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Spaced Out Tour (National Science and Engineering Week)

2009-01-14T08:37:00.000-08:00

Electrifying demonstrations and journeys into the far reaches of the universe (metaphorically) are all on offer over the next ten days as National Science and Engineering Week 2008 is celebrated at museums and other venues around the UK.

From the 2,000 or so events going on, we’ve plucked a selection that will stir up a current of excitement.

Benjamin Franklin, inventor and founding father of the United States, had quite a few ideas of a scientific nature.

His former home in London will be hosting a free day of activities suitable for all on Monday, March 10 (11am-4pm), so get to Benjamin Franklin House to find out about his electrical experiments, his musical invention the Glass Armonica, and ideas about canals.

People might have thought Franklin was a little eccentric in his day, but the two scientists coming along to bring their Science in a Suitcase show to Colchester Castle are certainly a whacky pair. Their bizarre experiments use everything from plungers to bullwhips, mime and music, and their groundbreaking research projects include the world’s smallest planetarium, quantum hair enlargement and the funny side of the centrifugal force.

The 30-minute Science in a Suitcase performances are included in normal admission price, running at 12pm, 2pm and 3pm.

© British Association for the Advancement of Science
Photo of a boy holding a thought bubble with the question 'Can we cure the common cold? written on it

More wide-eyed amazement is guaranteed with space-themed events, of which Kendal Museum’s on March 15 (2.30pm) sounds pretty awesome. A Tourist’s Guide to the Solar System invites visitors to enjoy an exciting tour around the most fascinating sights and landscapes of our amazing solar system.

See spectacular pictures of Earth’s sister worlds! Fly over a Martian volcano three times higher than Everest! Soar through Saturn’s rings! Swoop over Jupiter’s Great Red Spot!

Stuart Atkinson of the Eddington Astronomical Society is your tour guide on this trip, which is included in the normal admission price, children and full time students free.

On a more earth-bound note, Portsmouth Natural History Museum is inviting youngsters to come along on a minibeast safari on Saturday March 15 (10am-4pm), with microscopes helping to bring tiny creatures from the museum garden into focus. Big beasts will also be getting attention, with University of Portsmouth experts on hand to answer questions on Pterosaurs; fossils to see and feel and a 'dinotastic' craft activity.

Lucky Portsmouth schoolchildren will also be looking down the city’s drains with special tours of the sewerage pumping station at Eastney Beam Engine House on March 12 and 13. The building is open one weekend a month during the summer, for those who aren't on this special school trip.
Photo of children with questions on cards

© British Association for the Advancement of Science

From March 11 to march 14 Fermanagh Museum is looking at how scientific advances have changed everyday life in a programme called From Hand to Mouth, which will cover health and environmental issues in the context of how local lifestyles have changed in the last 50 years. Contact the Learning and Access Officer on 028 6632 5000 to book a place for £2.

Part of the week is the Big Question, where you can post your queries on the Science and Engineering Week website and have them answered by scientists.

The V&A Museum of Childhood has gone for a similar approach with its Science Boffins in Space days (Saturdays March 8 and 15; 11am, 1pm; 2.30pm), when 6 to 11 year olds will be able to find out the answer to questions including ‘Is there gravity on Mars?’ and ‘Is the moon made of cheese?’

Over 12s and adults can also find out ‘The Truth about Space’ with a series of talks by Jerry Stone at the museum on the same days.

For full what’s on listings for the week, which runs from March 7-16, visit the Science and Engineering Week website.

Aurora Borealis

2009-01-14T08:23:00.000-08:00

When you mix together electricity, magnetism and gases you get an aurora. Sun storms produce huge flares of electrically charged particles and generate powerful solar winds that blast the Earth's atmosphere. The Earth's magnetic field repels most of this electrical attack, but captures a fraction of it, which leaks down to the atmosphere at the magnetic poles. When the Sun is particularly active, this electrical energy passes through the thin gases in our atmosphere so they glow with coloured light like a fluorescent tube or a plasma ball.

The Moon shines beneath the glowing curtain during an Aurora display over Iceland. Photograph by Jamie Cooper.

