elements
esiegel | December 26, 2012"We have been forced to admit for the first time in history not only the possibility of the fact of the growth and decay of the elements of matter. With radium and with uranium we do not see anything but the decay. And yet, somewhere, somehow, it is almost certain that these elements must be continuously forming. They are probably being put together now in the laboratory of the stars." -Robert Millikan
The Universe has been around for a long time, but without the Big Bang, we'd never have any of the matter or starlight that gives rise to practically all of our experiences in the entire…
esiegel | December 12, 2012"I have this one little saying, when things get too heavy just call me helium, the lightest known gas to man." -Jimi Hendrix
Hendrix, as I told you once before, was almost right. We know of helium, conventionally, as the lighter-than-air gas that we fill balloons, blimps and zeppelins with in order to quickly and easily "defy gravity" here on Earth.
Image credit: Jonathan Trappe.
At least defying gravity is what it appears to do. But what's really going on is that helium is simply a very low-density gas. Our atmosphere, a mix of mostly Nitrogen (N2) and Oxygen (O2) gases, has an average…
esiegel | October 5, 2012"It took less than an hour to make the atoms, a few hundred million years to make the stars and planets, but five billion years to make man!" -George Gamow
Earlier today, a video (from last month) was released where one of the members of the US House of Representative -- a member who sits on the House Committee for Science, Space and Technology -- proudly proclaimed the following:
"All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, the big bang theory; all of that is lies straight from the pit of hell." -Paul Broun
Well, if the Big Bang is a lie from the pit of hell, then the Universe…
esiegel | September 24, 2012"The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains; and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed." -William James
Up in the heavens, there are planets, stars, and galaxies all clearly visible in the night sky.
Image credit: Dan & Cindy Duriscoe, FDSC, Lowell Obs., USNO.
But those stars weren't always there, and they won't be there forever. The other class of object in the night sky -- the nebulae -- come in two types. On…
carlyo | February 1, 2012
"The periodic table is the universal catalog of everything you can drop on your foot"
--Theodore Gray
You have the amazing opportunity to hear from best-selling author Theodore Gray at this year's USA Science and Engineering Festival Book Fair! Gray will be speaking at the Teen Non-Fiction Festival Stage at 11:50 am on Saturday, April 28th. His newest book is Theodore Gray's Elements Vault: Treasures of the Periodic Table with Removable Archival Documents and Real Element Samples - Including Pure Gold! Gray's other books, The Elements and Mad Science, are international bestsellers, as is…
grrlscientist | March 19, 2010tags: Marie Curie Actions, Roderick Fenske, Chemical Party, education, teaching, humor, funny, television, streaming video
Directed by Roderick Fenske, Marie Curie is proud to present: "Chemicals having a party," featuring sexy carbons, bored noble gases, and explosive reactions. This is a hilarious and educational video about chemistry!
grrlscientist | December 5, 2008tags: periodic table, elements, mnemetic device, streaming video
This streaming video documents the Periodic Table set to music -- especially for everyone who did not score 100% on this test [1:59].
esiegel | January 28, 2008One of the worst teaching tools physicists use (and they almost all do it) is to tell students,
There's no such thing as centrifugal force.
What can you do when the top physics education website says, "It is important to note that the centrifugal force does not actually exist. We feel it, because we are in a non-inertial coordinate system." There's a very funny comic over at xkcd that goes as follows:
Well, what's the deal? What really goes on, physically, and what causes a centrifuge to work? Is your physics teacher right, or is there more to the story than "the centrifugal force does not…