October 2010 Archives

Thirty-three workers were rescued recently after being trapped under ground when a mine collapsed in Chile in August. The workers were trapped 2,300 feet beneath the surface for 69 days—a very, very long time to be without natural light!

While engineers worked on a rescue solution, rescuers above ground were able to rig systems to get required staples to the miners: food, vitamins, reading material, a portable music player (that was shuttled up and down to be charged). The trapped group was even able to watch a football game projected onto a cave wall. What couldn't be passed down, however, was sunlight. While there were some portable light sources available, being without natural light for such a long time poses many potential health hazards because our bodies depend on an awareness of natural light to keep our "internal clock" regulated.

This internal clock is related to "circadian rhythm" which tells our bodies when to "do" certain things each day. At the most basic level, our bodies are trained to sleep when it's dark and be up and about in the light. Almost all living things, even microbes, show evidence of circadian rhythm, and this rhythm controls a huge number of physical, mental, and behavioral processes, changes, and fluctuations, including things like body temperature, bowel movements, sleep, and the ability to stabilize one's emotional mood.

Far-Reaching Implications

The trapped miners faced an extended period of circadian rhythm disruption, but this is an area of study that has impact for astronauts, airline pilots (who often fly across multiple time zones) and even workers who routinely work a night-shift, as well.
To begin exploring the presence and impact of circadian rhythms, take a look at these Science Buddies project ideas:

• Can Your Body Temperature Tell the Time of Day? Find Out with Human Circadian Cycles.: Chart the changes in temperature and reaction time throughout the course of a day in this human health project. (Difficulty: 6)
• Bioluminescence: Investigating Glow-in-the-Dark Dinoflagellates: Study the importance of a regular light-to-dark cycle on the bioluminescence of the marine dinoflagellate Pyrocystis lunula. (Difficulty: 7)
• Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Does Your Mouse Know the Time on the Clock?: Examine the activity of a rodent (or family pet) at various times of the day in this mammalian biology project. (Difficulty: 7)

If you consider FM-radio a bit old-school compared to your portable MP3 stash, it may be time to think again—with a look to the sky.

Not only is it possible to see the International Space Station with the naked eye, it's also possible to make unofficial radio contact—from home or school! The ISS is equipped with its own HAM radio setup, enabling classes and interested amateur radio operators to talk to someone in space via radio. Tracking the ISS and attempting to make contact yourself would make a great independent science project. And if you get through—talk about bragging rights with your friends!

Have you ever experimented with radio broadcasting? Ever used a CB-radio? Ever picked up a set of walkie talkies and used them with friends or family? Ever considered pulling on headphones and talking to someone on the space station from your bedroom or office or tree house? It sounds almost like something that belongs in a graphic novel or spy story, but it's absolutely possible to send out a radio call to the International Space Station (ISS) and have a free-floating astronaut--a scientists aboard the ISS who is working on one of a variety of ISS-based research projects--answer you. That's because the space station is fully equipped with its own ISS HAM radio station.

Hard or Not
How hard is it to contact the ISS with basically an antenna? According to HAM radio operators, successfully reaching the space station may be more luck than a function of superior equipment—which makes it a fun challenge for a student with an industrious engineering spirit, a lot of patience, and a willingness to play the odds.
There are several logistics involved in making contact with the ISS.

• Altitude: First of all is the fact that the ISS flies at a variable altitude of approximately 240 miles above the surface of the earth. To put that into perspective, a standard commercial plane (the kind you fly to Grandma's) flies somewhere between 25,000 and 37,000 feet—so an altitude of 5-7 miles.

• Speed: The ISS travels somewhere in the range of 17,000 miles an hour. So when it passes overhead, it's going to do so quickly!

• Duration: Because the ISS moves so quickly, its orbit is relatively short. Its near-circular orbit takes about an hour-and-a-half, which means it orbits almost 16 times a day. That means you have a number of available windows for making contact!