Image number:
10465084
Credit:
Science Museum/Science & Society Picture Library

Image rights:
Science Museum

Rat-Brained Robotics

2008-11-07T14:55:00.000-08:00

How to build a brain

To make Gordon's 'brain', scientists removed brain cells from rat embryos and grew them in a dish. Bathed in a warm nutrient solution, the cells, also known as neurons, form connections with each other.
'We keep Gordon's neurons in an incubator at body temperature,' says creator Kevin Warwick, robot expert at the University of Reading. 'We feed them every few days with a fresh nutrient and mineral solution - similar to the kind of thing athletes drink.'

Remote brain power

To avoid infection, Gordon's neurons have to be kept apart from his robotic body. The neurons are stored safely inside a sterile chamber, and signals are sent between them and the body via a wireless link.

A basic body

Although his brain is special, Gordon's body is more run-of-the-mill. Standing just 11 cm tall, he moves about on two wheels. Sonar sensors allow him to detect nearby objects.

Which way to turn?

Scientists have managed to teach Gordon to avoid bumping into the walls of his pen 80% of the time. His sonar system sends information as an electrical pulse to his neurons. The neurons respond and send signals back to his body, telling it which way to turn.

The Way of Future

2008-10-22T05:36:00.000-07:00

Physics research constant progress in many areas, and will still so far in the future.

Condension objects in physics, theoretical problem is not be the biggest explanation High-temperature superconductivity. Many businesses do to make spintronic and working quantum computer.

In the physics of particles, the first pieces of evidence for physics experiments outside the Standard Model has begun to yield results. The most famous is the appointment that the neutrino has a mass non-zero. The results of this experiment appears to have completed the solar neutrino problem that has long-standing physics in the sun. Neutrino physics is a major area of research experiments and theory, which is active. In the next few years, faster particles will begin to examine the scale of energy in the range TEV, which is where the eksperiment hope to find evidence for the Higgs boson and the particles supersimetris.

The theory also try to present quantum mechanics and general relativity into a theory of quantum gravity, a program that has been running for half a century, and still does not produce fruit. Candidates are next on the M-theory, superstring theory and loop quantum gravity.

Many astronomical phenomena and cosmological has not explained satisfactorily, including the existence of cosmic ray energy ultra-high, asimetris baryon, faster universe and the acceleration lap anomaly galaxy.

Although much progress has been made in the high-energy, quantum, and astronomical physics, a phenomenon many other day-to-day, regarding the complex system, chaos, or turbulens still barely understood. Complex problems that seem to be resolved by clever application of dynamics and mechanics, such as the establishment of the sandbar, "node" in the water "trickling", catastrof theory, or the Page-in collection heterogenic own that vibrate still not be. This complex phenomenon has received more attention since the 1970s for several reasons, not due to lack of other methods of modern mathematics and computer system that can calculate the complex to be modelling with a new way. Relations between the disciplines of physics complex has also increased, as in the lessons turbulens in aerodinamica or observation pattern formation in biological systems. In 1932, Horrace Lamb predict:

"I have parents now, and when I died and went to heaven there are two things that I hope can be explained. One is quantum electrodynamics, and one is from turbulens Fluid movement. And I'm more optimistic on the first. "
source : wikipedia.com

Carbon Dioxide: Good for Something? II

2008-09-11T07:35:00.000-07:00

Down With Oil
To eliminate the petroleum source altogether, he used an epoxide derived from the oil in orange peels as a co-reactant to make plastic with CO2. Coates is working to commercialize CO2-based plastics with a range of properties, and other "environmentally benign" polymers, through a company called Novamer.
Even if fossil fuel contributions were eliminated from all of these reactions, experts agree that making plastics from CO2 generated in power plants or other industrial processes will not fix the climate change problem.

