Symphony of Science

20 year old Chemistry major. . --- --People visiting my blog--

[oniongalaxy]

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you put a red gummy bear in potassium chlorate?

[oniongalaxy]

The other problems are set up exactly the same as this one, except for different mL of NaOH. I hope that this helps you to understand.

You have to get the new molarities first, which you can do with the starting mL and starting molarities given to you by getting the moles of each; and then you can get the new molarities by dividing the moles by the new volume of the total solution.

Then you need to get the pH of acetic acid and NaOH separately. You can usually get the acid dissociation constants from your textbook’s appendix, then you use that to help you get the concentration/molarity of H, in order to get the pH.

You can use the ion-product constant for water in order to get the molarity of H ( since you know the molarity of OH-).

Someone, please correct me if I did anything wrong. I did this problem at 1 A.M. so I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a mistake in there somewhere.

I hope you can read this, and good luck! Don’t be afraid to ask more questions.

[chemistryhelp]

Why does the Celsius-Fahrenheit/ Fahrenheit-Celcius conversion make sense?

F= 9/5 (C + 32) C= 5/9 (F - 32 )

You have probably used these two equations often in chemistry class to convert from Celsius-to-Fahrenheit and the other way around, but did your teacher ever explain to you why these equations worked?

On the Celsius scale, the range of temperature between the Normal Melting Point of Ice and the Normal Boiling Point of Water is divided into 100 equal units. Whereas on the Fahrenheit scale, the range of temperature between the Normal Melting Point of Ice and the Normal Boiling Point of Water is divided into 180 equal units. *You can see both of these for yourself by subtracting the Boiling Point by the Melting Point on each scale.

  *On the Celsius scale, zero is the melting point, and it corresponds to 32 degrees Fahrenheit. *  And the Fahrenheit degree is 5/9 of one Celsius degree. Why?

The 5/9 on the Celsius equation is obtained by dividing 100 ( Units between the Boiling Point and Melting Point of water [Celsius]) by 180 (Units between the Boiling Point and Melting Point of water[Fahrenheit]). 

100/180 = 10/18 = 5/9

* Note that 0 Celsius corresponds to 32 Fahrenheit, so to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius you would have to subtract 32 degrees.

Breaking this equation down: C= 5/9 ( F - 32 ) You can convert the Fahrenheit scale to the Celsius scale by using their ratio, then you must subtract 32 degrees. The equation could also be written like this: C= 100/180 ( F - 32) *The earlier equation is only a simplified version of the above equation. Remember, the 5/9 is there because a Fahrenheit degree is 5/9 of a Celsius degree; by having that fraction present, you are acknowledging the relationship between a Fahrenheit degree and a Celsius degree, and thereby converting the units.

[oniongalaxy]

This is a picture of the benzoic acid that me and my friend recrystallized in the organic chemistry lab.

The original substance was impure benzoic acid and it was heated in a boiling bath of water (while in a test tube), and hot solvent was added until the substance melted.

The substance was then cooled very slowly at a controlled rate of about 2-5 C per minute in order to allow large crystals to form. A controlled, slow cooling allows the crystals to form properly while blocking out most impurities.

The purified substance was then tested by determining it’s melting point. The initial and final melting point was within 1 C, indicating that it was very (but not necessarily entirely) pure.

[oniongalaxy]

Dihydrogen Monoxide is dangerous!

In an attempt to show how readily junk science is taken to heart, a student at Eagle Rock Junior High won first prize at the Greater Idaho Falls Science Fair, by displaying false information about the common molecule in order to prove how gullible people really can be. In case you were wondering what dihydrogen monoxide is… It’s just water!

But the student shared false information with the viewers, such as:

it can cause excessive sweating and vomiting

it is a major component in acid rain

it can cause severe burns in its gaseous state

accidental inhalation can kill you

it contributes to erosion

it decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes

it has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients

When he then asked them whether or not dihydrogen monoxide should be controlled,  forty-three said yes, six were undecided, and only one person knew that the chemical was water. When asked, most of the participants had wanted to BAN the chemical, to ban water. Clearly his science fair project was a success!

