Question of the Month

What is a thermal and evolved gas analyzer (TEGA)?

(Answer will be posted next month)





Answer to Last Month's Quiz:
Name one of the two rovers currently operating on Mars.



Spirit and Opportunity are the two rovers operating on the red planet.

Did You Know?

1. Physical Chemistry

Please see the new web page dedicated to chemistry for more on this exciting science.
Did you know that a liquid that is supersaturated with gas, such as soda pop, which is full of carbon dioxide, is ideal to support a physical reaction at a nucleation site. This is a location where gas embedded in a liquid is able to form bubbles. Nucleation sites can be dust particles or large surfaces such as coins or candy. Gas bubbles will form around them since such objects provide a large surface area in a very small volume.

Joseph Priestley was the first to discover a way of dissolving carbon dioxide in water. He achieved this by suspending a bowl of water above a beer vat at a brewery in Leeds. The ‘fixed air’ enveloping the fermenting beer produced a pleasant taste. Priestley offered this carbonated water to friends as a refreshing drink. He published a paper in 1772 entitled Impregnating Water with Fixed Air, which describes the mixing of liquid sulfuric acid with solid chalk to produce carbon dioxide gas and forcing the gas to dissolve in a bowl of water.

Mentos have many microscopic spaces that can support an incredible number of bubbles when dropped into a supersaturated gas solution like Coke.  Furthermore, since the Mentos are denser than Coke, they will sink and physically react with the soda as it travels to the bottom of the Coke container. Escaping carbon dioxide bubbles quickly turn into rapidly rising stream that explodes out of the container creating a geyser effect.

Play the video below highlighting the beauty of these physical reactions brought to life by Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz.
Hit play!

2. Potatoes Originate from the Home of the Inca

Researchers conducted genetic tests on 362 species of potatoes grown throughout the Andes in South America and discovered that every spud could be traced to a unique variety found in southern Peru. Since then a wide variety of potatoes continue to flourish in South America as well as in Idaho, Canada, Europe, Morocco, and Nepal. The ancient Inca civilization cultivated potatoes as a main foodstuff.
Source: Oct 2006 National Geographic

3. Honeybees Use the Most Efficient Polygon

Please see the new web page dedicated to mathematics for more on this exciting 'language of science.'
The ancient Pythagoreans were quite familiar with the geometric fact that polygons such as pentagons, heptagons, and octagons are unusable for establishing a continuous pattern without leaving gaps as they are placed side by side. Many a tradesman laying tile is familiar with this problem too.

They all know that only triangles, squares, and hexagons could cover an area without leaving any spaces between them.

Consider an area of 100 square units. Based on using the following shapes, the resulting circumferences become:
45 units - triangle
40 units - square
37 units - hexagon
35 units - circle
(for comparison purposes)

Hexagons are the most efficient regular polygon, since they most cloesly represent the circle in shape. Honeybees make use of the hexagon as they build their beehives based on a honeycomb infrastructure.

Bees want to store as much honey as possible in containers requiring the least amount of wax. Consequently, a container with the smallest circumference is one using hexagonal shapes.

Bees, tradesmen, and mathematicians seem to agree.

Test Your Knowledge

A World Perspective newsletter features a popular quiz on page 3 entitled Test Your Knowledge. This webpage has been added due to the popularity of the quiz and the demand from readers who want more technical and scientific Q & A. This page can also be printed and used for trivia games with you and your friends and family.

Also, please e-mail your questions and we will post them for others to try and answer.

Now, put those thinking caps on and exercise your grey cells!

Questions

(scroll down for corresponding answers)
Year 4 Newsletters (Nov 2007 - October 2008)

Q44 Who invented the radiometer?


Q43 What are the two major factors affecting climate change?

Q42 Where did the term “guinea pig” come from?

Q41 What percentage of the food you eat is made of corn?

Q40 What is parallax?

Q39 What is meant by the orbital parameter obliquity?

Q38 What geometric shape is Earth’s orbit around the Sun?




Year 3 Newsletters (Nov 2006 - October 2007)

Q37 Who invented gas lighting?

Q36 Name two greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

Q35 If a farmer has 20 cows and chickens, and the animals have 54 legs in all, how many chickens are in the coop?

Q34 What is dark matter?

Q33 Who discovered the positron?

Image courtesy of SSPL

Q32 What are the symbols for 1 and 10 in Egyptian hieroglyphics?


Name conversion courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania.

Here is a hint!

Image courtesy of Mark Millmore at www.eyelid.co.uk

Q31 What is the smallest number possible, expressed as the sum of two cubes in two different ways?

Q30 What is an isotope?

Q29 What is a dipole antenna?

Q28 Why do wind turbines usually have three blades?

