of "convection" that makes the Earth's surface move makes our jello turn solid and makes heating up a house with an oven highly ineffective (Trust me, don't try it. It could cause your oven to break, like ours did). The same concept of gravity that makes the moon go 'round our heads makes apples fall to the ground. And when we try to use these concepts for ourselves, we make life easier: a fan helps cool your jello dessert in time for dinner, a fireplace heats up your house quickly and effectively (relatively speaking), gravity makes bungee jumping all the more thrilling... This is what science is about. And it is ultra-important to your life, my life, and the development of mankind.

That's also why you should do your science homework. :)

Tired out, are you? I'll keep the answer to this week's question brief, because I need to do my homework and I'm sure you do too. We need to sit upright on roller coasters because of G-forces. If we don't, all these G-forces won't be distributed evenly and parts of us would feel heavier than others. I'll come back to this topic later (hopefully) because I need to do more reading. Here are some links about roller coasters:http://www.rollercoasterking.com/thrill-experience/http://www.themeparkinsider.com/safety/http://fun.familyeducation.com/summer/safety/35168.htmlhttp://cec.chebucto.org/Co-Phys.html  And thanks to njguy for the neat video. I don't think I'll ever go on Kingda Ka- way too scary for me.

By the way, if you'd like to comment on anything, feel free to do so.

Pippin's Question Box

Why are we told to sit upright on roller coasters? (and what happens if we don't?) Best

Got Science?

So, what is entropy? It sounds kind of weird, doesn't it? It's a very important part of the second law of thermodynamics (we learned the first law last year in Chemistry): Entropy always increases. But, of course, that doesn't explain much, does it?

Entropy, simply put, has to do with the disorder in the universe. More specifically, you could say it as the molecular organization of an object become disordered, or energy flowing from places with a lot of energy to places with little energy. (Decreasing potential energy, if you're studying for the test tommorrow) Need an example? Let's take an ice cube in a glass of water. Accorrding to entropy, energy will flow from points of higher energy to lower energy. The room, so long as it's a reasonable temperature, is much warmer than your glass of water, correct? So, the warmth from the room will eventually warm up the cup and melt the ice cube. Eventually, the room and the ice cube will be at the same temperature. That's about it! Here's another example I read in a book about how it has to do with organization: say you have a puzzle depicting, say, Einstein. At first, all the puzzle pieces are in order and you can see Einstein's head. However, give it a little shake, and it begins to randomize. There are a bazillion ways that the puzzle pieces may be scattered and messed up, but there is only one way that is correct and "organized." Therefore, it is much easier to be disorganized than organized, or entropy. Hope you've learned something for today!

Links:
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-entropy.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_entropy
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/therm/entrop.html

Got Science?

I know, I know, I haven't posted in a while.  To follow up on my discussion of heat transfer, I'm going to discuss the question box from two weeks ago: Why is it more efficient to heat up your house with the fireplace rather than the oven?

Pippin's Question Box

Why is the fireplace more effective at heating your house than leaving your oven open?
Explain: heat transfer, free convection vs. forced convection, surface area Best

Got Science?

Got science, anyone? Sorry, I couldn't resist. Hope everyone is enjoying their spring break despite the rain!

So, to the question box. My source for this is not a link, a book, but an engineer!! So, I have no link for you. The question was: How does jello solidify? The answer lies in the concepts behind heat transfer.

We all agree that jello needs to be cooled down in order to solidify, correct? So, really, jello solidifies according to how heat is lost- where the jello loses heat, it solidifies. However, the heat needs to be transferred to something else in order to "lose" heat- by conservation of energy, as we learned in class. Thus comes in handy dandy convection. Convection is heat transfer using a fluid- i.e., a liquid or gas. The fluid that is doing all the transferring in the jello scenario is not the jello itself, but the air around the jello. If we put jello in a pan, it has contact with the air. As the heat from the jello warms up the air around it, the air rises and starts moving, allowing cooler air to take its place. This type of convection, caused solely by the differences in temperature, is called free convection. But let's say I wanted to serve the jello, or in my case, the almond jelly/tofu-ish thingamajig for desert, and it was already five o'clock. Oh no! How would I speed up this process? Well, it might not be good enough to get it ready in time for desert, but it would speed up the time it took if I placed a fan that blew cold air next to the jello- forcing the air to move faster, taking more heat with it. This is called- you guess it, forced convection. So, the answer to the question? The jello solidifies all around. Wherever the jello (or it's pan) has contact to the air, it will solidify there first, so the last to solidify would be the middle. Now, here's a challenge: apply these concepts to the next question box, coming up soon.