[oniongalaxy]

Titin is a protein that in humans is encoded by the TTN gene. It is a giant protein that functions as a molecular spring which is responsible for the passive elasticity of muscle. It is composed of 244 individually folded protein domains connected by unstructured peptide sequences. These domains unfold when the protein is stretched and refold when the tension is removed. Titin is important in the contraction of striated muscle tissues. With its length of ~27,000 to ~33,000 amino acids—depending on the splice isoform— titin is the largest known protein. (Wikipedia)

Interestingly enough, due to it’s size, it’s actual name is 189,819 letters long. A man was recorded while spending about three hours trying to pronounce the word. If you want to see the length of the word itself, view this link:

http://www.digitalspy.com/odd/news/a444700/longest-word-has-189819-letters-takes-three-hours-to-pronounce.html

The word is also sometimes considered the lengthiest in the English language.

[oniongalaxy]

Accuracy and precision are important to the sciences, mathematics, and engineering because different scenarios require precision and/or accuracy.

Accuracy is how close a value is to the true value.

Precision is how close values are to each other.

A real life example of accuracy is when you hit a bulls-eye, or when you get the correct answer on a test. It’s being right on, what the answer is and not close to it.

A real life example of precision is when you aim and throw something, if you are able to throw another thing in the same area as the first thing then you are precise.It’s the act of the next answer being close in range of the first.

This person is accurate.

This person is precise.

Here’s a real life scenario: You are an engineer and you are asked by your employer to make estimate just how much it is going to cost to create a building on an area of land. You have to consider how much the materials will cost, if the soil is stable or if it isn’t and just how much it will cost to dig a hole and possibly cement that area, you also have to consider the pay of your workers if you hired any. Other factors you have to consider may be human error, you never know if something is going to go wrong, if you or your workers forgot something- and that will cost additional money. Creating a new building can be unpredictable, so your estimate will have precision- it will have a range of one number to another number- of about what it will cost; in this scenario you can not be accurate.

A lot of real life scenarios are going to be precise, and not accurate due to external factors, because you never know what will happen.

However you can be accurate on what you will pay your workers, but time is a dependent variable so if something goes wrong with the construction your workers will have to fix it and you will have to pay your workers more than you anticipated.

[subatomiconsciousness-deactivat]

Ernest Rutherford publishes his atomic theory describing the atom as having a central positive nucleus surrounded by negative orbiting electrons. This model suggested that most of the mass of the atom was contained in the small nucleus, and that the rest of the atom was mostly empty space. Rutherford came to this conclusion following the results of his famous gold foil experiment. This experiment involved the firing of radioactive particles through minutely thin metal foils (notably gold) and detecting them using screens coated with zinc sulfide (a scintillator). Rutherford found that although the vast majority of particles passed straight through the foil approximately 1 in 8000 were deflected leading him to his theory that most of the atom was made up of ‘empty space’

here

[trulydiscombobulated]

I think the Rutherford experiment should be common knowledge.

[marcelottie]

I would like to turn everyone's attention to something.

Nasa’s last rover Curiosity is landing on Mars, August 5th 1:23 AM (Eastern). There will be LIVE FOOTAGE (well, you know, live as they can get 23 minutes later) hosted on Nasa’s site. ( http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/participate/ )

I don’t know about you guys, but that makes me awfully excited. >u<

[redmerkury]

Oh my God, I CANT WAIT 8 DAYS.

[bloodredorion-science]

For those of you that follow bloodredorion AND bloodredorion-science, most of my science rants/lectures will be here from now on. 

[oniongalaxy]

Nuclear transplantation involves  moving a cell nucleus and its genetic material from one cell to another. In early nuclear transplantation experiments(those experiments directly or indirectly involved to cloning), the frog was the most frequently used animal.

