Why wood rots

Wood, or rather the inside of wood, is a bit like tonnes of tubes that are attached via "doors" which are spaced-out amongst the tubes.

These tubes are are actually the walls of living cells, they have however been dead for a long time and literally only the skeleton remains. The hollow tubes, the cell walls, are the skeleton of those cells.

Fungi, attach themselves to wood and secrete enzymes which literally eat their way through the wood. As they eat they destroy the "doors" between the tubes and this creates vast open gaps in the wood, making it POROUS!

This allows water to invade the open spaces of the wood as it is absorbed through the pores that have been made by the fungi.

This makes the wood HUMID which actually helps fungal growth, which in-turn makes the wood decay quicker.

As the wood becomes more porous it also starts supporting bacterial growth aswell as they too favour these conditions. Fungi and bacteria team-up and eat through the soft SUMMER growth rings and then the harder WINTER growth rings until there's no more wood!

Thanks

Adam :-) X

Time really does fly when you're having fun!

Yes it's true! When you're care-free and happy, life seems to fly-by!

Your brain typically transposes 30 images a second - this is standard and allows you to digest info and go about your daily business.

However, when you are stressed or under pressure, your brain THINKS more, which makes sense as often you are searching for an answer to a predicament that you have or worrying yourself over something.

Now, because the brain is more ACTIVE in these cases it is digesting MORE info!! You are making your brain WORK harder, giving it more information.

This actually makes TIME seem to SLOW down!! SEEM is a strong word.

In many cases, this is how your BRAIN literally saves you from making a bad decision, if you are given a short time-span to make a decision.

Being trapped in an inferno, averting a collision, catching something are all examples of where your BRAIN appears to slow time down, thus you feeling like you're given extra-time to make a decision.

Your BRAIN is definitely transposing way more than 30 images a second in these cases. More images = more frames of reference = more decision opportunities.

Many thanks

Adam :-) X

Colour

The human eye can only perceive a small section of the electromagnetic spectrum. We call this section "VISIBLE LIGHT". Different colours across the spectrum correspond to different WAVELENGTHS of light.

Our eyes contain cells called CONES, which are sensitive to these different types of wavelength and allow us to see in COLOUR. Three different types of cone are affected by light in the RED, GREEN AND BLUE parts of the spectrum. These correspond to the PRIMARY COLOURS. Different light sources give out different parts of the spectrum, which appear as different colours. When combined, coloured lights appear as different colours. This is called the ADDITIVE PROCESS. Adding primary light sources in the correct proportions can produce the sensation of other colours in our eyes.

When light hits a pigment in an object, only some colours are reflected. Which colours are REFLECTED and which are ABSORBED depends on the pigment. This is the SUBTRACTIVE PROCESS. Looking at a coloured object in coloured light may make it appear different. This is because pigments can ONLY reflect colours that are PRESENT in the oncoming light.

Many thanks, much love, ADAM! :-) X

A bit about Kidneys!

The kidneys serve two major functions:

they keep the salt content of the blood constant, and they filter waste out of the bloodstream.

So, the main components of urine are (salt) water and waste products. The major waste product from cells in the body is ammonia, and the major waste product from blood is a broken form of heme called bilirubin. In the liver, each of these is converted into a less hazardous form: ammonia is converted to urea, and bilirubin is degraded to urobilins. Salt, water, and urea are all colorless, but urobilins (which come from degraded pigments) are yellow.

So, if you drink a lot, your urine will be more dilute and clearer, and if you get dehydrated, your urine will contain less water and be darker yellow.

Drugs!!

Not the dodgy kind you can buy!!

A drug is designed to either prevent or cause something to happen in your body.

Every cell of your body has RECEPTORS on its surface. These RECEPTORS receive chemicals that transmit a message to the cell.

Your body is full of chemicals, in fact, it is jam-packed with them. Your cells are constantly receiving chemical messengers.

Sometimes, you don't want the message to get there or you want a different message to be received instead - this is where DRUGS come in to it.

A drug is technically a chemical that intervenes and changes things.

A drug may help your body deliver more of the same message to a cell or it can lodge itself in a cell receptor to stop the message being received by the cell.

Random fact: the Greek doctor Hippocrates used willow bark as long ago as 400BC to relieve the pain of his patients.

Wounds can become infected with harmful bacteria if an antiseptic is not applied to kill them. Antiseptics are able to kill bacteria in many ways. The alcohol rubbed onto your skin before an injection kills bacteria by breaking up the protein that makes up their cells.

There are 2 main ways in which antibiotics work. One type prevents the bacteria from making its cell walls. Another type interferes with the chemical activities in the cells of bacteria.

Anaesthetic drugs are designed to stop the brain from receiving messages of pain.

Antiviral drugs work by blocking the chemicals the virus needs to reproduce.

Drugs go vigorous testing that can span 8 years.

What causes weather - wind

Wind comes from the churning movement of air heated up by the Sun. It moves from the equator to the poles and back again. It breezes in from the sea by day, and breezes back out again at night. Wind is always moving, but it never has a destination.
There isn't a place on the planet that accumulates wind. Some places seem windier than others, but not constant and getting worse all the time.
Wind doesn't stop, it has a continuos cycle like lots of things on the planet.
WIND MOVES FROM AREAS OF HIGH TO LOW AIR PRESSURE IN AN EFFORT TO BALANCE OUT THE AIR PRESSURES AROUND THE GLOBE.

You can say that winds starting point is the equator, not because it is "born" here but the FORCES responsible for its MOVEMENT are located here.
This is where the AIR PRESSURE starts to shift about. There is plenty of WARM AIR at the equator due to the bulge of the EARTH and the amount of DIRECT SUNLIGHT that hits it. The sunlight heats the air and the air then RISES, this creates a GAP below it and this GAP is now an area of LOW PRESSURE. As air naturally moves from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration (known as DIFFUSION), air moves in to fill this GAP, this rushing air is WIND.

The warm air that is higher up must go somewhere (remember, it's a cycle). Depending on which side of the equator it is, either drifts north or south, towards the poles. However, it doesn't go straight to the poles, after travelling about 30 degrees north or south (about 1/3 of the distance between the equator and poles), it starts to cool off and starts to sink (because it's the opposite to hot air) towards the ground. Some of this COOLER air will make its way back to the EQUATOR, filling the GAP left there by the air still warming and rising there. This makes a mini-cycle within the cycle known as a WIND CELL between the EQUATOR and the tropics located 30 degrees on either side of it. More WIND CELLS form between the areas of 30 - 60 degrees, 60 - 90 degrees and so on until you get to either the north or south pole. The entire planet is covered by this vast chain of WIND CELLS. The wind follows the shifting air, blowing north to south and south to north within these WIND CELLS.

Depending on where you live, winds often come from east or west, this is due to one very IMPORTANT FACTOR - THE EARTH IS SPINNING!

The Earth spins, taking the air with it. This creates a force called the CORIOLIS FORCE that puts a spin on the rising and falling air, making the wind cycle within each cell travel clockwise or anticlockwise, instead of straight up and down. It's a MESS! Seriously, we end up with a COMPLEX pattern of moving air, with alternating bands around the Earth having either westerly or easterly prevailing winds.

SEA BREEZE: again, this is kind of a mini-cycle within a cycle. It is caused by a smaller set of forces (hence the term breeze). The sea breeze is caused by the fact that the land heats up and cools down faster than the sea does. As the air is heated on the ground and rises, the air over the sea can rush in and fill this GAP on the land - giving you a SEA BREEZE. At night however, the REVERSE happens, the land COOLS faster (there's no heat - the Sun is shining on the other side of the planet). The warmer air over the sea is replaced by the air from the land. This in-turn creates a breeze that goes out to sea at night.

Thanks, much love. Adam :-) X

Collagen!

Collagen is a PROTEIN!
Proteins are made of long chains of AMINO ACIDS.

You've probably heard of a COLLAGEN in a cosmetic sense (plastic surgery - lips etc).

Hopefully, after reading this you'll know a lot more about COLLAGEN.

Collagen is found in all animals. It is multifunctional and can be found in various parts of the body. It is the most abundant protein in your body. The most occurring types of COLLAGEN are labelled I - IV. These four types of COLLAGEN are found in over 90% of the body in tissues including skin,bones, tendons and ligaments.

Collagen makes up 30% of your bones. Type I collagen found in the bones combines with HYDROXAPITITE to give strength and resistance to the bones.

Skin: the DERMIS layer of the skin is the thickest part and comprises of the PAPILLARY and RETICULATE dermis. The papillary dermis consists of fine fibres of type III collagen that make the skin pliable, while the reticulate dermis is made of the broad type I collagen and gives the skin tensile strength (the opposite to pliable). Overall COLLAGEN gives the skin everything it needs to work.

Absence of COLLAGEN in the skin causes wrinkles, there are various foods that you can scoff to increase your COLLAGEN, I'll put them in at the end.

MUSCLES:
Thousands of individual muscle fibres combine to form a a muscle. Each muscle fibre is covered by 3 layers of collagen. The innermost COLLAGEN sheath is the ENDOMYSIUM, followed by the much thicker PERIMYSIUM. The EPIMYSIUM is the last COLLAGEN layer. The collagen in the muscle helps it to contract and stretch to transmit force, which can be translated into motion or more strenuous activities like lifting.