"When we keep burning as much fossil fuel as we are, it's going to be impossible for one chemical use to negate all of the CO2 that's made on a daily basis," Coates said. Production of all polymers worldwide amounted to about 260 million tons in 2005, according to Müller, while CO2 emissions added up to more than 100 times more.
"However, if you're using CO2 instead of a petrochemical source, then you are prolonging the lifetime of the petrochemical resources that we have," said Christopher Rayner, of the University of Leeds in the U.K., who is working to make formic acid, which can be used in fuel cells, from CO2 and hydrogen.
Doing As the Plants Do
Another approach to providing the energy needed to turn the carbon in CO2 into a more useful form is with electrochemical cells -- which use electricity and a catalyst to convert CO2 into carbon monoxide and, eventually, into a fuel such as methanol. Daniel Dubois of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, another meeting presenter, is tackling this problem.
"Part of the problem is, where do you get your electricity?" Rayner said of this method. Unless it comes from a renewable source, the electricity supply creates CO2 emissions that undo the gains in absorbing CO2 in the electrochemical process.
There is, of course, a precedent for stripping CO2 out of the atmosphere on a large scale and converting it into all sorts of useful molecules: Plants do it all day by harnessing the sun's energy through photosynthesis and using it to build their cells and tissues.
Some researchers are trying to turn CO2 back into fuels using methods similar in principle to photosynthesis -- using the energy in light to transform carbon dioxide into higher-energy molecules.
Others are trying to capitalize directly on plants' ability to convert CO2 into potentially valuable molecules, including sources of fuel. It will be a challenge to identify which compounds can economically be made this way, Müller pointed out, also noting that only one percent of the sun's energy is converted by photosynthesis into plant tissue. He hopes synthetic approaches can be more efficient.
"Of course we can learn from nature," he added, "We'd like to copy them."

Carbon Dioxide: Good for Something?

2008-09-11T07:21:00.000-07:00

April 10, 2008 -- The carbon in oil and coal is used to make many useful things: fuel, plastics, paints, detergents, pharmaceuticals...the list is long. Unfortunately, most of that carbon -- especially from fuel -- ends up in the atmosphere as good-for-nothing, climate-change-inducing carbon dioxide.
But is it really good for nothing? Maybe not for long. Chemists are developing strategies to put CO2 to use making products normally derived from oil. These approaches could take a bite out of power plant CO2 emissions that would normally go into the atmosphere.
For instance, CO2 could take the place of the poisonous gas phosgene in production of certain plastics, according to findings released this week at a meeting of the American Chemical Society by Toshiyasu Sakakura of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan.

Sakakura and colleagues developed a new catalyst that efficiently converts CO2 and methanol into a plastic precursor whose synthesis currently requires phosgene. Phosgene, which is derived from petroleum, is particularly nasty. It was used as a chemical warfare agent in World War I.
"It does not produce much waste," Sakakura said of the new process. "The waste is just water, so it is simple and clean."
Bringing New Meaning to the Word "Recycled"
Sakakura and other researchers have targeted other processes for making plastics, which are, essentially, long chains of carbon. CO2 can react with a class of chemicals called epoxides to make polycarbonate, the tough, clear plastic used in compact discs, eyeglass lenses, bulletproof windows and more.
Using CO2 in such processes is a challenge, said Thomas Müller of the CAT Catalytic Center in Aachen, Germany, who also presented at the meeting, because it is relatively inert and "low in energy." After all, carbon dioxide is what is left after the energy stored in the chemical bonds of the molecules that make up fuel has been released by combustion.
This means that reactions using CO2 require something else, like methane or an epoxide, to act as a source of energy in creating a stable, higher-energy product like plastics.
"It would be great if you could polymerize CO2 directly," said chemist Geoffrey Coates of Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, referring to the process of linking carbon atoms together. "But you would defeat the laws of nature."
These co-reactants generally come from fossil fuel sources, so these CO2-based processes generally decrease, but do not eliminate, the need for petroleum. Coates has made polymers, for instance, that are 30 to 50 percent CO2.

Carbon AplentyExhaust plumes spew from cooling towers at a coal-fired power station in Germany. At a recent symposium sponsored by the American Chemical Society, chemists from around the world presented schemes to put CO2 to use making products normally derived from oil. These approaches could take a bite out of power plant emissions that would normally go into the atmosphere.

Don't pit science against religion

2008-09-08T04:52:00.000-07:00

Lawrence Krauss
THE popular debate about intelligent design has, I am happy to say, discredited fundamentalists who want to censor science for religious reasons. It has also exposed pseudo-scientific organisations such as the Discovery Institute for what they are. Nevertheless, in pitching misguided evangelicals against the scientific community, it has had one negative effect: it has encouraged scientists to counter-attack by criticising religious faith in general.
Such attacks are nothing new. One of the more outspoken scientific opponents of religion, physicist Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas at Austin, has said: "There are good people, and bad people. Good people do good things, and bad people do bad things. When good people do bad things, it is religion." It was a brilliant sound bite, but one of Weinberg's less vituperative statements is more instructive: "Science does not make it impossible to believe in God. It just makes it possible to not ...
The complete article is 807 words long.