There was a reason for this.  For one, the reproductive biology of the frog, and it’s anatomy were already well known. Two, their eggs were more easily accessible; they fertilize their eggs outside of their body, and although the frog doesn’t have eggs all the time, all one really had to do was give the frog hormonal treatment, and squeeze the frog’s abdomin carefully. Three, the size and diameter of the frog egg was larger, so it was easier to enucleate, transfer nucleus of another cell in it, etc.    

What does this mean?  Since the frog had the most well understood reproductive system, behavior, and nuclear transplantation experiments, that meant that the frog was the first animal to be successfully cloned. 

To be the first successfully cloned animal, it had to be determined whether these guidelines were met. 

One, all genetic material had to be removed. The genetic material from the egg had to be removed, and there was to be no fertilization through sperm. There is also always the chance that the scientists didn’t remove all the genetic material, and that’s the reason for the second rule. Two, there should be a genetic marker to make sure that it was really cloned. Example, maybe there is a mutant gene in a certain group of animals within a species that the mother (of the egg) didn’t have. If the cloned frog has this mutant expression, then we know the frog came from the inserted nucleus and not from the mother’s genes. Three, did it really work, or not? Some frog clones do grow up into tadpoles, but die at a very young age before they become frogs. This is obviously the sign of an unsuccessful clone.

So, when it was clear that the scientist had followed all of these guidelines, and other scientists were able to do the same, we knew that the frog was the first successfully cloned animal.

Cloning can help us with the medical field. It can tell us about diseases, cancer, and ourselves. How could we better understand ourselves, than to recreate the situation, and eliminate different possibilities in order to tell us something we want to understand? This is why cloning is a big deal, forget the fictional cloning nonsense. 

[oniongalaxy]

Science is in a different time now.

We live in a different time now than we did decades ago. How people approach science, the ethics behind science, and the public opinion of science, has all changed. You can’t just go in your garage and build something revolutionary. I mean, sure, you can… But if something goes wrong, not only will they take all of the things you built, and the documents that you’ve written; but they may also criminalize you. 

There’s always been a topic that brings hesitance in every decade involving science. Like when the church continued to state that the sun rotates around the Earth and we’re at the center of the universe. When people were (and some still are) against stem cell research despite it’s revolutionary discoveries to health and medicine. When they started building the LHC, and some people were claiming the LHC would bring the end of the world, and scientists were getting death threats from opposers. And now, even though nanotechnology was technically created around 50 years ago, it’s become a controversial topic; like, will the toxins affect the Earth? Will it’s research change our world too much when people aren’t ready for it? Will transhumanism happen sooner than we thought?

So you always have to be a bit cautious when you’re coming up with new ideas ( or what you may think is a new idea), or when you’re working on something you need to take some steps to make sure you’re not going to be doing something dangerous. And yet, sometimes when you’re trying something new you can’t make a guess when something is going to be dangerous. And you might be criminalized just due to your research.

I also need to consider this when I consider taking something apart, or trying to make something.

This hesitance isn’t limited to hypothesis, research, creation, testing, etc. The hesitance also reaches to data from climate change. We live in a time where global warming is an opinion, not a fact. Imagine that. We’re reaching many peaks in science and technology, just around the corner from scientific discoveries that will revolutionize our perspective, change our ethics, and the possible structure of society… And topics as simple as evolution and global warming are opinions. 

We also live in a time where NASA is no longer important, no longer funded. We were making plans to travel to mars, there were plans to have space tourism, there were plans to possibly terraform mars! (Even though it was just a thought, and would take much time and effort. ) I can’t think of anything more important than expanding our horizons, expanding what we call our home, and making travel to other areas besides our own planet, Earth. And yet… We don’t fund it.

And this isn’t just happening in the U.S., this step away from science is happening in Canada too. But I can’t speak much for what’s going on in Canada, because I don’t live there.  But it’s happening around the world. Money is being taken away from science and being put into sports, music, television, and movies; that’s what people care about these days. 

Science is in a hard time. And if we want this to change, it’s going to have to make some leaps with the limited funds it has; and we will have to popularize it; and we will have to hope that we can continue progressing and not going backwards in our progress to improve ourselves.