• Astronauts are Busy! Astronauts aboard the ISS have busy schedules (including several hours of mandatory exercise a day), so it might be hit or miss to catch someone at the HAM radio.
  

If you're interested in seeing if you can make contact, you'll first need to put your equipment in place. The National Association for Amateur Radio lists the following equipment as the baseline: "a 2-meter FM transceiver and 25-100 watts of output power. A circularly polarized crossed-Yagi antenna capable of being pointed in both azimuth (N-S-E-W) and elevation (degrees above the horizon) is desirable."
Once your radio is working, and you've gotten a license (required for amateur radio operators), you'll have to keep your eye on the ISS so that you'll be able to predict when it will be passing over your area. There may only be a few minutes of a "window" as it passes over, so you'll need to be ready. But since it orbits once every 93 minutes, you'll have time for a snack and a walk around the block before your next attempt!

To begin tracking the ISS, try one of these sites:

• http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/tracking/
• http://www.n2yo.com/satellites/?c=18
• http://heavens-above.com/
• http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/tools/

Nuts and Bolts
If you're interested in the nuts and bolts of broadcasting and electronics, Science Buddies has two projects that can help you get started building AM radios:

• Build Your Own Crystal Radio (Difficulty: 4-9)


• Make Your Own Low-Power AM Radio Transmitter (Difficulty: 7-9)

Radio Contact for Schools
In addition to impromptu radio contact with the ISS, it is also possible for schools to schedule contact. To find out more about the ARISS program, visit: http://www.arrl.org/amateur-radio-on-the-international-space-station. (See also: ISS Astronaut Creating Ham Radio Buzz, Taking Science to Students".)

When a reservoir collapsed last week in Hungary, an estimated at 35 million cubic feet of toxic waste rushed into neighboring waterways and headed for the Danube, the second-longest river in Europe. The red sludge, a waste product from a factory that produces aluminum, destroyed many homes in Kolontar, a small nearby village, and wiped out aquatic life in local rivers and streams. As the sludge headed south for the Danube, turning waterways red as it passed through, officials were watching for dead fish.

Emergency Chemistry
In a race against the flow of sludge, scientists turned to chemistry fundamentals—acids and bases. To minimize the impact of the sludge on fish in the waters, scientists needed to lower the pH levels of the sludge (and of the Danube overall once the sludge reached it). In an attempt to counteract and neutralize the highly alkaline waste, emergency teams dumped quantities of plaster and vinegar (acetic acid) into the water.

With the sheer volume of the Danube working in its favor to help disperse the concentration of the sludge, the plaster and vinegar successfully helped lower the pH levels, diminishing the risk of further immediate environmental damage and neutralizing the sludge's impact on the Danube.

Staying Neutral
For students interested in exploring pH testing (and acidity), the following project ideas offer an inside look:

• Make Your Own pH Paper (Difficulty: 4-6)


• Cabbage Chemistry (Difficulty: 2)


• Measuring the Amount of Acid in Vinegar by Titration with an Indicator Solution (Difficulty: 7-8)

To experiment with the science involved in water quality control and testing, explore these project ideas:

• Conductance as a Water Quality Measurement (Difficulty: 5)


• Using Daphnia to Monitor Water Toxicity (Difficulty: 7)


• Harmful Algal Blooms in the Chesapeake Bay (Difficulty: 8)


• Can Water Plants Be Used to Determine Water Quality?* (Difficulty: 4-6)


• It's Raining, It's Pouring: Chemical Analysis of Rainwater (Difficulty: 5)

To find out more about the kinds of science- and engineering-based careers that deal with an emergency situation of this kind, check these career profiles:

• Soil and Water Conservationist


• Environmental Engineer


• Environmental Compliance Inspector

[Editor's Note: This post was edited after its initial posting due to an error discovered by a reader. We erroneously referred to the sludge as "acidic" rather than "alkaline" -- which doesn't make pH sense given that vinegar was used as a counter-balance to lower the pH of the sludge. We apologize for any confusion our oversight caused.]

