More?
Yes, there’s more to come but I’ve been inundated with interstate work, children’s birthdays, visitors and a social life. The first article in my Scorecard series is being worked on intermittently, when I can find some time away from all the above, and I reckon the completion time will be around mid-September.
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The scorecard so far
It must be at least once at week I find myself wondering where the hell all those wonderous sciences and technologies we read about in the 90’s have gone. Like a lot of people I find myself a little dissapointed in 2008. Perhaps the hype of the late 90’s affected my subconcious more than I realised, I mean, if you believed in everything you read back then we’d have a cure for the common cold by now; along with basic nanotech, alternative fuels and many exciting advances in health thanks to stem cells and other vague bio technologys. With that in mind I want to visit the areas I once believed would be far more advanced in 2008; explore where they are now, where they’re going, why it’s taking so long and when we can expect something that knocks our socks off. Coming up next…Cancer research - wheres my cure?
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Tags: future, medicine, research, science
Some things for today
Man’s destruction of Africa - oh dear
All technology can be used for good…or evil
Open source cancer research! - er, wow. That’s unexpected. Very welcome, but unexpected.
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Have you ever, while drinking your 12th beer of the evening, enjoyed a moment of contemplation and wondered ‘what is all this stuff, this…..stuff, made of’? To be imprecise, all stuff in the entire universe is made of…stuff. The same kind of stuff that all other things are made of. This other stuff comes in the form of atoms, electrons, quarks, gluons and other amusing little things.
Atoms, in broad terms, are the building blocks of everything around you - and though everything around you feels solid, it’s not. In fact, nothing is even TOUCHING anything else. No, really. It’s true.
To put that in simplest terms you need to understand two very general things.
1. When talking about charged things - or magnetic things - like repels like and opposites attract. So two things that have a positive charge will repel each other while one thing witha positive charge and another with a negative charge will attract each other. Got a bar magnet? And another bar magnet? Ok, me neither, but if you think back to science classes you may remember pushing the two together. If you push negative to negative, they try their hardest to stay apart. But put positive anywhere near negative and they come together like two hot sweaty blondes in a bath of jelly. What?
2. Um. I forget. Oh yeah, atoms are made of a whole bunch of things. 3 things if you ignore such particles as quarks and gluons. Protons, which have a positive charge; electrons, which have a negative charge; and neutrons, which have no charge, or no net charge to be pedantic.
Here’s a picture of an atom.
To be precise, it’s a helium atom. I’ll leave all talk of atomic weights, isotopes, ions, shells and whatnot for other posts, but for now you know enough to understand how atoms made stuff and why they don’t actually touch.
See the electrons around that nucleus? Thinking back a paragraph or two you might remember that electrons have a negative charge. Now think back to point one, like things repel each other. So two atoms won’t actually touch.
Why the hell then don’t we fly apart into individual atoms and enjoy an atom orgy where no atom actually touches another atom? The answer is simple, an electron cloud(more on this another day) around an atom is attracted to the protons in the nucleus of another atom. The atoms therefore come together but never actually touch. Cool, huh?
ps. Okay, the world of atoms is far more complex and wondrous than this simple article makes it out to be, but I found this all very interesting and simple to understand so I’m outlining it this way. There are many nuances and exceptions I’m sure. I’ll try to cover them in the fullness of time ie. when I have time.
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Tags: atoms, charge, electrons, particles, protons
An aside
While i try to find time for the next full post….
Georgia Tech researchers developing tricorder-like medical scanner
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Creationism and science
Some random news stories and articles discussing creationism and science. These come pretty much exclusively from the US where such a topic is big news. I fervently hope the same thinking never spreads into Australia and when I cover ‘creationism’ please don’t expect a fair and balanced appraisal because I think it’s total bollocks.
I’ll kick off with a well balanced article that probably summarises best what I believe. There should be room in religion for science and a realistic view of our world. If some sections of society wish to believe in stuff like creationism that’s fine, but they should restrict their sermons to like-minded or curious people and not foist it upon everyone.
Creationism is fine, just don’t call it science
Questioning evolution in schools - I have no problem with people questioning evolution, as long as it’s not a smokescreen to sneak wild, unsupported speculation onto the curriculum.
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Tags: creationism, pseudoscience, science
Electromagnetism
Electromagnetism. I’ve heard the term a thousand times before now but never really grasped the concept until quite recently. Sure, I know what electricity is and I know all about magnets, but what’s electromagnetism all about and why is it so important?
Let’s nutshell it to begin with and go from there. Electromagnetism is the concept that a moving electric current creates a magnetic field and a moving magnet creates an electric current. As an example, electricity moving through a wire creates a magnetic field around itself while a magnet moved past a wire or through a coil of wire creates an electric current in that wire or coil.