Tendons, ligaments and cartilage:
All 3 are made of COLLAGEN. Type II collagen is found in cartilage. Collagen gives tendons and ligaments the ability to transmit force from the muscle and assist in the translation of this force to movement and exercise.

WOUND HEALING:
The COLLAGEN in the DERMIS is responsible for helping BUILD the skin back that has been damaged. COLLAGEN DEPOSITION is initiated by the body in a wound for the healing process. The right amount MUST be deposited for the skin to heal correctly.

FACTS ABOUT COLLAGEN:

Good sources of it!

Soy milk
Cheese
Dark green veg
Kale
Spinach
Collards
Asparagus
Red fruits and veg
Omega acids
Salmon
Tuna
Cashews
Pecans
Almonds
Brazil nuts
Avocados
Green and black olives
Cucumber
Celery
Vitamins A and C


Many thanks, much love, Adam :-) X

Water does flow upwards!

We all know that plants need water. Water molecules are key for a plant when it is photosynthesising.

Here is the equation for PHOTOSYNTHESIS:

6CO2 + 6H20 = C6H12O6 + 6O2

Note: the equation is the OPPOSITE for animal respiration.

Water fundamentally gives a plant it's shape, water makes a plant rigid and solid. If you ever see a plant that is wilting (floppy), it needs water!

Plants loose water from their leaves through EVAPORATION. Water molecules are attracted to each other due to ELECTRONEGATIVITY, this is because a water molecule has a heavily positive side and a heavily negative side. POSITIVE ATTRACTS NEGATIVE. So as the evaporated water leaves the plant it draws other molecules UPWARDS to take its place.

The ROOTS also PUSH water upwards once they've taken it in, this would be the plants natural way to get water to the leaves for PHOTOSYNTHESIS to occur.

You've gotta love plants!

P.S a plant is green because they use PHOTONS of a red and blue wavelength as ENERGY for PHOTOSYNTHESIS and reflect the GREEN photons. Making them GREEN. X

Water waves - what are they?

The Moon "draws" the water toward it. This causes the tides, whether it be neap or high tides.

As the water is "drawn", it will do so but the water will never REACH THE MOON! It's impossible! The Moons GRAVITY isn't strong enough for that to happen, this is the KEY point!

The Sun deserves a mention too! Technically it has a similar effect on the tides, if the Moon and the Sun are facing the same side of the Earth as each other, this causes high SPRING tides, if they are on opposite sides, again we can get high SPRING tides. If they are in any other position, we call that NEAP tides.

The Sun is 400 times further away from the Earth than the Moon is BUT the Sun is 400 times BIGGER than the Moon. Gravity is all about MASS, the BIGGER or the more DENSE the the MASS is, the greater its GRAVITATIONAL PULL. Distance has to be taken into account though aswell. Hopefully this paragraph explains the EQUAL (distance and size) effect of the Sun and Moon on our oceans.

Back to waves! You could say that water waves have a SHAPE, think of a CANDLE, when lit, the flame is shaped by GRAVITY! It's like a deformed triangle, it has a TIP! So do WAVES! It's just that you can't see it because the waves are so wide, the tip is unnoticeable. There'll always be a LEADING part of the WAVE and that's the TIP!

Due to the fact that the WAVE cannot reach the Moon or Sun because of the WEAKNESS of GRAVITY, the WAVE literally collapses. The collapse normally occurs on the shoreline because there's no MORE WATER to be apart of the wave. The COLLAPSE can also occur out at sea because the wave loses MOMENTUM (again GRAVITY). Waves follow each other as the PULL of the Moon and Sun on the oceans is CONTINUOUS.

Thanks for reading! Hope you get something out of it, I certainly enjoy writing this stuff :-)

Adam X

Why do things expand when they get hot?

Back to the atom!!

An atom will jiggle more the more energy it gets. Heat is energy and is carried by the PHOTON. A photon can cause an electron to jump to an atomic orbital of higher energy. The atom is now excited. An excited atom will have energy and wants to move. This is very much like a solid becoming a liquid, the solid receives heat and the atoms of the solid get excited, the solid melts as the atoms disperse or fly away.

Another way atoms can get excited is through friction. IE if you rub your hands together, the electrons get excited and your hands heat up. Your hand will EXPAND in the process, you can't visibly see this with your naked eye, but it does.

When our walking, your feet feel the rubbing of your footwear, your feet heat up, they expand.

The PHOTONS that we humans emit are of an INFRARED wavelength, you can't see them with the naked eye either.

Thanks, Adam. Much love. :-) X

Why is light weird?

According to the laws of physics, light is STRANGE!
Imagine you're chasing a car that's moving at 30 km/h and you're moving at 29 km/h, you are 1 km/h slower than the car.
You are very close to the car and can almost keep up.
LIGHT BEHAVES TOTALLY DIFFERENT.
No matter how fast you chase the light, it always moves away from you at exactly the same speed. Even if you were flying at 999,999,999 km/h behind a beam of light, the light would still speed away from you at a full 1 BILLION KM/H. You may as well be standing still!!

Thanks, Adam. Much love. X

How does my microwave cook my food?

It heats it up! Whilst this is correct, it's not holistically accurate.

Let's start with the known fact that everything is made of ATOMS. The microwave, the food and the dish/plate.

Microwaves are a specific wavelength and are made of photons.

The electricity (electrons) running through the microwave creates PHOTONS through the ELECTRONS being excited to a higher energy level of their respective atom and then dropping back to a lower energy level. The electron emits a PHOTON of the MICROWAVE wavelength which then travels at the SPEED OF LIGHT inside the microwave machine.

Most of these PHOTONS will be absorbed by the electrons of the atoms in your food. This gives the atoms energy and allows them to move. This softens your food and heats it up as the food is constantly being hit by PHOTONS. Some atoms in the food will evaporate (probably the water in it) and when the timer pings, the electron flow is stopped and thus so is the PHOTONS from being emitted by the microwave. The food is piping hot as its atoms have been excited by the huge flux of photons and it's steaming some atoms off still. The food (or rather the atoms) is now ready to be eaten.

Thanks, Adam.

Much love. :-) X

How long does it take for blood to circulate the human body?

About 1 minute. Here's the SCIENCE!

The average human heart pumps roughly 0.07 litres of blood per beat.

The average heart beats 70 times per minute.

70 x 0.07 = 4.9 litres.

The average human body contains 5 litres of blood.

All signs say 1 minute!!

Other factors are:

HEALTH
HEIGHT
ACTIVE OR AT REST

Thanks, Adam King :-) X

Why is urine yellow?

Urine is waste (we already know that), it is what is left over after our body has removed all the goodness and nutrients that we need.

Urine contains salt water too.

The major waste product from cells in the body is ammonia, and the major waste product from blood is a broken form of heme called bilirubin. In the liver, each of these is converted into a less hazardous form: ammonia is converted to urea, and bilirubin is degraded to urobilins. Salt, water, and urea are all colorless, but urobilins (which come from degraded pigments) are yellow.
So, if you drink a lot, your urine will be more dilute and clearer, and if you get dehydrated, your urine will contain less water and be darker yellow.

Thanks, Adam King. :-) X

The rock cycle

Rocks are made of grains that fit together. Each grain in the rock is made from a mineral, which is a chemical compound. The grains in a rock can be different colours, shapes and sizes.

Some types of rock have interlocking grains that fit tightly together. Granite is a rock with interlocking grains. Other types of rock have rounded grains. Sandstone is a rock with rounded grains.



Rounded grains - Sandstone:



Interlocking grains - Granite:

 

Porous rocks
Rocks with rounded grains are more likely to absorb water than rocks with interlocking grains. THIS IS BECAUSE THE WATER CAN GET INTO THE GAPS BETWEEN THE GRAINS. Rocks that absorb water are called POROUS.

Rocks with rounded grains are usually softer and easier to crumble because they lack the structure of rocks with interlocking grains. Plus, if the porous rock gets more water into it, that alone will make it softer.

Rounded grains with water effect:

Interlocking grains with water effect:

So from this, we can gather that a rock with interlocking grains will be more structured and durable enough to resist damage either via water or compaction.

Sedimentary rocks:
There are 3 main types of rock; sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic.

The formation of sedimentary rocks:
A river carries/transports many things besides water and one of them are broken pieces of rock as it flows in its given direction. All rivers flow to the sea and when the river meets the sea there is a great difference in depth, so anything that has a bit of weight will sink to the bottom of the sea. We refer to this as the rocks being DEPOSITED. These DEPOSITED ROCKS build up in layers from the seabed, called SEDIMENTS. This process is called SEDIMENTATION.

Simply put, layer upon layer stack on top of each other. As this happens the layers that are at the bottom will be compacted and crushed due to the weight pressure of the layers above. With this happening in the sea, water is squeezed out from between the pieces of rock and crystals of different salts are formed.