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki for their development of a procedure for "palladium-catalyzed cross coupling," an organic chemistry process which enables the synthesis of large carbon-based molecules. Life on Earth is carbon-based, so carbon is seemingly everywhere, but because individual carbon atoms are so stable, it isn't always easy to hook them together. When carbon atoms are hooked together, however, new things are possible. For example, many medicines depend upon the synthesis of carbon atoms, and electronics and materials like plastics often involve carbon-based materials.

What Heck, Negishi, and Suzuki did is develop processes for using palladium atoms as a catalyst. Carbon atoms meet on a palladium atom, and then are so close together that chemical reactions are possible.

The Role of a Catalyst

In "palladium-catalyzed cross coupling," palladium acts as a catalyst. It "encourages" and "enables" a reaction between individual carbon atoms. Catalysts are used to start or facilitate all kinds of chemical reactions, from manufacturing processes to chemical reactions that occur in our own bodies.

The following science project ideas let you explore the importance of catalysts:

• Crime Scene Chemistry—The Cool Blue Light of Luminol: iron functions as a catalyst in a light-producing chemical reaction. (Difficulty: 8-9 )
• How Far Can You Stretcha the Mozzarella: The Science of Making Cheese!: rennin is a catalyst in the process of making cheese. (Difficulty: 5)
• I Love Ice Cream, But It Doesn't Love Me: Understanding Lactose Intolerance: lactase enzymes are catalysts that aid in digestion of lactose. (Difficulty: 5-7 )
• Presto! From Black to Clear with the Magic of Photochemistry: light can influence the speed of a chemical reaction. (Difficulty: 7-8)
• Liver Stinks!: the liver is a source of catalase enzymes that serve as catalysts in the body. (Difficulty: 3-5)

The Full Story

To read more about Heck, Negishi, and Suzuki's Nobel-winning work in organic chemistry, see this ScienceDaily article.

Don't Miss

Read our other posts about the 2010 Nobel Prizes: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/blog/2010/10/nobel-news-and-student-projects-to-explore-part-1.php

Applications are being accepted for the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing until October 15, 2010. U.S. high school girls, grades 9-12, who are interested in computer science or technology are encouraged to apply! Sponsored by the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), the award recognizes high school women who have distinguished themselves in the area of computing and technology.

To find out more about NCWIT and the Aspirations in Computing award, visit the website: www.ncwit.org/award.

To explore fun and innovative computer science project ideas at Science Buddies, look at our Scratch and Storytelling Alice projects. Computer Science may not be the way you envision it!

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics went to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, a team of researchers from the University of Manchester. Using ordinary tape, Geim and Novoselov managed to extract a flake of graphene from a piece of graphite like that found in a regular pencil. Graphene is a form of carbon, which makes it sound fairly ordinary. But graphene has proven to be a wonder-material. At only one atom thick, graphene is the thinnest known material and also the strongest. It's harder than diamond, another form of carbon, and has impressive properties as a conductor of electricity and heat. It's almost see-through, and yet it's incredibly dense. It seems, in this case, that a #2 pencil may have been hiding unknown answers all along!

What state is it?

At the core, Geim and Novoselov's work with graphene highlights the fact that when you change the shape or state of molecules in a substance, you also potentially change its properties. The state of water, for example, has everything to do with its properties—How hard is it? How fluid is it? How dense is it? The answers depend on the state of the H2₀. Even though liquid water, solid water (ice), and gaseous water (steam) are all comprised of the same molecules, their properties differ.

To extend and sweeten this study, you can explore the physical properties of chocolate in Temper, Temper, Temper! The Science of Tempering Chocolate (Difficulty 6). Or, with hammer in hand, pound out the details and observe how the properties of metal are directly related to its shape in the It's Hard Work to Work Harden! Learn How to Make Metals Stronger project (Difficulty 5-6).