By the way, Bubbly happens to have some good links if you really want them!

Pippin's Question Box

How does jello solidify? (from the top down, sides in, bottom up, etc.)
Explain these concepts: Heat Transfer, Free Convection vs. Forced Convection Best

Got Science?

So what is a gravity wave???

Now, I'm no physicist, but I do know how to do a bit of research- or rather, simply use the NASA link on my page and search the archives. Anyway, seeing as this is a weird question that has a cool answer, I'll discuss it.

Light comes in waves. Water comes in waves. Homework comes in waves! So why not gravity? Gravity waves are hypothetical waves that are kind of like "ripples" in space time. Think of it this way: space-time (that stuff we're sitting in) is a huge sheet. Whenever I put an object on it, like Sunnyd's yellow bouncy ball (the sun!), it causes a little dent in the sheet (that is, if the ball doesn't bounce off...).

From: Gravitational Waves

That little dent, in this instance, is gravity. Now, say Sunnyd got ahold of a bowling ball and put it on the sheet. Providing that you can still hold it, that sheet will be jiggling a little at first, right? Think of that bowling ball as some supermassive object, like... a huge star, and those vibrations are gravity waves- like ripples in a pond. As I get a little mischievious and start shifting that bowling ball around, even more "ripples" are made- thus, more gravity waves. Of course, that's an oversimplified explantion, so if you can rectify this, feel free. These are extremely hard to detect as they get to us, though, because all those gravity waves from the black holes nearby (not that near! No need to panic) get fainter and fainter as they move away from the source. A new satellite, LISA, is expected to launch in 2011 to detect these gravity waves. My source is: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/topics/gwaves/gwaves.html.

I'd like to commend everyone who has answered this first physics question box, but some things to note for next time:

Make sure to paraphrase your answers ( I blame myself for this, so it isn't your fault)

Make sure it sounds vaguely scientific- but if Sunnyd or I can't decipher it, you've gone overboard!

Good work everybody!

Pippin's Question Box

New theme: (drumroll!) Physics!!

What is a gravity wave? Best

Got Science?

Anyone curious for ways to time travel? Some ways that I've heard about are:



1. Make an infinitely long spinning cylinder. This cylinder will warp space-time with it, so (I believe) every trip around this cylinder will make you go backwards in time. I don't quite get it, but I read it in a book.

2. From the same book, if you wanted to make a time machine, you could: using negative matter and stuff like that, make two... er... capsules (hard to explain and I read this book a long time ago) and string a wormhole between them (good luck doing that). Then, put one of them on a ship and send that ship zooming off at the speed of light. Time will go differently in each one, and so going in one capsule will send you back in time to the time when it was created (I'm not sure what is which).

3. Going at the speed of light will "stop" time for you, and time slows as you approach the speed of light.

4. Certain drugs will change your perception of time. (i.e. make it seem to speed up/slow down)

5. Life-threatening situations will slow down your perception of time (they did an experiment on it, though I don't quite have the patience now to explain it).

Here are some clips you can watch, and reading the books in this post will also give some more ways. The website that I had hinted at earlier was www.livescience.com, which would have given you some good answers (and possibly some extra credit points!)

EDIT: Congrats to Saffire Goldstone for having the best answer to the first ever question box! And providing wonderful links to articles and videos about time travel. Check it out!