IT'S PROBABLY A GOOD IDEA TO MENTION HERE THAT ALL ROCKS ARE MADE OF MINERALS.

The crystals that form act as a cement because they cause the pieces of rock to stick together. This is known as CEMENTATION.

These processes make the type of rock known as SEDIMENTARY ROCK. This process may take MILLIONS of years for the SEDIMENTARY rocks to form but due to the nature of the CYCLE, SEDIMENTARY rocks are constantly moving on to the next phase.

This is the established order of the SEDIMENTARY rock formation:

SEDIMENTATION - COMPACTION - CEMENTATION

IGNEOUS ROCKS:

Igneous rocks are a product of the inner Earth - a very hot place that has the ability to melt rock. MOLTEN (LIQUID) ROCK is the product of melted rocks and is known as MAGMA. MAGMA does eventually undergo the law of cooling and when cool enough, IGNEOUS ROCKS are formed.

You may be wondering to yourself - isn't a rock a rock? True, but you can tell a tremendous amount of information from a rock and it's composition by taking a closer (much closer) look.

Igneous rocks are comprised of randomly arranged INTERLOCKING crystals. Now, the size of the crystals depends upon how quickly the MAGMA cooled and solidified. The longer the cooling process, the bigger the crystals. That is, they have more TIME to stick together and arrange themselves, meaning a larger crystal.

Metamorphic rocks!
The 3rd type of rock in the rock cycle. The key word to pick out here is MORPH - that is, metamorphic rocks are formed from OTHER rocks by a change in HEAT or PRESSURE. They are MORPHED from other rocks.

As we know, the Earth is constantly moving, whether it be spinning on its axis, orbiting the Sun or even the movement of its tectonic plates.
Earths movements cause rocks to be either crushed or buried. All this compaction causes heat via the pressure that the is applied on the rock. The heat doesn't cause any melting but instead causes a CHEMICAL REACTION. It allows the chemical composition of the rock to be change. The MINERALS that make up the rock are altered, giving us a NEW ROCK. The heat allows the reaction to take place as HEAT IS ENERGY or rather HEAT GENERATES ENERGY.

On occasion, METAMORPHIC rocks are formed when rocks close to some MOLTEN MAGMA and are subsequently HEATED UP.

A KEY POINT TO NOTE HERE IS: ROCKS THAT DO MELT FORM IGNEOUS ROCKS - NOT METAMORPHIC.

When a METAMORPHIC rock is formed under pressure, its crystals become arranged in layers. Slate, which is formed from shale, is like this. The slates on your roof may spring to mind here. Slate can be split into flat sheets - hence why it's so appropriate for roofing.

MARBLE is another fine example of a well used metamorphic rock and is formed from limestone. Metamorphic rocks can contain fossils if they were formed from sedimentary rock (the fossils would be compacted) but the fossils are usually squashed due to the nature of the sedimentary rock process.

METAMORPHIC rocks can be formed from either IGNEOUS or SEDIMENTARY rocks.


Weathering is also a key part of the rock cycle. Rocks are gradually worn down by the weather. There are 3 types of weathering that can occur:

Physical
Chemical
Biological

Physical weathering is caused by actual physical changes in the surrounding weather, changes such as temperature (increase/decrease), freezing, thawing, wind, rain or waves.

Temperature:
When something gets hot it expands - a rock is no different. It's also the same scenario if something gets cooled it contracts - a rock is no different. This constant expansion and contraction causes the rock to crack and crumble. In climates such as the DESERT, the temperature goes from one extreme to the other so this type of weathering is very common.

Wind has the ability to blow tiny grains of sand against a rock. These wear the rock away and weather it. Rain and waves too have the ability to wear away rock over long periods of time.

When water freezes, it expands, this is how many things are damaged IE water pipes and rocks are no different. Water will find get into anything it can, it can and getting into the crack of a rock is easy. Once the water freezes, it could either widen the crack or split the rock. It could take years for a very large rock to split as the crack could be very minor to begin with and be gradually expanded.

Biological weathering:
Animals and plants too can wear away rocks. Animals can set up home within a rock and create or widen cracks that split it.
We all have weeds in our garden and plenty in between the flags/stones of our paths, where there is soil and the ability to receive water, you will find a plant.
This plant may start small and stay small or it could grow to be very big. It's roots would cause the cracks to expand (it's important to note that the cracks may be minuscule but are still cracks). Eventually, pieces of rock would break away.

Me and you are examples of biological weathering, we tread on rocks often and the constant pounding will eventually cause wear and tear of the rocks.

Chemical weathering:
Rainwater is naturally slightly acidic because CO2 from the air dissolves in it. Minerals in rocks may react with the rainwater, causing the rock to be weathered.
Some types of rock are more reactive than others. Limestone is made of a mineral known as CALCIUM CARBONATE (CaCO3). When acidic rainwater hits the limestone a reaction takes place that results in the formation of new soluble substances. These are washed away and the rock is weathered.

The more ACIDIC the rain is, the greater the chemical weathering. Rain that is more acidic contains fossil fuels that have been burned IE oil.

Difference between WEATHERING and EROSION:
Weathering is the wear and tear of the rocks.
Erosion is the transportation of the broken pieces of rock from the weathering.


Examples of the types of each rock:

SEDIMENTARY: Limestone, sandstone.
IGNEOUS: Basalt and granite.
METAMORPHIC: Slate and marble.

Many thanks, Adam. :-) X

The Plasma state.

PLASMA IS A STATE OF MATTER, just like gas, liquid and solid. It is far less common with regards to life on Earth yet extremely common in the Universe as a whole.

You may well be familiar with the 3 aforementioned states of matter. The easy way to remember where PLASMA lies with regards to physical change in matter is this:

The hotter something becomes, the less structured the atoms are that comprise the substance.

Here are the states:

SOLID: TIGHTLY PACKED ATOMS

LIQUID: LOOSELY PACKED ATOMS


GAS: FREE-FLOATING ATOMS


PLASMA: ELECTRONS ARE RIPPED FROM THE ATOMIC NUCLEUS, PARTICLES WHIZZING ALL OVER THE PLACE - NO ORDER AT ALL.

What this shows is the more ENERGY something is given/ or has the less order there is because the particle is travelling much much faster.


Our Sun is in the PLASMA STATE - the Suns core has a temperature of a whopping 15,000,000 degrees C!

It is due to the PLASMA STATE that NUCLEAR FUSION can occur though because we have these PROTONS whizzing about all over the place and eventually because they are travelling at such a speed, they smash into each other and NUCLEAR FUSION has begun.

Milky Way Galaxy Facts

Thanks, Adam King :-)

P.S CHECK OUT MY YOUTUBE VID FOR THIS BLOG. Type in - Kingyscience. X

Plants USE OXYGEN ALL THE TIME!

Yes, all green or vascular plants use OXYGEN ALL THE TIME! Green plants release oxygen through photosynthesis but they still consume oxygen at the same time. The primary way plants USE OXYGEN is through THEIR ROOT CELLS. Plants continually grow root hairs in order to absorb water and nutrients from the soil. These root hairs DO NOT carry out photosynthesis (they are underground) and are made of living cells like you and me. These cells live and function by USING OXYGEN and give off CARBON DIOXIDE! Again, just like you and me. They burn carbohydrates to obtain the energy they need to function, just like you and me. This is why you can tragically "drown" a plant by giving it too much water. If there is too much water, the plant can't "breathe", it can't get enough oxygen. Again, the same could happen to you and me.

There are some plants that have evolved to get around this issue - it could rain and rain and rain - not our fault. Cypress trees and cattails have root hairs that grow out of the stems above the soil and/or water surface so that they can "breathe" - take in Oxygen.

Difference between a molecule and a compound

All compounds are molecules but not all molecules are compounds!

An O2 molecule is NOT a compound.

CO2 is a molecule AND a compound.

A molecule MUST consist of at least 2 atoms.

A compound MUST consist of at least 2 atoms.

Here's the KEY DIFFERENCE:

A compound MUST contain at least 2 DIFFERENT ELEMENTS.

What are Vitamins and how do they work?

A vitamin is a small molecule that your body needs to carry out a specific reaction. Your body has no way to create vitamin molecules itself, so it is DOWN TO YOU AND THE FOODS YOU EAT.
The human body needs 13 different vitamins:
Vitamin A: fat soluble - Retinol; comes from beta-carotene in plants (when you eat beta-carotene, an enzyme in the stomach turns it into Vitamin A.)

Vitamin B: - water soluble.
B1: Thiamine
B2: Riboflavin
B3: Niacin
B6: Pyridoxine
B12: Cyanocobalamin
Folic Acid

Vitamin C - water soluble - Ascorbic acid

Vitamin D - fat soluble - Calciferol

Vitamin E - fat soluble - Tocopherol

Vitamin K - fat soluble - Menaquinone

Pantothenic acid - water soluble

Biotin - water soluble

Inside the body, vitamins are used in many unique ways. For example, one of Vitamin A's main roles is in the production of RETINAL. Retinal is used within the rods and cones in our eyes to sense light. The easy way to remember this is RETINAL=RETINA. Your body needs VITAMIN A in order to see and READ THIS.