Electric motors and generators work on these two ideas. In an electric motor an electric current moves past magnets that then turn a drive shaft. A generator with a chemical source of energy moves magnets past a coil of wire and creates an electric current.
Electromagnetic waves are self propagating. An electric wave sets off and the movement generates a magnetic wave that moves along with the electric wave. In turn, as this magnetic waves moves it creates an electric wave. The electric wave moving with the magnetic wave creates another magnetic wave, and so on.
Light, radio, x-rays etc are all electromagnetic waves with the variation in their wavelength determining their properties. It’s important to understand that all electromagnetic waves move at the speed of light (which is roughly 3×108 m/s).
There is so very much more to this subject but to go further is to branch out into other subjects and delve into more difficult territory.
As a final word I just wanted to mention that this article describes the classical model with an electromagnetic field regarded as a smooth, continuous wave. In the quantum world an electromagnetic field is regarded as a collection of particles, or photons. I’ll leave quantum physics until another day as I’ve only recently begun to understand how it works. Anything I say now is likely to be wrong.
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Tags: electromagnetism, waves
Coming up next…
Now i’ve put across those two basic ideas I’ll be getting into some of the interesting stuff I’ve read and heard about, posting stories from the world of science, commenting on life, theorising on interesting historical happenings and generally making bold statements that I hope are at least moderately well informed.
What I can promise is that the content and commentary will remain firmly grounded in the real world and not wander off into pseudo-science or superstition. If there’s one thing I really hate it’s half arsed mumbo jumbo crammed down peoples throats as real and shielded from independant inquiry. I’ll have a go at that shit as well.
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Models
Models are used to help explain, plan and conceptualise things. For example, the diagram below is an example of the atomic model. It helps explain how we currently think about atoms(at a very basic level).
This is only one way in which to conceptualise atoms and can’t explain the whole idea of atoms in one image. What it does do is help clarify what is being put across when someone says that an atom has a nucleus made of x neutrons and y protons that is orbited by y electrons. In reality an atom looks nothing like this and indeed electrons don’t orbit around the nucleus like planets around a star, but it helps you to understand the concepts.
To help explain other facets of an atom there are other models, like the shell atomic model that demonstrates how electrons orbit a nucleus on different ’shells’. An example of this can be seen at http://www.britannica.com/eb/art/print?id=18103&articleTypeId=1. I’ll delve more into atoms some other time.
Of course there are models out there for lots of different things. There are models for biology, physics, construction, programming, mathematics and so on. Some of these represent ideas or concepts that have yet to be proven and may be in the form of equations, other models may be a miniature copy of something very large, yet another may show how something very small - like a human cell - avoids becoming cancerous when exposed to a mutagen. All of these models respresent something and they help explain what it is and how it works in a way that makes sense, at least with a little explanation. And in the case of quantum physics, a few beers.
If i’ve got anything wrong, please forgive me and i’ll correct it later. For now i’m going on holiday to a tropical island!
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I guess the best place to start is a description of scientific method. In a nutshell, scientific method means to question, investigate, test, verify and open to criticism any and all ideas. Science - by extension - is using the scientific method to prove or disprove ideas. Anyone can float an idea but only flogging the hell out of it to see if the outcomes match the idea, and ditching the idea if they do not match it, is real science.
The process of ‘flogging the hell out of it’ must be measurable, provide observable results and do so in a way that can be repeated by others. This process should always include documentation that explains the idea, how it was tested and the results of testing. This documentation must then be shared with others so they can try for the same results. Only through repeated, independant testing and verified results can your idea be proven.
So, broadly, that’s what we call scientific method and it’s possibly the greatest discovery man has ever made.
To quote Richard Feynman, one of the great twentieth century physicists, from a lecture he gave in 1964;
In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is - if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.
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Tags: hypothesis, science, scientific method
Life, science, reality
Hello, my name is Shane and I want to write. I want to write about the basics of everything that so many people seem to get wrong, misunderstand or purposely ignore.
A lot of these basics are absolute truths - painstakingly researched over years, decades, centuries and in some cases millenia(sp?) - yet for some people they seem to remain a mystery, an enigma. Because these basic truths can become arcane and difficult to understand at face value, many choose to disbelieve or in some cases even actively deny that these truths can in fact be true. Why is this? Why can so many be so ignorant, so lazy, so ready to believe in the easy answer, the comforting answer? Perhaps I can put forward some ideas on that as well.
Enjoy, I have no idea what I’ll add or when but I really, fervently hope that at least one person reads these articles and wants to know more about the real world.
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Tags: welcome