Q27 Who invented electrolysis?

Q26 What is the difference between a chemical reaction and a nuclear reaction?

Q25 What is royal jelly?


Year 2 Newsletters (Nov 2005 - October 2006)

Q24 Who invented Pi?


Q23 Prior to fiber optics, what technology was used to transmit long distance signals?

Q22 What is benzene?


Q21 Who discovered penicillin?

Q20 What did Jeremiah Richter invent?

Q19 What role did the TIROS-N satellites and do the NOAA satellites perform?

Q18 What is the duration of the sunspot cycle?

Q17 How did the Associated Press (AP) start?

Q16 What is the difference between a comet, an asteroid, and a meteor?

Q15 Who invented the electromagnet?

Q14 What is an integrated chip (IC)?


Year 1 Newsletters (Nov 2004 - October 2005)

Q13 What is CERN?

Q12 What impact did Johannes Kepler's theory of comets circling the sun in elliptical orbits have on society?

Q11 Who invented the 8-hour workday?

Q10 Who discovered the photoelectric effect?

Q9 What products did the vacuum tube enable?

Q8 Who developed the Uncertainty Principle?

Q7 Who is known for the quote: "God doesn't play dice?"

Q6 What causes scurvy?

Q5 What does the acronym LASER stand for?

Q4 What is Chernobyl?

	Q3 Name the three major technical innovations on the Space Shuttle.

Q2 What orbits the earth 375 miles above us?

Q1 Name the five types of electricity found in nature.

Answers

Year 4 Newsletters (Nov 2007 - October 2008)

A44 In 1873, Sir William Crookes invented the radiometer. Radiometers measure the radiant flux or power in electromagnetic radiation.

A43 Global warming and global dimming, the former dealing with greenhouse gas emissions and the latter related to particulate matter - air pollution, are the two major factors.

A42 “Guinea pig” emerged during the diphtheria investigations to describe an experimental subject. Thousands of small Andean animals were slaughtered once Friedrich Loeffler (1852-1915) found in 1884 that guinea pigs were susceptible to the diphtheria germ.

A41 25 percent of the food you eat is corn-based, from cereals to ketchup to sodas. Check out Koslowsky’s fictional short story, Cornbot, for more.

A40 Parallax is used to figure out how far away a distant object is from the observer.


A39 Obliquity is the degree of the earth’s tilt as it completes its daily rotation and yearly revolution around the sun. It varies from 21.5 to 24.5 degrees.

A38 The earth’s orbit forms an ellipse about the sun as discovered by Johannes Kepler.




Year 3 Newsletters (Nov 2006 - October 2007)

A37 Scottish engineer William Murdoch was the inventor of practical gas lighting in the 1790s. In 1802, the Soho foundry in Birmingham was lit with gas and in 1804, a spinning-mill in Manchester was lit up. By 1812, gas lighting began to appear in London streets and some residences. Business drove the acceptance of gas lighting.

A36 Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

A35 There are 13 chickens in the coop.
We know that the number of cows (X) and the number of chickens (Y) is 20 so:
X + Y = 20 (Equation 1)
We also know from our experiences that a cow has four legs while a chicken only has two legs.

This gives us the second equation as follows:
4X + 2Y = 54 (Equation 2)
We can express the first equation as
X = Y – 20 and
substitute into the second equation to solve for Y and hence find the number of chickens in the coop.
By substituting we find that Y = 13 or there are 13 chickens in the coop. Returning to the first equation we can see that there are also 7 cows on the farm, as X + Y = 20.

A34 Dark matter is matter made up of the anti-particles of electrons and quarks.

A33 Carl Anderson (1905-1991) discovered the positron in 1932.

A positron is equivalent to an electron with a positive charge, a fact that was mathematically proven by physicist Paul Dirac (1902-1984) in 1931.

A32 The number 1 is a vertical stroke and the number 10 is the drawing of a hobble for cattle:


A31 The number is 1729.
Try it out for yourself!
1^3+12^3 = 9^3+10^3 = 1729

A30 An isotope is an element having a nucleus with the same number of protons (the same atomic number) but different numbers of neutrons, hence, different mass numbers.

A29 The simplest form of antenna is the dipole. Each half of the antenna is fed with electrons from its center. The antenna resonates and produces electromagnetic waves - radio waves if the frequency is found in the accepted AM and FM radio bands we are familiar with.

This is a half wavelength dipole used to radiate energy to heat the oil sands in Rob's 1981 experiment to preheat oil sand.
Please see the February and March 2007 issues of AWP.

A28 Wind turbines usually have three blades to ensure dynamic stability during rotation so that the wind turbine does not tear itself apart.