Scales and a bit of random science

If an atoms' nucleus were the size of a tennis ball then the electrons orbiting the nucleus would be at least 1km away. If the Earth were 1cm away from the Sun and this cm was deemed as 1 Astronomical unit (1AU), then the Oort Cloud ( where the Suns' gravitational pull ends ), would be 0.5km away. If the Sun were a standard-sized Basketball, the Earth would be a single pimple on that Basketball. You could fir just over 1,000,000 Earths insidethe Sun and 1,000 Earths inside Jupiter. The Sun accounts for 99% of the entire mass of the Solar System and is an incredible 860,000 miles in diameter. Everything in the Solar System could fit inside the Sun! If you wanted to turn Earth into a blackhole then you would have to shrink it down to the size of a PEA. Jupiter is essentially a failed star - it didnt accrete enough mass to begin fusion (its not far off being classed as a brown-dwarf). Earths atmosphere extends to over 60 miles, which seems vast but compared to our diamter (approx 7,000 miles), its not, this explains why it iscalled "the thin blue line".

First blog!

First blog!

THE EARTH IS APPROXIMATELY 93 MILLION MILES AWAY FROM EARTH AND IT NOURISHES OUR PLANET WITH LIFE VIA SPEED-OF-LIGHT TRAVELLING PHOTONS ( A MASSLESS PARTICLE ), CREATED IN THE CORE OF THE SUN UPTO AND BEYOND 100,000 YEARS AGO.

YOU, ME, THIS COMPUTER - ARE ALL MADE OF ATOMS.

Origins of our Solar System

Our Solar System was "born" out of the remnants of a SUPERNOVA!! Long ago a Red Supergiant star ended its "life" in a beautiful explosion which created all you can see today.

The last element made via NUCLEAR FUSION in the CORE of a red supergiant is IRON. A star cannot FUSE a heavier element in its core after IRON because it takes more energy than what is given out. Remember - A STAR SUSTAINS ITS THERMOSTATIC EQUILIBRIUM BY THERMAL PRESSURE RADIATING OUTWARDS FROM ITS CORE.

The IRON made in the core of the star is now in the cores of EARTH, MERCURY, VENUS, MARS, our MOON and many other Solar System occupants. Of course some Iron is on Earths surface and we use it for construction and many other uses. If we were to somehow tally up all the Iron that we know about, we could approximately establish the size of the core of the red supergiant star.

When the red supergiant went supernova, the outer layers were blown millions of miles outward. A star begins its life by fusing Hydrogen into Helium in its core. It would be a very long time before the Hydrogen would "clump" together to form our Sun. Of course there are other elements present in the composition of our Sun, such as Oxygen but 3/4 (75%) of our Sun would have been Hydrogen when it first begun nuclear fusion.

So now the picture is this. We have Hydrogen coming together to form the core of a new star born out of the supernova remnants.

Around this new star are all the other atoms that were scattered by the supernova explosion. All this "matter" would start to spin, like a large disc. This disc is not just one band though. Think of Saturns ring system, our Solar System is the same. All of these discs would be the future orbits of the planets and matter would accrete and accrete together.

As the Sun gathered mass it would therefore start to attract the heavier atoms and that is why the four inner planets are known as the rocky planets as they all have IRON cores and are made of heavier atoms. After the ASTEROID BELT, we find the outer GAS GIANTS which are made of much lighter elements.

Once NUCLEAR FUSION ignited in the Suns core all the dust was blown away from the orbiting "discs" and the planets could be seen. The orbits of our planets would settle with some affects from the Gravity of each other. Our Solar System is made. One could say that the Solar System is still evolving after 4.7 billion years.


Thanks, Adam King :-) X

Water cycle

All the water on the planet is the SAME WATER that was here millions of years ago.

The terms evaporation and condensation will be familiar to everyone. In fact, the water cycle is all about this. There are no animals involved in the natural cycle.

Water is EVAPORATED from the sea due to the HEAT of the Sun. Cold air is denser and heavier than hot air. Hot air has more "kinetic energy" which in turn makes the atoms take up more space and therfore makes it less dense and lighter - IT RISES. Once this evaporated water reaches a specific height (I.E the top of the TROPOSPHERE - first layer of Earths atmosphere and layer of all weather) the water CONDENSES and clouds form. Once the cloud has become DENSE enough (big grey clouds - known as cumulonimbus clouds) it will be unable to "carry" it's own weight and then rain is released. It's important to note here that ice crystals form in the cloud, the ice crystals (also known as hail) TURN into rain as they are HEATED as they fall.

Water will then find its way back to the Ocean or will be evaporated before it gets there.

Thanks.

Adam King :-) X

Here's a pic to summarise all my text:

 

Carbon Cycle

Yes, Carbon undergoes a continuous cycle too!

Green plants and some bacteria use carbon dioxide as a raw material in photosynthesis to make organic, carbon containing compounds, such as carbohydrates, which are eaten by animals. Both animals and plants use carbohydrates during respiration and release waste carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. During the day, the amount of carbon dioxide consumed by plants for photosynthesis is greater than that released from respiration; at night, however, the reverse is true.

That's right! Plants switch to OXYGEN at night to survive. They use the Oxygen to CARRY the ELECTRONS so that they can carry out their processes.

Let us not forget that we humans BURN our fair share of FOSSIL FUELS which releases Carbon compounds into the atmosphere.

Just like with the Nitrogen cycle, once the Carbon is "in" plants it can be eaten by animals and either leaves via faeces or death. Then DECOMPOSERS feed on dead material and release carbon dioxide into the air.
Dead material can also be unearthed by us humans and be used as FOSSIL FUELS. Plants can of course die and then the DECOMPOSERS go to work on them. Again, the key aspect to remember is that you cannot destroy an atom. THE CARBON MUST GO SOMEWHERE!

Thanks,

Adam King :-) X

Here's a pic to summarise my text:

 

The Nitrogen Cycle

We all know that Nitrogen constitutes approximately 70% of Earths atmosphere.

Did you know that it's very important in our everyday lives and a key part of proteins?

Nitrogen is an INERT gas so fundamentally it's unreactive and not necessarily a danger to us.

However, without it, our way of life would cease to be.

I'm going to start with how Nitrogen gets from the atmosphere to the ground/surface. Lightning has the ability to COMBINE Nitrogen and Oxygen to make weak nitrous acid which can fall to the ground as ACID RAIN.

Bacteria! Are found anywhere and everywhere! When the Nitrous acid hits the ground it forms NITRITES in the soil. BACTERIA convert the Nitrites into nitrates.The bacteria in question is known as NITROGEN-FIXING BACTERIA.

Planets can only take in Nitrogen in liquid-form and absorb it through their roots. Hence why it must be a nitrate.

DENITRIFYING BACTERIA also exist and they do the opposite to the NITRIFYING BACTERIA. They convert Nitrates to Nitrogen which is then released back into the air. These bacteria are largely the sole way that Nitrogen is restored to the atmosphere. We owe them quite a lot as they MAINTAIN the atmospheric balance that helps us sustain are way of life.

Other important aspects of the NITROGEN CYCLE are that once the nitrates are in the PLANT, the plant may be eaten and digested by an ANIMAL which could see the NITRATES return to the soil/ground either via faeces from the animal or the animals tragic demise. If it's faeces or the dead animal then DECOMPOSERS will break them down and this RELEASES Nitrogen compounds.

Now Nitrifying bacteria will convert the Nitrogen compounds into NITRATES or the Denitrifying bacteria will convert the compounds to NITRITES. Quite the battle. The cycle is perfectly balanced as the amount of Nitrogen in our atmosphere does not alter. REMEMBER! You CANNOT DESTROY AN ATOM! X

Thanks, Adam King :-) X

Here's a pic to summarise my text:

 

Special Relativity

The results that flow from the principles of special relativity are remarkable. Using thought experiments, Einstein showed that the speed of light is the same in all frames of reference, that means anywhere in the Universe.
The measures of space and time in one reference frame must be transformed to those in another reference frame. These transformations show us that when an object moves at a high speed relative to an observer, the observer sees LESS of its length - this is know as LORENTZ CONTRACTION. Also, TIME for such an object appears to run more slowly - an effect called TIME DILATION.

TIME DILATION:

Special relativity predicts that an Earthbound observer sees time slow down on board a spacecraft travelling at close to the speed of light relative to EARTH. At 90% of light-speed, the passage of TIME is halved - a clock on the spaceship advances only 10 minutes while more than 20 minutes pass on EARTH. This effect is symmetrical and can be reversed. This is because there is no absolute frame of reference. It's impossible to see everything as it is, when it is/was.

So measurements of time and space vary between moving reference frames. Einstein also showed that an object gains mass when its energy increases and loses it when its energy decreases. This ultimately led him to realise that mass and energy have an equivalence, which he expressed in his infamous equation E=MC2.

