General Science
Requested by the man for aeiou, who describes it as follows:
We don’t know exactly what he has in mind, but we’re eager to find out.
Date: November 20, 2007
Categories: The Universe
Sunday, 28 April 2024
Life, the universe, pies, hot-pink bunnies, world domination, and everything
Requested by the man for aeiou, who describes it as follows:
We don’t know exactly what he has in mind, but we’re eager to find out.
Date: November 20, 2007
Categories: The Universe
Could we discuss geologic columns? We started learning about them in science a while ago. Turns out, geology “rocks.”
Wow. I’m lame.
Anyways, do you think that there is a place that really does have almost all of the layers of the geologic column?
it’s little like a chameleon theard, a bit like hot topics, and a bit like a muse academy science class.
1)but before that, let me tell you TMFA’s first idea of science:
all science is related.
and TMFA’s secand Idea of science:
all science is easy to understand if you take your time.
The only thing I can think of right now for science is acetlysalicylic acid(probably not spelled right), more commonly know as aspirin! Which is what I have been making in Chemistry.
1)- yes, I do. it just is that most of it is under the dirt. that is why the earth’s crust is as thick as it is.
3) hmm. odd. now let us see how, by using TMFA’s secand idea of science, we can conect that to geologic columns.
I mean first.
2- I quite agree with both Ideas.
Canix’s First Law: If you find a favorite song on the radio, it is already more than halfway done, but if you find a song you hate, the probability of the SEEK button breaking is greatly increased.
this is one of the fastest growing threads, after evolution and museblog fanfic, and the first alter egos.
ag’s law: If a solid object is heated up enough, it will either explode or melt.
You’re making Aspirin in Chemistry? That’s really cool! We haven’t really made anything yet. All we’ve done is take a bunch of notes and do a few rather dull labs. Though I did enjoy the distillation lab, that was fun.
Whoever tells me the definition of the science word below will win 100 spdzk points.
PHENOLPHTHALEIN
Note: In the event of an answer taken from Wikipedia, spdzk points self-delete from the spacetime continuum. You have to do actual (GASP!) research.
Another note: Once someone wins spdzk points, they can award them as well. There are only 100 spdzk points in existence. Once I award these, I will not be able to award any more. Whoever wins them can award them in any amount, including or under 100, to any blogger or GAPA they choose.
Argh, that word sounds so familiar, I just can’t remember why….
Wait, I think that’s the stuff that will turn pink(I think, I know it changes colors) in certain solutions….
7 and 9~ Hee, hee. I like those laws.
I have never really been one for science or math. Math I can do reasonably well, but science tends to bounce off the windsheild of my understanding capabilities. *dies*
a whitish or yellowish crystalline compond, used in laxatives. C20H14O4.
thank you!
I got it from the dictionary, so I think that should count.
11- it is a chemical that has an alchohol functional group on it somewhere (an -OH) that is what I know from Chem class.
In chem last year we had an ester lab and we were supposed to make three different smelling esters and see what they were (our student teacher worked in an actual comercial lab and knew the formuals to various things) and one of ours turned out *perfectly*. it smelled exactly like wintergreen lifesavers and I kept wanting to eat it… oops.
CHEMISTRYYYYYYYY
Phenolphthalein’s penchant for turning red in alkaline solutions makes it useful for magic tricks. My brother saw me playing with it once and thought I could turn water into wine. One of my science teachers said he had sprinkled crystals of it on some chocolates to find out who had been stealing them. When the thief went to the bathroom and washed his hands, the alkaline soap made the crystals stain his hands red. The teacher caught him literally red-handed.
By the way, a very old British nickname for chemistry class is “Smells.”
I hope that no one minds that I’m staying as far away from possible from this thread.
Because I have nothing interesting to say about science. I’m a different kind of nerd.
Nerds: GET HIM!
*runs away*
Raven of the Hawk was first with a correct definition (it does turn pink when contacting alkali), but TMFA’s was more complete. I will give ROTH 70 spdzk points for being first, but TMFA gets 30 as a reward for effort.
You now have ZE AWESOM POWERZ of the spdzk points. Use them well.
Hello science.
Chemistry is hard this year. I have decided that this is because the science education system that I’ve gone through so far has completely failed to ever teach me anything that I didn’t already learn from Muse…and because my teacher isn’t very competent.