Science Flash: A "Black Hole" for Light

I actually learned about this first from my dad, who was reading in an article in Chinese. He said that some Chinese scientists actually made a black hole. Honestly, after reading about "mini black holes" that pop in and out of existence, I wasn't that concerned- until he said that it wasn't super small, like I suggested. That made me (literally) jump out of my seat (well, the couch) because any black hole made on earth that's visible to the naked eye would be really, really bad- rather, we wouldn't be here if it was a true, cosmic, suck-everything-up black hole. To my dad's credit, I must mention that he said it was for light. Still, it's not quite a black hole! To get the real scoop, I yahooed it (with no results) and googled it, to get this article. At least it's in English now.

First black hole for light created on Earth

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17980-first-black-hole-for-light-created-on-earth.html

First, before we start talking about the article, I want to point out what the "black hole" I had in mind was. A black hole occurs when you take something- anything, really,- and squish it down until it's really, really, really (really) small. For instance, I might be wrong, but I believe if you wanted to squish yourself that small, you'd have to be as small as a molecule- which is really small. Once it collapses down to a certain radius (there's a name for it, but I don't know how to spell or say it), it becomes so dense that it's gravity is really strong- so strong that light cannot escape the pull of it. Let's take an example that is almost certainly wrong, but gets the general gist of it. Let's say that I have a very big sheet of unbreakable fabric, which would be the space-time continuum. Now, put a school-bus on it. It creates a sag in the fabric, right? The sag is the gravity (according to Einstein) because if you were a marble on it, you'd roll down, or be "attracted to" the school bus. Next, you have to put on some muscle and compress the entire school bus into a tiny ball the size of a pinhead- no, not taking a little piece, but actually stuffing all that matter into a little ball. Put that little ball on the fabric, and voila! you see that it creates a "hole" that your marble self would just roll into and never come out again. That is a black hole. Such a thing on earth that, even it was a size of an atom, would suck us all up into oblivion if I have it correct, although the good thing would be that we wouldn't even know it (people were worrying about that when they launched the LHC Collider, which smashes atoms to find things like evaporating mini black holes and weird elementary particles. Complicated stuff). Anyway, it's fascinating to think about, but not a good thing to have.

The article is says they have made a "black hole for light." Is it a black hole that will suck us all up? No!! It's almost completely different than what a cosmic black hole is. It is meant to trap electromagnetic radiation (light, microwaves, etc.), not people, so rest easy. It is supposed to work on the principle of black holes in the sense that light spirals towards the center. I think of it more like a labyrinth that forces you to go a certain way. Back to the article- when they do start talking about the device, they say, "The key to making light curve inwards is to make the shell's permittivity – which affects the electric component of an electromagnetic wave – increase smoothly from the outer to the inner surface." If you are having one of those What's that? faces, then you know what I'm thinking. Permittivity, according to to dictionary.com, is "A measure of the ability of a material to resist the formation of an electric field within it." So, I'm guessing that that the outside attracts the light or microwave and the inside, well, keeps it inside- although it all transitions smoothly, of course. Two scientists, Tie Jun Cui and Qiang Cheng at the Southeast University of Nanjing made one of these "black holes" for microwaves (the radiation used to heat up your hot cocoa) with 60 round strips made out of a special material called "meta-materials." Meta-material's acclaim to fame, so to speak, is that they are used to make things invisible. (Quick lesson on invisibility: you bend the rays around the object you want to make invisible so the rays don't bounce off and go into your eye, making you "see" it. Don't count on it too soon though, I'm pretty sure they still have a long way to go. All the good stuff you'll probably have to wait a long time for) The outer 40 rings form the shell that the light/microwaves enter, and the inner 20 actually absorb it. Each of the rings apparently look like a circuit board. In the first version, the absorber converts the microwaves (or is it light? I'm confused) into heat.

Now that the version for microwaves is done, they are hoping to do the same for light. However, since light has smaller wavelengths than microwaves (the electromagnetic spectrum!), they have to make the circuitry on the boards a lot smaller. The purpose for this is that they could hopefully put a solar cell in the middle of the absorber, converting the light into electricity. If so, they could use this black-holeish thing instead of huge mirrors to focus enough sunlight on the cells. (Yes, you need sunlight for solar cells to work, you can't put it in half-shade and expect it to produce a whole bunch of electricity).