Space and Time

We all share some common-sense notions about the world. One is that a second in London is a second in Melbourne - time passes at the same rate for everyone. Another is that the length of a rigid object such as a car, does not change. The truth is that space and time are not absolute but they stretch and warp depending in relative viewpoint. What is more, the presence of matter distorts BOTH space and time. If Earth wasn't where it is then there would be no GRAVITATIONAL PULL present. Look at it this way, SPACE IS A GIANT BLANKET AND STARS AND PLANETS "dent" this blanket when present, this "dent" is their gravitational influence on space and time.

It does MATTER!!

Everything around you - your phone/computer/body, even the air you're breathing - it's all MATTER. Matter is the word for ATOMS whether it be a single Hydrogen atom or a huge POLYMER - this is a vast collection of atoms that are BONDED together by the ELECTROMAGNETIC force. In fact, you, me and evryone else are all POLYMERS as our bodies are BONDED together by the ELECTROMAGNETIC force.

Matter is the ATOM!

from Hydrogen:






















To Uranium:










Both atoms are from opposite ends of the PERIODIC TABLE - Hydrogen:1, Uranium:92. The number is a refernce as to how many PROTONS the atom has.

Every single piece of MATTER anywhere in the entire Universe is made of the SAME 92 types of MATTER. Some ATOMS are more common than others E.G you won't find some of them in the human body but as far as we know, these ELEMENTS have laws to abide by such as BONDING, MELTING POINTS, ELECTRONEGATIVITY etc. These laws are the SAME ANYWHERE in the Universe.

So the next time someone says to you "it doesn't matter! Maybe it doesn't, unless its made of ATOMS.

Thankyou.

Adam King

Much love. XX

Why does it get hot in my car?

If you've read any of my previous blogs you will now be accustomed with the knowledge that LIGHT comes in the shape of PHOTONS. PHOTONS come in different wavelengths which denotes their "type" - IE really long wavelength is a RADIO wave and really short wavelength are GAMMA waves.

Next up - how PHOTONS are ABSORBED by ELECTRONS. Electrons absorb photons then emit them. When a PHOTON is absorbed by the ELECTRON, the electron "jumps" to an atomic orbital of higher energy and then "drops" back down when it emits the PHOTON - this happens exceptionally fast.

If you've read my BLOG on GLASS you'll know why it's transparent and why PHOTONS pass straight through the GLASS.

So picture a PHOTON - a massless particle travelling from the Sun to Earth. This PHOTON is of the VISIBLE LIGHT WAVELENGTH. Now picture the PHOTON passing through the windscreen of your PARKED car. It is then absorbed by an electron in an atom of the drivers seat. The PHOTON is then emitted by the ELECTRON but it CANNOT pass back through the GLASS! WHY?

If a PHOTON gives an ELECTRON ENERGY, that means it must be CARRYING energy - PHOTONS ARE ENERGY! So if the PHOTON gives its energy to an electron who then "uses" it to move up and down then gives the energy back - PART of the energy has been USED. The PHOTON that is emitted is of a LONGER WAVELENGTH as it has "lost" energy. The PHOTON is now of the INFRA-RED category. This means that the PHOTON HAS LESS ENERGY and is not able to PENETRATE the windscreen. The PHOTON CANNOT "leave" the car and causes HEAT build-up as it is absorbed and re-emitted by atoms in the inside of the car.

This principle is the SAME for GREENHOUSES and many other similar scenarios.

Thanks.

Much love, Adam. XX

FAT = ENERGY

Yes it's true! Your body wants and need ENERGY to function - whether it be OXYGEN or CARBOHYDRATES, PROTEIN OR LIPIDS (FATS).

Your body will "borrow" calcium from parts of your body and transport it to a site where it is needed. It's all done for you and you don't have to even think about it. Your part in the process of meeting ENERGY needs is taking in food that will GIVE you energy then BURNING it off (exercising) or just generally living your life.

Most people think that FAT is bad, truth is you need some for a balnced BMI and for your body to function and be protected. There's nothing wrong with a bit of "cushioning"to protect your organs.

Here's the main point - YOUR BODY MAKES FAT. Fat is ENERGY that is STORED by your body. FAT is the only form that ENERGY can take if it is going to be stored for the LONG-TERM. Your body will have a SHORT-TERM supply and a LONG-TERM supply. It is obvious that if you TAKE IN a lot of energy 9food etc0 and don't BURN it off, your body will MAKE FAT as it is storing this energy - that is how people gain FAT to their body.

Genetics DOES have an influence as METABOLISM ans natural MASS/WEIGHT are hereditary to an extent.

Next time you see/meet a person that you may observe as having a bit of excess FAT (I'm sorry if that isn't PC), you can instead think to yourself - WOW this person has lots of STORED ENERGY.

Adam King XX

Some relevant temperatures

Here is a short list of temperatures that are applicable to our Earth, Solar System and Universe (in Celsius)

6000: Surface of the Sun
2861: Iron boils
1538: Iron melts
230: Paper catches fire
100: Water boils
58: Hottest weather on Earth
0: Water freezes
-39: Mercury freezes
-89: Coldest weather on Earth
-196: Air becomes liquid
-219: Air freezes
-270: Outer space
-273: Absolute zero

Absolute zero:
This is the lowest temperature possible, atoms have no kinetic energy and stop moving. It's impossible to get to -273 but you can get close. Very strange things happen within a millionth of a degree of absolute zero. Atoms lose their individuality and slide into each other, forming a single atom-sized "blob" - this is referred to as a state of matter known as "Bose-Einstein condensate".

Dark Energy and Dark Matter

Something must be out there amongst the blackness of space? Something must be making the Universe expand?

Current composition of the Universe:

Dark Energy : 70%
Dark Matter : 25%
Free Hydrogen and Helium : 4%
Stars : 0.5%
Neutrinos : 0.3%
Heavy Elements : 0.03%

Here's a pic to help:


You'll probably notice that these %'s don't add up to 100%. However, I fully trust this reliable source and this is the FACT.

THE BIG BANG

Not quite the big bang - more like the BIG EXPANSION.

If all the numerical aspects of this seem a bit much, then PLEASE READ the end of this blog as I will summarise everything, thanks.

The theory about the origin of the Universe has been debated and debated over and over again. Today we have a team of scientists plugging away at the LHC in Geneva, trying to find particles such as the HIGGS BOSON that will establish how our Universe went from a SINGULARITY to all that you see around you.

The Big Bang was not an explosion of space but an EXPANSION of spac, which happened everywhere. Quite possibly a slight imperfection within the singularity would cause this expansion, kind of like order out of disorder.

The Big Bang is split into eras which are more like time scales, periods in which change was occurring. I think it only idealistic to begin with the beginning!

The Planck Era: 10^-43 seconds



No-one as of yet truly knows what could have happened during this period.
Max Planck was a very renowned physicist, his surname is attached to many types of measurement, in fact usually it's attached to the shortest possible distance/time/length. It is often referred to as the "smallest possible amount worth measuring".

The Inflation Era: -10^-35 seconds - a hundred-billionth of a second! 
Diameter of Universe:

10^‑26 m

Temperature: 1,000 trillion trillion °C

It is believed that at the end of this period, GRAVITY split from the other forces of nature, followed by the STRONG nuclear force. It is widely accepted that this event triggered INFLATION - a short but rapid expansion. If INFLATION did occur, it helps to explain why the Universe seems so smooth and flat. During inflation, a fantastic amount of mass-energy came into existence, in tandem with an equal but negative amount of gravitational energy. By the end of inflation, matter had begun to appear.

The Quark Era: 10^-32 seconds
Diameter of Universe: 10m
Temperature:1,000 trillion trillion °C

Sometimes called the elctroweak era, this period saw vast numbers of quark and antiquark pairs forming from energy and then annihilating back to energy. Gluons and other more exotic particles appeared.


Separation of the electroweak force: 10  seconds 
Diameter of Universe:1 billion km/620 million miles  
Temperature: 1,000 trillion °C


Near the end of the quark era, the electroweak force separated into the elctromagnetic force and the weak interaction. From then on, the forces of nature and physical laws were as they are now experienced.


Hadron Era: 10^-6 seconds
Diameter of Universe: 60 billion miles
Temperture: 10 trillion °C

Around the beginning of this era, quarks and antiquarks began combining to form particles called hadrons. These included baryons (protons and neutrons), antibaryons and mesons.

Lepton Era: 10^-3 seconds
Diameter of Universe: 600 billion miles
Temperature: 1,000 billion °C

Leptons are - electrons, neutrinos and their antiparticles. The Leptons were very numerous. By the end of this period, the electrons annihilated with positrons (antielectrons).

Nucleosynthesis Era: 1 second
Diamter of Universe: 5.88 trillion miles/10 light-years
Temperature: 10 billion °C

Neutrons gradually converted into protons as the Universe cooled and slowed down. However, when there was about one neutron for every seven protons, most remaining neutrons combined with protons to make Helium nuclei, each with 2 protons and 2 neutrons.

Opaque Era: 200 seconds
Diameter of Universe: 6,000 light-years/
Temperature: 100 million °C

During this relatively lengthy era, the ocean of matter particles (comprising mainly protons, electrons and helium nuclei) were in a continual state of interaction with photons (radiant energy), this would make the then Universe appear "foggy".