We watched a movie on String Theory today. I feel like I need to catch up on my reading on that.
I just finished my sci fair project. It was about gum arabic and it really stank. Anyone have any ideas on wat i could do next year?
The skipper nancy, you might wanna watch this whole pbs show on it. It was reely imformative : smile :
is aaannnyyy one oooon heeerrrreeee
This isn’t a chatroom. People don’t stay on very long, and replies can take hours or even days to appear. You have to be patient and get used to the rhythm.
22: Are you new? *pies just in case* Why are your pants on fire?
I’m in earth science this year, which is awesome. (was there ever any doubt?) But wait- it gets better! The earth science teacher is really good too, and some of my friends are in my class. *does happy dance of science nerdiness*
There seem to be a lot of people here who are in chemistry. I don’t take it until I’m a junior, but my friend (a sophomore) has it now. She says that her and her friend were doing a lab, turned the bunsen burner up really high, and gave the teacher the worst burn she had ever gotten from a student. They couldn’t work together on the next lab.
As to the aformentioned (sp.??) big bang theory, can someone explain to me in general terms how it works??? I know one of the theories says that all the matter in the universe was once crammed into a space smaller than a golf ball, then it it exploded in the Big Bang. But how was everything crammed in??? I’m in 8th grade science and we just started our astronomy unit.
I was special: There were three things you could take in 8th grade. (earth science, band, art). You could only take two to preserve your precious lunch period. So I took all three and didn’t take lunch. Didn’t hurt a bit.
Earth science was excruciatingly boring. I loved the class; it was very interesting and informative. However, there were a few morons (sorry) and I had to sit next to one of them (also sorry). The teacher talking ina monotone and repeated himself a number of times and didn’t ever take a breath or pause or….
Other than that, it was great.
I LOVE bio this year. we cloned plants and this kid tried to clone himself. Regretfully it didn’t work. we also boiled water and turned things blue (my hand ; ) ) and yellow and broke a large quantity of glass. This other kid, he found out that glass cover slips don’t bend. So he went around breaking them at people. Funny. We still have to take notes and do boring labs, but we have fun.
I want to do chem. However, I think the local laws prevent us from actually doing anything interesting.(flash, boom, mwahahaha!)
I’m doing a project on Venus in science. It is intensely interesting.
Bio sounds awesome!!!! What grade is that?
bio for me was soph year and it was the most excrutiatingly painful thing i have ever experienced. most boring class EVER. all our bio teachers aren’t that good though. i like logsdon (he teaches AP bio, i interviewed him for torch) but i’ve heard he’s a horrible teacher, and messerly was just painful.
chem, i get horrible grades in but i really like it. actually everybody gets horrible grades because flores is crazy but we all learn a lot.
I’m doing freshman bio on-line this year as an 8th grader. Bio is fine, but it’s not my favorite field of science. Actually, my favorite is history of science.
i should probably ad to this because my mom’s a science proffesor…… oh well. E=mc with a little two above the c.
Well. My theory is that life exists everywhere. Litterally. Nature abhorrs the vacuum, right? So why not on other planets?
See, l think that scientists are narrowminded about life. They usually think that they have to look for carbon based life on planets similar to earth.
1. They’re just begining to realize that organisms based on silicon might exist on earth. Perhaps such organisms could exist elswhere?
2. Why do they have to be similar to earth? Archeabacteria live in extreme conditions, so why can’t other life forms do so on other planets?
I think the string theory is really interesting and quite possible. I’m also really into stuff with metaphysics and all, that this reality is just an illusion. For those of you interested, a great movie to watch is What The [Bleep] Do We Know? It’s really interesting, with just one scene making it PG-13, so viewer discretion is advised.
31 – are you new? if so, then *SPLAT* Also, i have no idea why you put e=mc(squared), but i just learned what that means, strangely. Energy = Mass x The square of the speed of light in cm per second. w00t!
Jupiter’s first law: if you find eggnog in the fridge the day after a holiday, it is almost guaranteed that there will be less than an inch left in the carton.