In my opinion, this is definitely impressive, but it is not exactly the biggest thing that ever happened. After all, with the ability to bend light and all those smart people (not me, I'm just the critic) out there, somebody probably would have come up with it sooner or later. However, the speed that they work and the neatness is definitely a big accomplishment. Also, I think that they (I don't know who gave the name, so I'm saying they) completely misnamed it. Black holes will make people jump, you know! Couldn't they have named it something like the "light-trapper" or "sun-collector" or "light labyrinth" or even "a device that simulates the effects of a black hole on space-time with meta-materials in order to bend light into a compact thingamajig." Making a black hole in any headline would definitely make people read it, but still, when it's in Chinese (English too) it's hard to get the real scoop without using dictionaries and a lot of prior knowledge that's there because of luck! (Actually, you could argue it's my fault for not learning Chinese properly and that I shouldn't be on a Chinese website in the first place, but it still makes people jump to weird conclusions). Wow, I just realized there are a lot of comments, and a treasure trove of information as well. I like how one person said "it is more of a lens made of meta-materials" because that makes more sense and is not nearly as extreme as a black hole! Plus, some people interpret it as sucking in light, while others think that the light has to hit the thing first, then it navigates its way to the middle. I agree with the latter more, because it says nothing about attracting anything other than the reference to black holes. There are also a lot of people pointing out that meta-materials aren't exactly cheap, so whether this light-trap (as people call it) would be more expensive or cheaper than mirrors is also something to consider. Others point out that this could have other uses. The one that I think was the most interesting (and probably practical) would be to create cheaper versions of this in order to trap excess radio waves and other radiation types from cell phones and wireless devices in the office to reduce exposure. There are also a lot of comments (you can see the varying degrees of "it's a black hole" vs. it's not) that actually take the idea of a black hole literally (one started talking about a black hole bomb! I don't think that would be possible with a light-trap). Overall a good discussion of the article in the comments- and there's a link to another version of the article! Here it is! http://blogs.discovery.com/space_disco/2009/10/first-ever-black-hole-created-on-earth.html Don't read the comments on that one, though, since it's a somewhat nasty discussion. Otherwise, it's definitely a good discovery, but they could have been clearer on the actual device, not just going "it's like a black hole!" because that isn't a good analogy at all- and certainly not good for innocent schoolkids to read, since they can get mixed up.

Science Flash: Dark Matter Even More Complicated?

Dark matter and dark energy never really made sense to me, but then again, I think that's because no one really knows much about it. Anyway, it just got more complicated.

Is Unknow Force in Universe Acting on Dark Matter?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091022154644.htm

To sum up my history in the pursuit of dark matter and energy, I knew before August 2009 that dark matter basically was unknown "stuff" in the universe (actually, it's the majority of stuff in the universe) and it acted on visible matter, so our galaxies can stay together and not fly apart, since it exerts gravitational effects. Dark energy is like the opposite of gravity, but again, it's called "dark" because they don't really know what to call it-or even what it is, seeing as the "opposite of gravity" is just a wild guess. Then, I read two books by Michio Kaku about all of the bizarrities of physics. He started to throw in negative matter and energy, which is really bizarre, and then I got really confused. All I could glean from that discussion was that nobody really knows what dark matter is, and that we walk through it all the time (it's omnipresent!) yet it doesn't interact with us (that is, while we can catch things like air in a balloon, or "interacting" with it, we can't do the same with dark matter. Bearing this in mind, I shall try my very best to figure out what the article is talking about and explain it as well.

The article starts with saying that there is "an unexpected link between mysterious 'dark matter' and the visible stars and gas in galaxies that could revolutionise our current understanding of gravity." How gravity got in there is beyond me, because the first part is a whopper in the first place. Dr. Hongsheng Zhao then suggests that there is an unknown force in the universe acting on dark matter. (Although I have to say: aren't there enough complicated forces already? Do we really need another one?) I'll get back to this later, though, because the article describes it more clearly later on.

The next paragraph then is basically what I said in my first paragraph, but to illustrate my point of what I was saying earlier, here are some citations: It says that "only 4% of the universe is made of known material," which means there's a lot of unknown stuff (gases, stars, quasars, and all of that doesn't count as "unknown") in the universe. It also says that "a solid understanding of dark matter as well as direct evidence of its existence has remained elusive," which basically means they flat out don't know what dark matter is and can't really prove that there is "dark matter" at all.