Balance of Elements:
This is the 2nd part of the opaque era. Here, many more free photons existed than helium nuclei, or other atomic nuclei. The scene was set for the first atoms to form. When they did, about 9 Hydrogen atoms were made for each Helium atom. A few Lithium and Deuterium (heavy Hydrogen) atoms also formed.


Matter Era: 300,000 years - present day
Diameter of Universe: 100 million light-years
Temperature: 2,700 °C

At the start of our present era, photons were free to travel through the Universe. Most electrons were bound to atoms until the first stars formed and gave us the PLASMA state of matter and NUCLEAR FUSION - the building of the heavier elements.

Trends of the timeline:

• The Universe is getting bigger at each phase and is STILL expanding today
• The Universe is getting cooler at each phase and MAY still be cooling today
• TIME is the fourth-dimension and there is no stopping it - often referred to as the "Arrow of Time" - it has take a very long time for the Universe to get to where we are today (13.75 billion years!).

Evidence for the Big Bang:

If you look at everything in the Universe, all the matter is moving away from each other. So surely, you could rewind and bring everything back together. Light is the biggest indication of an expanding Universe - we call that REDSHIFT - I'll BLOG about that soon. A cool easy way to show Redshift and the idea that if something is moving away from you, the wavelength of visible light that it emits gets longer is this: get a balloon that isn't inflated, draw a wavelength on it, any will do. Now inflate the balloon, as it INFLATES the WAVELENGTH gets longer.

Hard to believe that everything you can see is from the something the size of a Proton eh? I find it hard to believe too but it seems the only feasible possibility.

The temperature was so high in the beginning that quarks were able to be formed into protons and neutrons, which is great to understand as it makes sense that protons and neutrons are no longer "made" anywhere in the universe. Plus the fact that an Atom is 99.99999% empty space means that every atom could be so tightly packed together.

A random fact to put in here is that the entire human race could fit inside the volume of a sugar cube if it were possible to compact atoms.

The Big Crunch:

What happens when all the stars have burnt their fuel and there's no more Hydrogen to be used? The Universe will become cold, dark and lifeless.......

I personally think that Gravity will step in because as long as there is matter, Gravity will have a say in what happens next. Although Gravity is weak it has an INFINITE range and that gives it the edge. I think Gravity will overcome anything and bring every atom back to the beginning. Remember Gravity is all about attraction of masses, the more mass Gravity brings together, the greater the Gravity of that mass. Think of it as the snowball effect. Once it starts, it will be difficult to stop. Then maybe the Universe will start again?!

Thanks.

Much love, Adam XX :-)

The Periodic Table and its trends

THE PERIODIC TABLE:

Can't touch this!?

What if I told you that you've never touched anything before and you never will?!. You'd probably think that I'm mad, yes.

An atom is so small and so empty. An atom is 99.9999% empty space. So then why don't two atoms pass through each other? If they're empty space it should be easy? Right?

My hand should pass through my other hand or the pen I hold. No!

The ELECTRONS in every atom are NEGATIVELY charged, meaning they REPEL each other. In fact the closest one electron can get to the other is a distance of 10^-8 cm!! This means that the electrons in your feet and being repelled by the electrons of the Earths surface! That's why you don't slide through the Earth like a knife through butter. The point is you can't touch anything due to the repulsion of electrons. Be thankful, without electron repulsion nothing would "be" stable.

Thanks. :-) XX

This isn't to scale but it will convey what I'm talking about:

 

I drew this image in PAINT - sorry if the quality is lacking but you get the jist of what I'm talking about. X

Can you feel the heat?!

Wouldn't it be great if you owned a telescope that was so powerful you could zoom right in to look at atoms and molecules. You would be able to see the atoms and molecules "jiggling" about. This "jiggling" motion of the atoms is HEAT. If you rub your hands together, they got warm. Keep rubbing them and they get even hotter. That's is because the rubbing motion EXCITES the atoms in your hands, causing electrons to "jump" to a higher energy orbital, only to fall back down and release a PHOTON! PHOTONS are HEAT as well as LIGHT. The heat released by you is INFRA-RED - and that's why you can't SEE it.

Temperature is fundamentally just a measure of how FAST the atoms are JIGGLING.

Types of Atomic Bonding

1. Covalent
2. Ionic
3. Metallic

Magnets?

The electrons that whizz around ATOMS don't just create electricity. They are responsible for the mysterious force of MAGNETISM.

Whenever an electron moves, it creates a magnetic field around it just like the field around a bar magnet. Every atom has electrons, so therefore every atom is magnetic. Or is it?

Normally the atomic magnets in objects I.E a table are jumbled up and have no arrangement, this means that the magnetic fields cancel each other out - there is NO NORTH and SOUTH magnetic poles. However, in some materials, such as IRON, the magnetic fields of atoms can line up together. Then the whole piece of IRON acts as a single magnet.

Magnets are surrounded by something called a FIELD OF FORCE. It's INVISIBLE! But you can see it by scattering iron filings on a piece of paper and placing a magnet on top. The iron filings jiggle about until they spread themselves as EVENLY as possible within the magnetic field. They particularly cluster around the NORTH and SOUTH poles, where the magnetic force is the most strongest.

Why is Earth magnetic?

Earth is a giant magnet and our planet has a liquid outer-core that is largely composed of IRON. However, the IRON in our outer-core CAN'T be magnetic as iron LOOSES its magnetic abilities at 760 degrees Celsius and our inner-core is roughly 5,000 degrees Celsius! One possibility, and I personally think this IS reason, is that our Earths magnetic field is generated by the swirling electric currents within the outer-core which are in-turn caused by our planets rotation about its axis.

Biology - Cellular Respiration

Biology - Body Systems

1. Circulatory
2. Skeletal
3. Muscular
4. Nervous
5. Immune
6. Lymphatic

Answers to common questions about the Universe and the world we live in.

Why is the sky blue?
Why is grass green?

I'll keep updating this blog over time, expect answers of 2-3 sentences to questions that may have crossed your mind many times before. Thanks, Adam King. X

The sky is blue due to the interaction of photons that have travelled the 8 minutes to the Earth from the Sun. They are being absorbed by the Oxygen in our atmosphere, however, the BLUE photons are being re-emitted/reflected and that is why the sky is blue.

You can take this fact and apply it to anything with colour!! If something is red, it is emitting/reflecting RED photons.

Grass/plants are GREEN because they use red and blue photons as energy for photosynthesis but reflect GREEN - this is probably due to the GREEN photons being of no use to them. I think they are spectacularly clever and GREEN is a nice colour - on a plant of course :-D. X

THE SUN IS WHITE! Yes, its true! It only appears yellow because we are observing it through our atmosphere. If you were to somehow view the Sun in a vacuum - it would be white. Why is it white? Well, visible light that has been "split" by a prism shows all the colours of the rainbow but if you use another prism the light essentially comes back together and when this happens - it is WHITE. All the colours of the rainbow together are WHITE. You look at the night sky when it's clear and you see many many stars and they are white. The Sun is a star and it's white too!! X

Why are Sunsets' RED? Well, if you've read the answer above as to why the sky is blue then this will make perfect sense. As the Sun sets on the horizon it appears to get lower in the sky because of the Earths spin and we are heading for night-time where we are on Earth at that time. Due to the Sun being lower on the horizon, the photons (light) will pass through more of the Earths atmosphere and encounter other gases such as pollution and perhaps water vapour. This results in the scattering of RED light predominantly, hints of orange are there too. So basically its all about YOUR position on the Earth and fundamentally, what is YOUR SUNSET is someone elses SUNRISE. X

Why are stars and planets spherical-shaped?
Gravity is the cause. Gravity is responsible for "building" every galaxy, star, planet, asteroid  and comet. If I gave you a bunch of rocks and instructed you to "squash" them all together at the same time or told you that you had to make these rocks as small and compact as possible, you would proceed to wrap your hands around them and squeeze. You would form a sphere with your hands as you crushed the rocks. Gravity forms rocks into spheres because it is the only shape in which MASS can be evenly distributed. Think about it for a second.........you wouldn't see a square planet or a pentagon planet would you? It would have edges and be uneven. MASS is evenly distributed throughout a sphere and therefore it is BALANCED. If something is BALANCED it is in a suitable state. Stars are born due to gravity forcing atoms of Hydrogen together yet the resulting nuclear fusion causes outward pressure that is almost equal to the crunching of GRAVITY. The star is BALANCED. The Earth is actually referred to as an OBLATE SPHEROID - it isn't perfectly spherical - it BULGES at THE EQUATOR.

Answers to questions.

Leave me a scientific question which I'll endeavour to answer. Write your question in my comments section and I'll answer it here and quote your name, thanks, Adam :-) Much love. X

The four fundamental forces of the Universe

Another blog I'm gonna adore!!

Yes, four fundamental forces are responsible for making the Universe what it is and these forces are enabling YOU to READ this right now.