Jupiter’s second law: if your mom is screeching at you to get off the comp, you probably just leapt through a wormhole to 2 hours after you originally got on the computer.
sorry for the triple post, but one more thing i wanted to discuss: tesseracts. In a wrinkle in time, they are apparantly a sort of wormhole that lets you leap through space and time, but tis not the dictionary definition. quote Wikipedia: “A tesseract is a four-dimensional hypercube with 24 faces, 32 edges, and 16 vertices.” It’s quite interesting to see what it looks like, and you can scroll down on the Wiki article for it and see quite a few depictions of it. Also, can anyone tell me which Muse issue had the article about tesseracts?
16- that is truly hilariouse (especialy the water into wine)
Kagy’s first law of computer Science: If you are home alone and on the computer ther is a 90% chance the roly/clicky thinging between the right and left clicker will not work.
Kagy’s second law of computer science: if you are on the computer and you hear footstpes the is a 20% chance it is a sibling. if it is indeed your sibling there is a 100% chance you will be kicked off the computer so the can do “homework”.
36- the “roly/clicky thinging between the right and left clicker” is called a scroll wheel. Scroll rings around trackballs are awesome. Wheeee!
penguini’s rule of boxes: If a box arrives in the mail shaped roughly like an old IBM Stinkpad; it probably is one. If it is one, one’s father will attempt to get one to configure it into a working machine. The Stinkpad will usually not have a battery that can hold a charge, a hard drive, a CMOS battery that work, the jacks in the side are broken or any and all of the above.
One arrived in the mail today and it was missing a hard drive. The CMOS battery was dead and the big battery can’t hold a charge. And the jacks in the side are broken. And my father succeeded in getting me to help configure it.
30- Cool! What program are u doing it through?? I’ve taken advanced Reading courses online through WCATY (Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth). I probably won’t this year because my new school’s curriculum is much better than my old school!
Duh! I just realized that you probably don’t live in Wisconsin! Oh, well, maybe you do…..
Wow, exclamation point overload. Sorry for that and the double post.
Peoples!!! Can we please get back on the topic of general science? No more probablility laws or anything. This is supposed to be a science thread, not a mock-science thread.
38 – I use the Illinois Virtual High School, but it’s only for people in Illinois. I know that there are some nation-wide virtual schools.
23- I sometimes stay on for an hour or so, if there is more than one GAPA on and moderation is fast. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen often.
Canix’s Second Law: Felis domesticus will always sit where they are least wanted.
(35) Ivars Peterson wrote about tesseracts in his Math Page column in the September 2000 issue. You have a good memory!
I’ve never been sure that Madeleine L’Engle understood what a tesseract is.
In a scene from my attempted MuseBlog fanfiction, I mentioned the Tesseract as a sort of holographic successor to the World Wide Web.
43- Your MuseBlog Fanfic was what inspired me to write the Epic.
I’m glad that it had that effect. Inspiration is what we do here. Now, does anyone have anything else to say about science?
well, my chem teacher is being ridiculous and making us do a lab report about a lab that we didn’t do. Which would be fine, except that he’s still making us do the rerun (the letters all stand for something that i forget…) where we have to say stuff like what went wrong in the lab and how we could have improved it and it’s like …WTF WE CAN’T SAY WHAT WENT WRONG IF WE DIDN’T DO IT he wants us to just say what could have gone wrong, but i still think it’s ridiculous.
other than that, i asked for an xkcd shirt for christmas and said i either wanted the just shy, not antisocial one or the stand back i’m going to try SCIENCE one.
on an almost totally unrelated note, i’ll prolly get dad a new first amendment shirt if i can find one, because he said his is falling apart and he wants a new one
actualy i do have a queston(s). if humans ceased (sp?) to exist on earth, would the earth eventualy go back to how it was before humans poluted it?
do you think it’s possible for an advanced race to evolve from humans?
47- 1. It would. It would take quite a few million years, but it would. 2. Human beings are probably going to take control of their own evolution with genetic engineering pretty soon.
(47, 48) Even after millions of years, Earth wouldn’t be exactly the way it was before we came along. But that’s all right. Things were changing long before people were here, and they would continue to change if we disappeared.
There’s a book out about that topic, which I mentioned on the Hot Topics thread.
49- The World Without Us?
Yes. I’ve read articles based on it and hear that it’s very good. It has its own website at www. worldwithoutus.com/index2. html .
