Science In Action

Weird Science Words

Published on 2011-11-27 16:06:21

Science Dictionary Here are some weird science words. Be careful how you use them. Auscultation—Listening. Especially listening to the sounds of the internal organs, as with a stethoscope. Borborygmus, pl. borborygmi—Rumbling and gurgling noises from the intestines. Stomach "growling". Bromhidrosis—Body odor, B.O. From the Greek bromos, a stench, and hidros, sweat. Cacophony—Jarring, discordant sound. Cacophonous: having a harsh, discordant sound. From the Greek kakophnos, kakos, bad

Periodic Table of Videos

Published on 2011-11-11 14:54:50

The Periodic Table of the Elements compresses an amazing amount of information into 118 boxes, one for each chemical element. The most stunning revelation of the table is the regularity of patterns formed by the similar properties of elements in each group (column), which has come to be explained by the quantum structure of the electron clouds around atoms of each element. More about the table here (Wikipedia). Unfortunately the periodic table can be a bit dry and boring. So much information!

Show And Tell--Sharing Science By Video

Published on 2011-09-29 15:35:42

The Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) makes hands-on science available by video. Real scientists demonstrate their experiments on line to accompany their publications. A picture being worth a thousand words, and a video being worth at least a thousand pictures, this novel channel gives fellow researchers (and budding scientists!) around the world clearer access to experimental procedures. Now JoVE is offering free access to developing-country researchers. Those of us who have tried to fi

Probability and Profiling

Published on 2011-08-30 18:24:42

The Set-Up: I am going to test your understanding of "probability" and "randomness". For purposes of this demonstration, assume that the person in this picture has been randomly selected from all Americans. This is a picture of a randomly selected American. The Question: Is this person more likely to be a farmer, or a librarian? The Answer: Whatever you answered, your answer was almost certainly influenced by your previous knowledge, biases, and thinking about what the woman "probably" was.

Why Is Urine Yellow?

Published on 2011-05-21 07:03:57

What true scientist has not asked, at some time or other, "Why is pee yellow?" Some European alchemists in the middle ages apparently thought one possible reason was that there was gold in urine. This led to fruitless, and possibly quite disgusting, efforts to extract that gold. The yellow color in urine is due to chemicals called urobilins. These are the breakdown products of the bile pigment bilirubin. Bilirubin is itself a breakdown product of the heme part of hemoglobin from worn-out red

Oil Spill Math: How Much Risk for How Much Oil?

Published on 2011-05-14 07:14:05

How much oil has spilled? Big quantities are sometimes hard to grasp. They are outside our everyday experience. When you hear that millions of gallons of crude are spilling in the Gulf, how much is that really? Professor James Corbett of the University of Delaware has done the math in a creative way. Assuming the gusher is was gushing 50,000 barrels of crude a day (you can adjust this assumption on the site), "As of day 66 (today), if that oil had been refined to fuel in a typical US refinery,

Plants Unhappy About Global Warming

Published on 2011-05-14 07:12:04

Rice field in Bangladesh New science raises serious concerns about the negative impact of global warming on crop yields and plant productivity in general. This could be one of the most severe social and economic effects of climate change. Rice Yields Hurt By Warming Researchers from the University of California, Duke, National Bureau of Economic Research, IRRI and FAO published a very revealing paper in PNAS. They studied 227 intensively managed irrigated rice farms in six important rice-p

Latent Heat--Sweat, Storms and Cooling Towers

Published on 2011-05-14 07:10:29

If you don't understand "latent heat" you can't understand how much of the biosphere or a lot of engineering works. The latent heat of water is the energy absorbed when water is evaporated, or released when it condenses. Weather, thermoregulation, global warming and industrial cooling all depend on the high latent heat of water and its ability to transform heat to work and vice versa, and to move energy from one place to another. Water is Magic Water is marvelous stuff and has many interest

What Is The "Greenhouse" Effect?

Published on 2011-05-14 07:07:53

This post will help you understand Why the "greenhouse effect" has to do with gases in the atmosphere, How these "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere warm the Earth (and what that has to do with things that are "red hot"), What this implies for future warming as we put more of these gases into the atmosphere. The use of a toaster is not required, but it helps if you know how one works. What Is The Greenhouse Effect? The "greenhouse effect" refers to how gases in the atmosphere which ab

Climate Change--What We Know and What's Uncertain

Published on 2011-05-14 07:05:58

The Royal Society has published Climate change: A summary of the science. It has the aim "to summarise the current scientific evidence on climate change and its drivers." It is focused on how Earth's climate is changing and what is making it change. "The impacts of climate change, as distinct from the causes," are not considered. Although the summary tries to be as non-technical as possible, it is after all a summary of the science, so it incorporates some scientific terminology necessary to co