Here they are (strongest =1, weakest=4):

1.Strong nuclear force
2. Electromagnetic force
3. Weak nuclear force
4. Gravity

Gravity is the weakest and the weakest by far - planet Earth is pulling everything around you down towards it, got a pen? Pick it up!! Gravity isn't so strong is it! However, the Suns gravity keeps Earth in orbit around it so it must be formidable! What if I told you that Gravity is both the creator and the destroyer? If Gravity is all about attraction, then why doesn't everything just come together instead of spread apart all over the Universe? The answer - it's too weak to overcome the other forces - atleast for now.

Here is aquick break-down of the strength differences. I've given Gravity no rating but instead the numbers reflect how much stronger the other forces are compared to gravity. the number in brackets is how many zeros after 10 there are.

1.Strong nuclear force 10(-38)
2. Electromagnetic force 10(-36)
3. Weak nuclear force 10(-25)
4. Gravity

Let's begin with the strong nuclear force - this is CRUCIAL and without it - no other force would exist. If you've read my post on the ATOM then you will know that the atomic nucleus contains protons and neutrons. Well the reason that they are BOUND together in the nucleus is due to the STRONG NUCLEAR FORCE. The strong nuclear force binds together the QUARKS inside the protons and neutrons (remember NUCLEAR FUSION) Each of the forces has a MESSENGER PARTICLE which basically represents the presence of the force, it is also known as a MEDIATOR (think MEDIUM - in-between). the MESSENGER for the strong nuclear force is the GLUON (easy to remember as GLUE).

Here's a pic:









This is a PROTON! You can see that the "wavey lines" are the GLUONS.

There is a second part to the STRONG NUCLEAR FORCE which I wanted to write about and that is the RESIDUAL STRONG NUCLEAR FORCE - the strength is the same but the MESSENGER PARTICLE is not. The messenger particle is the PION and the PION is responsible for binding the PROTONS and NEUTRONS together inside the ATOMIC NUCLEUS. This force stops the protons and neutrons from pulling apart from each other. PIONS are generated when the protons and neutrons try to move apart.

LASTLY, what is very important to understand is the RANGE of the force and by this I mean what is the distance at which this force can work. How close of a RANGE does the force need to work and can the RANGE be vast. The atomic nucleus and the distance between the QUARKS is majorly small (the diameter of a proton is 10^-15 m and the the distance between a proton and a neutron is the SAME. The strong nuclear force only works at a very very very small range.




THE ELECTROMAGNETIC FORCE:

This force is responsible for HOLDING the ELECTRONS within the SHELLS surrounding the ATOMIC NUCLEUS. It attracts the NEGATIVELY charged electronstowards the POSITIVELY charged nucleus. The particle that MEDIATES the force is the PHOTON - the lovely particle that is MASSLESS (it weighs NOTHING) and gives us LIGHT. PHOTONS can be absorbed and emitted by electrons. The range of the ELCTROMAGNETIC FORCE is INFINITE! Yes,there is no limit as to which this force can work.This is down to the MASSLESS of the photon. Example: a photon can leave the Sun and travel 93 million miles to Earth and be absorbed by you then re-emitted by you and absorbed by an atom of the wall of your living-room.

I could say lots of other things about the electromagnetic force! It's what holds atoms together into molecules or crystals. It holds molecules together into cells, and holds cells together into people or plants or pasta. It keeps two solid objects, such as you and the chair you're sitting on, from passing through each other, and so on!


THE WEAK NUCLEAR FORCE:

To be continued later today!

The Electromagnetic spectrum!!!

I'm proper looking forward to blogging about this!!!!!!! How Yorkshire am I!!!

Here's a quick fact:

Human beings can see only wavelengths between 400-700 nm.

A nm is a nanometre and in length it's interpreted as one-billionth of a metre.

700nm - red light.
400nm - blue light.

Stay tuned, I've got work this morning.

Comets and Asteroids

Differences;

Comets are made of water-ice - hence the tail that forms (this is like a mini cloud) and always points away from the Sun because it's the Suns heat that generates the tail - its cooking the comet.

Asteroids are made of rock - in my opinion, all the rocky planets are all massive asteroids that coalesced (accredted) into planets. The Asteroid belt is fundamentally a "failed planet" - it didn't all coalesce, probably due to Jupiters HUGE gravitational pull stopping it happening.

Comets brought all the water that you see to earth, they are made of water and the continuous heating from the planet - yes it used to be hot millions of years ago - and the Sun - melted the comets - giving us water - which is sutained by our atmosphere.

I will delve into the separate classes to make you aware of the variety of these space-dwelling beauties.

To be continued...........

Newton's laws of motion

You will have heard these before in School no doubt, here they are.

1. An object in motion will stay in motion, an object will likewise remain at rest (still) unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

2. The greater the mass of an object the more energy needed/required to move the object in a given direction.

3. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

So here are explanations of the laws using scenarios.

1. If you let go of something that is moving, such as a shopping trolley (or anything with wheels), it will keep moving in a given direction before it hits something or looses momentum. This law is all about INERTIA. Inertia is the ability to resist change, as in practically every object around you has INERTIA, moving or not. A way for me to describe INERTIA is if you were in a moving car with your seat-belt on and the car suddenly stopped, you would move slightly forward. You do this because you HAVE INERTIA, which has effectively being given by the moving car. The seat-belt saves you and halts your momentum. FRICTION generally halts the movement of everyday things I.E it stops the car mentioned (BRAKES).

2. It's much easier to make something lightweight move than something super-heavy. Sound obvious?? Think of a bicycle and a lorry or a car. "Acceleration" means speeding up and that's what happens if you push something in a direction or drive/ride a vehicle. The harder you push or the more you put your foot down, the greater the acceleration. The less weight (bicycle) will accelerate quicker and easier. In physics, acceleration means ANY CHANGE from being still to moving, whether your getting up of the settee or running 100m. So if you are driving a car and you brake to slow down, the force of FRICTION gives you NEGATIVE ACCELERATION (you decelerate).

3. When a rocket pushes burninggas out of its engine, the gas pushes back on the rocket and lifts it into space. Forces can also be labelled as "actions" and always work in pairs. If one object pushes another then that object pushes back with the same force - the forces are equal. The effects may not be however as if you were to throw a tennis ball, the ball pushes back on your hand but the ball can travel a good distance. If you push down on the ground with your feet and the ground pushes back and flings you up into the air - you jump. The force from your feet also moves Earth! but not enough to notice!!

Kepler's laws of planetary motion

There are 3 laws:

1. Every planet orbits around the Sun in an elliptical orbit.
2. This concerns the speed of a planet around its orbit, and notes that an imaginary line between the planet and the Sun would sweep out the same area in the same given area.
3. The square of the time a planet takes to go round its orbit is proportional to the cube of the orbits semi-major axis (half the diameter of the planet's orbit).

The first law is relatively easy to convey, we all know that planets orbit the Sun and they effectively "circulate" it, better known as an orbit!!
What is important to understand is that a planet I.E Earth, has 2 key points in its orbit, these are known as the Aphelion and Perihelion.

Aphelion: Furthest from the Sun.

Perihelion: Closest to the Sun.

This effectively means that our orbit is not perfectly spherical and you're probably wondering why do we have these 2 key points??

Gravity pulls things together and in actual fact it wants to combine the Earth and the Sun and if it could it would, but it can't. Why?

The Earth is travelling at too high a velocity (velocity=speed in a given direction).

You may have heard the word FALLING mentioned when people talk about gravity.

Here's a pic to show the orbit:







You can see the 2 key points clearly marked. The Earth is bound to this orbit because of the gravitational pull of our Sun. The word FALLING may be easier to understand if I rotated the pic with the aphelion at the top, I'm not doing that as it would be illogical.

The Earth is travelling at a velocity around the sun which stops it being drawn in, however the gravitational pull of the Sun, results in this orbit. So the Aphelion is the point that Earth gets to when the Sun says "you're going nowhere" and pulls it back. The Perihelion is the point at which the Earth says "you can't have me".

A point to mention here is that the Earths velocity increases the closer it gets to the Sun - that is it is FALLING and everything increases its velocity as it falls. This doesn't mean it spins faster, it means it moves through space at a higher velocity.

You can see from the pic that our Moon has an elliptical orbit too!

Perigee: nearest

Apogee: furthest

Thats the first law.

Here's the second:





Sometimes labelled the law of "equal areas", the main principle to note here is that a planet will be travelling at its fastest when it's closer to the Sun and at it's slowest when it is furthest from the Sun. However, if I was somehow able to draw an imaginary line from the centre of Earth to the centre of the Sun, the line would be equal length at equal times.

Have a look at this picture:





You can see that although the triangles' sides are different, the actual area of each is the same. Please note that there are 12 Earths shown to reflect our 12 calendar months respectively.
The last part to note about the second law is that the short base of the triangles are a reflection that Earth is travelling slower (its further away from the Sun!). Therefore the longer base of the other triangles is a reflection that the Earth is travelling faster (it has travelled further over the course of the month).


Third law!

This is all about comparing the orbits of each planet in our solar system.

Probably a good idea to put this here:










AND THIS:

 

The important factor to establish here is that the closer the planet is to the Sun in general - I.E Mercury is the nearest planet, the faster/quicker its orbit of the Sun. This may seem obvious because it has the shortest distance to travel when compared to the other 7 planets. However, the time taken to orbit the Sun is due to the Sun itself, remember the point that the closer a planet gets to the sun, the more it accelerates. Well, Mercury is accelerating faster than all the other planets because it's the closest.