A27 Michael Faraday invented electrolysis

and its first and second laws are named in honor of his laboratory discoveries.

A26 A chemical reaction occurs when an atom’s valence electrons interact, while a nuclear reaction takes place when the atom's nucleus is altered through the process of fission or fusion.

A25 Royal Jelly is a form of honey that comes from the mouth glands of young bees. Each queen bee only needs a teaspoon of the creamy white honey - very rich in proteins and fatty acids.


Year 2 Newsletters (Nov 2005 - October 2006)

A24 Archimedes discovered Pi. In ‘Measurement of the Circle,’ Archimedes shows that the exact value of π lies between the values 310/71 and 31/7.

A23 High bandwidth, long distance signals were sent using microwave radio systems developed in the 1940s. A microwave network was used to carry Eisenhower's January, 1953 inauguration speech to over 118 stations in 74 cities.

A22 Benzene is an organic carbon and hydrogen compound. It is a colorless and flammable liquid with a pleasant, sweet smell. Many chemists believe that 75 percent of modern organic chemistry is directly or indirectly the product of Kekule's benzene structural theory. It is an important industrial solvent and key component in the production of drugs, plastics, gasoline, synthetic rubber, and dyes.

A21 In 1928, Sir Alexander Fleming (1881 - 1955), professor of bacteriology at St. Mary's Hospital in London, England discovered penicillin.

A20 Jeremiah Richter invented stoichiometry, the law of reciprocal proportions used in chemistry. Stoichiometry is the relationship between the weights of the reactants and the products of a chemical reaction. Like Kepler, who searched for mathematical relationships in the astronomical data of Tycho Brahe, Richter searched for mathematical relationships in the field of chemistry.

A19 The Television Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS) proved the effectiveness of satellite observations, which led to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite series for weather reporting. These satellites track cloud-pattern data, show storm and hurricane systems, pinpoint jet streams, and record upper level wind direction and speed.

A18 Sunspots follow an 11-year cycle based on observations made since 1610 AD.


A17 The Associated Press or AP was originally formed to share the cost of transmitting news bulletins by telegraph.

A16 Comets orbit the sun (e.g. Halley) or circle planets like Jupiter (e.g. Shoemaker-Levy 9) in an elliptical orbit. Asteroids elliptically orbit the Sun in packs found in the Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud. Meterors are fallen comets or asteroids that strike the Sun or planets.

A15 William Stephenson invented in the electromagnet in 1825.

Doorbells are based on electromagnetic technology.

A14 An IC is a thin chip consisting of at least two interconnected transistors as well as passive components like resistors. Typical chips are 1 cm in size or smaller, and contain millions of interconnected devices. Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby independently invented the integrated chip.

Year 1 Newsletters (Nov 2004 - October 2005)

A13 CERN stands for Conseil European pour la Recherche Nucleare. It is the European organization for nuclear research, the world's largest particle physics center where physicists explore the composition of matter and the forces that hold it together.

A12 Kepler’s discovery that comets move in elliptical orbits and return at regular intervals reduced the fear people had during their earthly approach.

A11 Henry Ford invented the eight hour workday and paid higher wages to retain his manufacturing workforce.

A10 Heinrich Hertz discovered the photoelectric effect in 1887. This discovery illustrates one of the ironies of science - Hertz was confirming the wave theory of light and uncovered its particle nature too.

A9 The vacuum tube produced radio, television, computers, radar, and inertial guidance systems.



A8 Werner Heisenberg, with the Uncertainty Principle, postulated that it is not possible to exactly measure a particle's position and speed at the same time.

A7 Einstein said, "God doesn't play dice"



A6 Scurvy is a horrific disease arising from vitamin C deficiency.

A5 LASER stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.



This is a 10Gb/s laser module used in an optical fiber transmission system.

A4 The Chernobyl nuclear power plant near Kiev in the Ukraine experienced a catastrophic meltdown on April 26, 1986.

A3 Three of the major technological innovations used on the space shuttle include solid fuel booster rockets for propulsion, use of a silica-based heat shield, and a distributed computer architecture using a redundant scheme for monitoring and control.

A2 The Hubble Space Telescope orbits 375 miles above the earth's surface.

A1 The five types of electricity are chemical (or voltaic), static (or common), magnetic, animal (or physiological as in electric eels), and thermo-electric (e.g. electrons leaving heated surfaces).

All electricity is the same. This fact was not shown until Michael Faraday demonstrated this commonality among the various forms of electricity in 1832. He reported these results in Series III of the Electrical Researches. Prior to Faraday's exhaustive testing, Helmholtz settled a heated dispute between Galvani and Volta regarding animal electricity versus chemical electricity. Helmholtz ruled that both types of electricity were the same.