50- I saw it at Borders- shelved in the kids’ section, strangely enough. Perhaps I’ll buy it.
We dissected perch and squids in science class. It was so cool. I currently have the squid’s eyeball and beak sitting on my shelf downstairs.
47- I think that if we ceased to exist the earth would be less polluted and have more animals, but I don’t think it would go back. If evolution is real I think a new human race would eventually evolve again and then I have no clue what might happen. Of course that probably wouldn’t happen, but you never know.
Does anyone know what gelatin is made of? I heard that they began making it from chemicals instead of animal products, but I’m not sure. On the ingrediants list it just says gelatin.
54-That’s kind of dumb. (About the ingredients)
I think we’ve polluted our planet so much that it would never be as good as it was, although it might get close if we suddenly died off.
And absolutely not if the cause of us dying off was a nuclear war.
47- Basically what Robert said. Earth will definitely outlive us, unless we do something utterly senseless (blowing the place to bits). So what if we end up making Earth really polluted (not saying that I approve of the polluting, I think we should try to stop it)? We’ll die from the pollution we’ve caused, and some animal or whatever is going to evolve slowly into something that can live. And unless that animal starts making things worse, things will get better.
An example of this is that oxygen is poisonous, but we humans and animals have evolved to support life in it.
56-Earth might outlive us, but it might never become rehabitable. I know this is a bad example, it being fiction and all, but I think Earth would just end up like Terra in Terraformed, when it’s destroyed by the nuclear World War Last: unhabitable, radiation everywhere…yeah, a new species MIGHT evolve, but how’s that going to happen if you killed everything off in the first place? There won’t be anything to evolve FROM.
Maybe cockroaches will remain. =/
53- ew. i guess it’s cool in away but it’s against my beliefs to disect animals (at least that’s what i’m gonna tell my teachers )
in away humans are always evolving. we used to be rather tiny but now we have many, many people over 6ft. it’s kinda neat. and also now we “breed” across races and cultures so things are verry much different than several hundred years ago. it’s hard to explain but i hope you get the gist of things.
57- Maybe we’ll get hit with one of those meteors like in “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verill” (the Stephen King short story). Then, the plants will reinhabit the world. Something new might be introduced that happens to be able to survive.
Also, by “we”, I meant human beings. Then, in the time it takes for everything else to die, a new animal will evolve.
It’s like spraying Raid on cockroaches. All it takes is for one to get sprayed but not die. That way, over a couple generations, they’ll develop an immunity to the Raid, rendering it useless.
has anyone read the osamu tezuka pheonix books? there’s one, i think it’s pheonix future about how humans kill themselves off and there’s one man who in eternal and he watches the earth change and then it starts all over again with the dinosaurs and a superior race emerges (slugs) and they kill off the dinosaurs and the slugs evolve and stuff, and then they die out and the world starts all over again. i know that’s a poor synopsis but it’s a great book. tezuka is a master.
60 (Kagy) That sounds like a really good book. Very interesting plotline. I like the part about the slugs.
59-Yup.
Trying to explain diffusion becomes a lot harder when you have a teacher standing there saying “why?” over and over without giving you any indication of whether you’re right or not, as the honors chem class learned today. huzzah for brian and jake, without them we’d have been there for hours
61- it is. go read it.
64-Just looked it up on Amazon, and it looks great. I’m definitley asking for it for Christmas.
63- I hate that! It’s like the cheapest trick up a teacher’s sleeve not disclose whether you’re right or not! It’s sort of like an Alex Trebek thing.
63–My physics teacher is like that. He NEVER says “Yes, you have the right answer.” He always says, “Discuss it with the person next to you and we’ll see where we’re at in a few minutes.” But of course no one else knows, except for the one kid who took physics in his old school and uses all these words that we’re not “supposed” to use because we haven’t “learned” them yet. I need someone to say, “Yes-this-is-the-equation,” instead of “Do you think this is the right equation?” How am I supposed to KNOW? Consequently, there are several people in this class having a hard time, because not only are they in low math, they are not sure of what the equations and properties are because he won’t TELL us.