Here's an everyday example: you have an ice-skater on a rink who is spinning round and round with her arms out in front of her. In order to increase the speed of her spin, she PULLS her arms inwards to her body, the closer together she is - the faster she'll spin.

Planet	Period (s)	Average Dist. (m)	T2/R3 (s2/m3)
Earth	3.156 x 107 s	1.4957 x 1011	2.977 x 10-19
Mars	5.93 x 107 s	2.278 x 1011	2.975 x 10-19

You may wonder why I've put this table here, well it's because mathematics is an important part of the third law. I shan't go too in-depth. The main point is that:

The comparison being made is that the ratio of the squares of the periods to the cubes of their average distances from the sun is the same for every one of the planets.

Planet	Period (yr)	Ave. Dist. (au)	T2/R3 (yr2/au3)
Mercury	0.241	0.39	0.98
Venus	.615	0.72	1.01
Earth	1.00	1.00	1.00
Mars	1.88	1.52	1.01
Jupiter	11.8	5.20	0.99
Saturn	29.5	9.54	1.00
Uranus	84.0	19.18	1.00
Neptune	165	30.06	1.00
Pluto	248	39.44	1.00

The last column is the most important here. You can see that amazingly, each planet has the same T²/R^3.


No matter how long their "year" (orbit) is or how far away they are from the Sun. Kepler was able to devise a calculation that showed that every planets' orbit is the same.

The third law is also known as the LAW OF HARMONIES because every planet is in harmony with each other.

I hope you've enjoyed reading.

Much love, Adam XX.

Dynamic Earth - Edinburgh

I was lucky enough to be able to visit Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh this week. I loved it, a lot of money has been spent in order to justifyingly convey to the public how special and dynamic our planet is. No single factor really makes our planet what it is (prob the Sun though). There are so many factors that create and shape our planet that it has to be marvelled at.

Everything is expertly laid out so that all ages can really grasp what has happened to our planet since the Big Bang to the present day, without perplexing anyone.

Biospheres!!:

This is something I have studied a little but I will look into it more. The spheres are habitats in which life has adapted to this particular way of life - they have EVOLVED to maximise the uses of their surroundings to ensure they survive and carry on the existence of their species.

The Wildest Weather in the Solar System!!:

A great video/tour filmed by National Geographic that shows the extreme weather that is out there.
Highlights include:

Venus' red hot (400 degrees celsius) atmosphere
The dust storms of Mars
Jupiters great red spot - a storm raging for at least the last 400 years
Titans Methanological cycle - like our Hydrological (water) cycle but with a twist



Some key facts that stood out to me from elsewhere inside Dynamic Earth were:

Cactus' spikes - why do they have them? Well, water is so rare in a desert so when a Cactus is able to take in water they want to keep it. Specific animals roam about and would find it easy to pierce the Cactus to get to this water. This is where the spikes come in, they are a defence from these water-predators (I made that title up) and they preserve their water so they can use it to photosynthesise.

Deserts - why do they have the climate that they do? Well, they are near the Equator, so its very hot, however, a lot of rain hits around the equator so why not in the desert?

Okay, hot air rises from the Equator until it is cooled at the top of the troposhere (1st atmospheric layer), forming clouds which then release rain when they can no longer hold the weight (the cloud becomes too dense), then this air has no where to go when the cloud has gone and due to the constant rising of the hot air from below, it is pushed to the side. It then falls as there is no upward pressure, now it's directly in the desert with no clouds above which means no rain and no protection from constant sunlight. This creates a very warm and dry climate.

Adam King

20/04/2012

Nuclear fusion in the core of our Sun.

The Sun is a Star!!!

Specifically a Yellow G2 Dwarf star. Stars have 7 fundamental classes - O, B, A, F, G, K and M.

Our Sun is nothing special with respect to others but it does (like all other stars though) "make" fuel which sustains an outward force that prevents Gravity from killing our star. In actual fact it is Gravity that is responsible for the birth of every star you see.

Now, the temperature of the core of our Sun is an intense 15,000,000 degrees Celsius - HOT HOT HOT! Unimaginably hot.

It's these temperatures that allow the important part to be carried out by a star during its life - NUCLEAR FUSION - and this is their boring middle-age part.

Every second the Sun converts 600,000,000 tonnes of Helium into 596,000,000 tonnes of Hydrogen - the 4,000,000 tonnes that is missing is lost as is done.

To help explain - we convert this:





To this:























 Now, you may look at these two pictures and wonder where the blue-balls come from - these are called Neutrons as they are the same size as Protons but have no charge.

Charges:

Proton = +1
Neutron= 0
Electron= -1

The temperature of the core is due to how dense it is, atoms are tiny but yet the Sun boasts enough Hydrogen to carry on Nuclear Fusion for another 4 billion years (approx - thank goodness!).

Protons don't like each other, by that I mean they can't just be stuck together on their own (due to the +1 charge), this is where the Neutron comes into play as it has no charge so it can act as a barrier between Protons and bring stability to the nucleus (the centre) of the atom.

So are Neutrons present in the Sun? - probably but not exactly.

This where atoms get clever in my opinion.

STABILITY is key, every atom pretty much wants to be stable and carry no overall charge (e.g 12 Protons and 12 Electrons) but it can't get anywhere without Neutrons to help build from the most basic atom - Hydrogen (see above diagram).

So it makes a Neutron, out of a Proton!

Proton - internal structure:











Protons are made up of Quarks! Specifically:

2 x Up-Quarks
1 x Down-Quark

Quarks are held together by Gluons (the wavy lined parts)



Neutron - internal structure:

Neutrons are also made of Quarks:

2 x Down-Quarks
1 x Up-Quark









You can see that the difference is minimal as a Proton has the exact opposite to a Neutron.

This is the clever part:

An Up-Quark will DECAY into a Down-Quark - ON PURPOSE FOR STABILITY.

Now the Proton is a Neutron.

To be continued........

When this decay occurs, a Positron and a Neutrino will be emitted by the nucleus of the atom.

A Positron is the exact opposite to an Electron (it carries a positive charge).
A Neutrino is a massless particle that has no charge (think a tiny Neutron).

Now we have an atom that is not your usual Hydrogen because there is a Neutron present.
The atom is now known as Deuterium (1P and 1N).

Now this Deuterium atom can accept a second Proton into the nucleus and now that we have a Neutron, we have a little bit of STABILITY.

So, the Deuterium atom can accept/capture a Proton but this process results in energy being given off and we're talking a lot of energy in the form of a GAMMA WAVE. A gamma wave is a Photon that has a very short wavelength and a lot of energy.

Now we're faced with an Isotope of Helium.

Our atom now contains:

2P
1N

Not quite your usual Helium atom of:

2P
2N

So we have an isotope. An isotope is a variation of a specific atom - I.E a certain number of Protons (e.g Helium = 2), but a different number of Neutrons than the correct stable state that you would expect to find the atom in. An isotope is an atom that contains a different number of Neutrons - you can usually get variations where by there is 1 less or 1 more than normal.

Now our Helium isotope is ready to undergo the FINAL STAGE of fusion.

It will combine with another Helium isotope, an exact replica of itself.

You may be thinking that this would give us:

4P
2N

 and it does, temporarily, before 2 Protons are ousted from the nucleus, leaving us with:

2P
2N

HELIUM!!!

Now, you may be wondering:

Why doesn't a proton decay into a neutron and give us Lithium-3?
What happens to the ejected Protons?

The first question I cannot answer, sorry. My best postulation would be that the temperature of the core is not quite hot enough for this to happen - we should be glad as if this weren't the case then the burn rate wouldn't be another 4 billion years.

The second question I can answer and I pick up from the last sentence I wrote as these 2 Protons will be able to join the party once more and will eventually fuse into Helium (they could, for example, take part in the first phase).

To round off I shall explain what happens to;

The Positron
The Neutrino
The Gamma wave

The Positron is the opposite to an Electron (what we call antimatter) and when the two are able to combine they annihilate each other (both explode) and a lot of energy is given off - a Photon of a very short wavelength (i.e a Gamma wave).

The Neutrino, due to being massless will travel away (close to the speed of light (186,000 mph)) and not interact with anything and I mean anything. Neutrinos pass through the most solid of objects - buildings, land and PLANETS!! In fact they are passing through you right this second as you are reading this!!

The Gamma wave(s) - we now have prospectively 2 - these will probably be absorbed by electrons and then released by electrons over and over gain until they are able to leave the sun completely. They then travel at the speed of light to our earth and provide LIFE with energy to LIVE. An important aspect of Photons is that they can alter their wavelength (only get longer with less energy) the more they are absorbed by electrons. Effectively they get diluted due to losing energy through the absorption meaning they arrive at Earth as any of lower energy wavelengths thjat can penetrate Earths atmosphere - UV-3 and lower.

It can take a Photon up to a MILLION YEARS to get from our Suns core to the surface of our planet!!

I hope this helps.

Adam King

15/4/2012