The Eyes Have It
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008Another great scientific question from my ten-year-old; why are my eyes blue and my sister’s eyes brown?
What determines a person’s eye color?
The color of a person’s eyes depends on the amount of a pigment called melanin present in the iris of the eye (melanin is also responsible for the coloring of our skin). At one end of the [...]
Ethanol
Sunday, April 6th, 2008With record oil prices once again topping the headlines, today’s “Science Word of the Week” is “Ethanol”.
Ethanol is a colorless volatile flammable liquid. It is a form of alcohol, C2H5OH, found in alcoholic beverages and also used as an additive in gasoline to produce gasohol. Ethanol is used as an oxygenate in reformulated gasoline. It is also [...]
Nothing Matters
Saturday, April 5th, 2008“Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one” Albert Einstein
Matter is all the “stuff” that we see, feel, and smell around us. By definition, matter has mass and takes up space, and it includes substances such as water, wood, rock, metal, and air. At the most basic level, these substances are built from [...]
Evolutionary Tail Fins?
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008We sometimes forget that like everything else on Earth - not to mention the planet itself - we humans are a work in progress. The following are nineteen body parts that are in the process of being deleted from our design…
VOMERONASAL ORGAN
A tiny pit on each side of the septum is lined with nonfunctioning chemoreceptors. They may [...]
Really Big Bugs
Monday, March 31st, 2008There was a time in Earth’s prehistoric past when insects grew to enormous sizes. Fossil records reveal that there were once dragonflies with the wingspan of a hawk and millipedes that were perhaps 6 feet long.
Scientists have long theorized why modern insects should have elvolved to such dramatically smaller sizes. The answer appears to be linked to the nature [...]
Meanwhile in Middle Earth…
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008A pair of caves on the South Pacific island of Palau has yielded thousands of bones, including the skull of an extinct three-foot-tall people. Excavated in 2006 and 2007, these remains belonged to a race that lived between 2,900 and 1,400 years ago as evidenced by radiocarbon measurements.
The Palau find has fueled much debate within the archaeological community on the relationship the [...]
Science and the Urban Legend - Part II
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008For your entertainment and edification, here are five more persistent yet patently false urban legends…
The Great Wall of China as seen from space by the ESA Proba Satellite
The Legend - The Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from the moon.
The Truth - From a low Earth orbit (160 to 350 miles [...]
Science and the Urban Legend
Thursday, March 20th, 2008The following are actual science related urban legends that have been circulated as truth - some of them for decades. All have been busted by various sources but as urban legends are wont to do, stubbornly persist to this day. Here are five particularly long-lived legends and the reasons they are BUSTED!
The Legend [...]
Totally One-sided
Saturday, March 15th, 2008Here’s a quick trick to play on your friends and some pretty cool science to know. Cut a 2″ wide strip off the side of a standard letter size sheet of paper so that you have a strip of paper that is 2″ wide and 11″ long. Now ask someone if they can draw a continuous [...]
Lessons in Leverage
Sunday, March 9th, 2008A “simple machine” is a device for overcoming resistance at one point by applying force at some other point. Simple machines are generally classified into six basic categories:
Levers
Wheel and Axle
Pulleys (Block and Tackle)
Inclined Planes
Wedges
Screws
One or more simple machines are usually found at the heart of all modern machinery.
The following illustration demonstrates one of several ways that a lever can be used to effectively reduce [...]