After that, we really start getting into the hard part of the article. It says that the team researching this thinks that the interactions (but remember, we walk through the stuff all the time without even knowing we are, so this is pretty significant) between normal matter and dark matter "could be more important and more complex than previously thought," or that dark matter isn't just keeping our galaxies together, it could be doing other things as well- or it might not even exist at all, it could be a new force. Dr. Benoit Famaey basically explains, as I see it, that dark matter is doing an intricate balancing act throughout the entire universe, and that the dark matter "acts" in a way that it seems to "know" where the visible matter in the universe. Dr. Zhao allows us to visualize it by saying that it's like going to a zoo with all sorts of animals at different ages and finding that they all have the same backbone weight- so an elephant and a monkey have the same backbone weight. In the universe, even though all the galaxies are like different animals that are at different ages, they seem to all have the "fingerprints" of an "invisible fifth force." Then, it says that this force might solve a mystery I mentioned earlier: dark energy (We're just back to square one). Of course, if you aren't sastified with that craziness, they also say that it could also lead to a revision and a whole new outlook of gravity (quick history: Newton discovered gravity, Einstein revised it to make it better.) I can't quite grasp this (if anyone who knows physics can explain, I'd be very grateful) because, from what I know about the universe, it's hard enough to grasp the size of the universe (let's just say it's so incredibly big I've given up trying to imagine it), let alone what's in it. My opinion summed up on all of this: it's all mind-boggling, really complicated, and immensely bizarre craziness! That's why I like it.

Science Book, Take A Look: "Real" Science Fiction!

Calling all lovers of sci-fi, physics, science, and bizarre facts!

Here are two (non-fiction) books worth reading:

Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku

Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku

(For those who watch the science channel, Michio Kaku is the Asian-ish, probably Japanese, guy with the white hair that shows up a lot.)

I put these two books together because they have a bit of an overlap in what they talk about. Physics of the Impossible is primarily about "impossible" technologies. He classifies them into three groups: class one, or something possible in the next couple of centuries, class two, something that's possible but is so far away that it's basically science fiction to us (well, it all seems like sci-fi anyways) and class three, or the truly impossible (although only two things, telling the future and perpetual motion machines, fall into this category). Of course, being the co founder of string theory, he likes to talk quite a bit about the awe-inspiring "theory of everything," aka string theory or M-theory. However, this is primarily about the "impossible"- time travel, invisibility, force fields, and other things that seem magic to us. For those who like Star Trek (I never saw it), he also makes a lot of references to Star Trek as well. I highly recommend this to people who like science-fiction: it's just as weird, but true as well!

Parallel Worlds delves deeper into the "theory of everything" and all the strings (string theory, get it?) attached. He discusses parallel universes, quantum mechanics, baby universes, and of course, string, or rather, M-theory. (Just to clear things up, the "theory of everything" is like the holy grail of physics. M-theory, the m standing for membrane, is the latest version of string theory, which people hope is the new theory of everything.) This is just as bizarre and a little harder to grasp than Physics of the Impossible, so I recommend you read Physics of the Impossible first if you are interested in both of them. This book's bizarreness comes from all of those wacky theories. For instance, just as a little taste, quantum mechanics can imply that there is a slight probability that we could suddenly disappear and reappear on Mars from the uncertainty principle- thankfully, the probability of this is so small that you'd have to wait longer than the lifetime of the universe for this to happen, so saying that your homework disappeared due to the uncertainty principle is not a reasonable excuse for not having your homework.

Overall, these two books are very, very interesting- but two warnings: first, don't read them one after the other, but put a book in between. They have quite a bit of an overlap in material, so while the info will sink in better the next time, it will be repetitive. Also, don't read too much of this stuff: it gave me a weird dream about disappearing into a parallel universe, and I've been wondering about parallel universes and how we would tell the difference between a parallel universe where we originated from and one where the only difference is something like a butterfly not existing- good food for thought, but still really creepy.