[itsokaytobesmart]

How to Count Infinity

“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.” - Hazel Grace Lancaster

Are there really more numbers between 0 and 1 than there are integers? MinutePhysics explores, in typically wonderful fashion.

(by minutephysics)

[eutektiks]

UCSD Electronic Wireless Tattoo Receives Grant from the Gates Foundation

Described as an electronic “tattoo”, the device is a wearable patch of circuits, sensors, and wireless transmitters that sticks to the skin like a temporary tattoo and is able to stretch and flex with the skin. The researchers hope that the final product will continuously measure and monitor uterine contractions, fetal heart rate and oxygen, and maternal heart rate and body temperature.

The nice aspects of this device includes its ability to continuously monitor the status of the fetus within the womb in a noninvasive manner and to transmit the data wirelessly to physicians. Aside from its usage of monitoring fetal health, be prepared to notice the varying usage of the electric “tattoo” concept. In fact, one of its usages has been explored in this blog a while back as a food monitor.

[oniongalaxy]

Earlier, I was thinking about ’ why are some of the most popular scientists/ writers those who took ideas from others? And why did the people that originally got these ideas not get the credit for the ideas taken by the person?’

Well, when you have fame on your side you can get away with...

[futurescope]

The EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation

Horizon 2020 offers a useful glimpse of what topics will be important for the future. Check out the items listed on their video page (although some don’t have videos, yet):

Health, demographic change and wellbeing

Exercise: the way to a healthier European society? Technology for people living with dementia Animal to human: hidden diseases Independent Living – multiple hopes for multiple sclerosis Hi-tech future for ageing Europe Malaria: tracking a serial-killer Bilharzia and the ‘fluke’ discovery Digital fight against breast cancer Flu vaccine: A race against time European initiative spearheads medical advances New frontiers of imaging the human body Food allergies Mobility for all Solar-powered disinfection The fight against fat Unveiling the mysteries of sleep Number of Alzheimer’s patients set to increase

Food security, sustainable agriculture, marine and maritime research, and the bio-economy

A photovoltaic oasis Mapping out the future of Alpine glacier A world without bees? Tagging the eel Rescuing European forests Crusts, Crumbs and Chromatography Food allergies The quest for better rice

Secure, clean and efficient energy

Energy Saving A photovoltaic oasis Building energy efficient cities Home green home A tale of underground alchemy Home green home Spotlight on OLEDs CO2 capture in great carbon roundup Harvesting energy from the sea

Smart, green and integrated transport

A safer road ahead “Smart” cars to help reduce road fatalities Easier, cleaner and safer urban transport Hydrogen: vector for clean energy Further than the Orient Express

Climate action, resource efficiency and raw materials

The Cloudbusters Building energy efficient cities Home green home Ocean acidification CO2 capture in great carbon roundup Dustchasers seek answer to the Aral Mercury falling Harvesting energy from the sea Easier, cleaner and safer urban transport Shaping the future of shipping Hydrogen: vector for clean energy Weather Detectives Getting to the bottom of Africa’s carbon figures

Inclusive, innovative and secure societies

High-tech textiles Robots: man’s new best friend? Technology for people living with dementia Rescuing European forests Robots designed to roam city streets Developing intelligent fabrics Robots learn to express emotions A safer road ahead Mobility for all The robot child Rehabilitation Robots Independent Living European Digital Library

[via] [Presentation on Horizon 2020] [Horizon 2020] [video page]

[olena]

…living systems on this planet … may differ widely from many of the diverse complex adaptive systems that surely exist on planets revolving around distant stars in various parts of the universe. On some of those planets, perhaps the only complex adaptive systems are ones that we would not necessarily describe as alive if we encountered them. … Even the rule that genes must be made up of the four nucleotides abbreviated A, C, G, and T, which seems to be true of all life on our planet today, may not be universal on a cosmic scale of space and time.

Murray Gell-Mann, The Quark and the Jaguar, 113-114 (via olena)