63: My math teacher does that! It drives everyone crazy because he doesn’t teach us anything. We have to teach it to ourselves after he assigns the homework. Luckily, we have a student teacher who is better because he answers questions. (*gasp* Why would teachers need to answer questions? That’s ridiculous! /sarcasm)
I guess I should say something about science… I dunno. Science is awesome! I have a t-shirt that says that.
66- that’s terrible! what an awful teacher!
66/68-actually, that’s how flores is, and he’s an incredible teacher. we learn a lot, and what’s more we learn how to figure things out on our own. The only problem is that they’re insane and so everybody fails the class.
63 – I actually like when teachers do that. It makes me feel like they want to make their students think instead of boring them.
70-oh i do too, it just makes everything so much more complicated but who says complication is bad?
but sometimes it does get annoying, especially in the end when i want to know if i’m right
For example, in my math class last term, we unexpectedly derived the quadratic formula from something completely random. It was amazing. I understood how to use the formula and everything. Then we discussed it in class, which solidified my knowledge.
It would be fine if my physics teacher taught like that. We just need to sum everything up to make sure everyone understands.
what is the string theory?
so yesterday, flores said we would soon be learning about how suction didn’t exist, which i found intriguing, so i kept asking him about it but he was just like “we’ll get there” and today he kind of explained it at the end of class. then i came in for moral support for bill during lunch and i was messing around with the mini plunger (his hall pass) and he started asking me about why it sticks to the table and we had a long, awkward interrogation.
i think teachers are beginning to think of me as somewhat smart, which is frightening because normally i’m just like “whee, low standards! fun! i can learn things outside of school!” but this year i have really good teachers and really good classes and i kind of want them to think of me as smart. it’s very different…
16- I used that solution in science in 7th grade for an extra credit presentation. We had to do an experiment (optional) and present it to the class/preform it. I turned my finger red so that it looked like it was bleeding. A+!
35- TESSERACTS! I loved that book.
63- Gah, that is so annoying. Still it is nice sometimes to be able to figure things out on your own.
I don’t have Biology this semester, but next semester I have it. I can’t wait! My teacher is supposed to be the best teacher ever! Everyone says so! Yesss!
So yes, I like science very much. I even have a chemistry set at home… I don’t use it very much though… Not much time. And my dad is excellent at math and science so he teaches me a lot of stuff. Yay!
Isn’t the string theory the theory that a single event like a butterfly over a lake could cause something even bigger like an earthquake?
73 – the string theory is that everything is made up of tiny little particles called strings, which are more or less like little rubber bands of energy. The theory goes that as the solar system is to a single atom, that single atom is to a string. 0_o
76 – no, that’s called the chaos theory.
I have this neighbor who’s science teacher said that global warming has happened before…like before humans romed the earth. So, maybe there is a scientific explanation for climate change…Whatev. The Big Bang Theory isn’t completely right in my opinion. I have my own ideas… Anyway, I saw this bumper sticker that read, “Big Bang Theory: God spoke, and *BANG!* it happened!” I thought that was pretty awesome.
We know, okay, everyone saw Mad Max. But still, at some point you just have to realize that the ape-men know what they’re doing to some extent. And maybe they’ll actually survive.
This thread is dormant….or at least, I think it is…..
Time to revive this thread.
Who wants to talk about radioactivity?
i don’t really understand radiosctivity, if you want to explain?
with this post, we have passed the first science theard’s post number!
82-Me nether.
Have you all heard that M.I.T. has put all of its courses online? Anyone can “attend” the lectures on the Web. They’re all at ocw.mit.edu .
According to the New York Times, a physics professor named Walter Lewin has become a worldwide hit. You can see the syllabus for one of his mechanics classes at ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-01Physics-IFall1999/CourseHome/index.htm .
Oh, as for radioactivity: You know that the nuclei of atoms are made of particles protons and neutrons. Some combinations of protons and neutrons result in unstable nuclei, which try to become more stable by spitting out particles. That process is called radioactive decay, and the particles are called radioactivity. If enough of those bullet-like protons and neutrons hit your body, they can kill your cells, change your DNA molecules, and otherwise make a mess. (There are other kinds of radioactive decay, but that’s the general idea.)
Isn’t it cool how some radioactive elements lose their potency at measureable intervals, thus letting archeologists and paleontologists test for these elements to find out how old something is?
I dig archeology.
Man, I need a life.