The Full Story

To read more about the history of Geim and Novoselov's work with graphene, see this ScienceDaily article.

Don't Miss

Read our other posts about the 2010 Nobel Prizes: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/blog/2010/10/nobel-news-and-student-projects-to-explore-part-1.php

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded yesterday to Robert G. Edwards, a pioneer in in vitro fertilization (IVF) therapy. Edwards' research and conviction that infertility could be treated, dates back to the 1950s. After years of experimenting with the fertilization of human eggs cells outside of the body, Edwards' efforts came to fruition in 1978 when Louise Brown, the first "test tube" baby, was born.

Student Study

Spearheading IVF practices and the knowledge bank from which thousands of babies have been born using IVF, one of Robert Edward's groundbreaking studies involved in-depth research into the conditions that allowed fertilization (the transfer of DNA from sperm to egg) to occur. Better understanding this process as it relates specifically to humans (and as it differs, as he discovered, from rabbits, which had been the subject of early fertilization research), paved the way for successful out-of-body human egg fertilization.

Like the transfer of DNA from sperm to egg, bacteria also transfer DNA to one another. Since bacteria are single-celled organisms, however, the process is called transformation (rather than fertilization). Students curious about the mechanics of fertilization can explore the ways in which transformation occurs, and the various conditions that positively or negatively impact the process, in Bacterial Transformation Efficiency (Difficulty: 8-10).

The Full Story

To read more about Edwards and the history of IVF research, this ScienceDaily article offers an excellent starting point.

Don't Miss

Read our other posts about the 2010 Nobel Prizes: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/blog/2010/10/nobel-news-and-student-projects-to-explore-part-1.php

It's Nobel Prize time! This week, Nobel Prizes will be announced in the following areas:

• Physiology or Medicine
• Physics
• Chemistry
• Peace Prize
• The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel

To help students, classes, and families talk about the Nobel winners in the sciences--and to contextualize the kinds of research, discovery, innovation, and advancement reflected by the winners--we will be highlighting relevant Science Buddies project ideas, where possible, to give students a chance to explore and research similar topics. In some cases, project ideas highlight a different angle or veer in a different direction, taking an approach that is applicable to advanced school study, high-school lab settings, and science fair guidelines, but we hope to give high-achieving students a foothold into areas of study singled out by Nobel prizes this year.

Science Buddies' Coverage of the 2010 Nobel Prizes

• the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine


• the Nobel Prize for Physics


• the Nobel Prize for Chemistry

You may be able to win brownie points with friends and family if your science project involves baking dozens of cookies and asking people to tell you which one tastes best... the ones with regular chips or the ones with mini chips or the ones with white chocolate chips or the ones with carob chips or even the ones with M&Ms. A chocolate buzz can go a long way, but is it science?

Projects that involve surveys and testing (even taste testing) by volunteers can be legitimate science projects, but be careful! The project you choose has to have an underlying scientific principle and needs to be designed in such a way that you are asking (and investigating) a clear scientific question. The scientific backbone of the project may be a psychological, sociological, or other scientific principle, but there has to be a science component on which the project--and the survey--hinges.

Projects that simply compare products (which type of chocolate chip tastes better tastes, for example) are not appropriate for a science fair. While those kinds of tests and comparisons are valuable in product marketing and product development, they don't necessarily fill the requirements of a science project. As you consider projects, you want to be sure that your background research leads you to a test-able hypothesis. If there isn't any real research you can do, then you are not asking a scientific question.

Luckily, there are an infinite number of science-based questions that can be asked. With careful planning, survey-based projects can be fun and successful. With a bit of research and planning, you can even develop a whole project around cookie taste-testing! Stumped as to how? Check out our How Do You Make the 'Best' Cookie? project.

Planning Ahead

Unlike other experiment-based projects, with a survey, it is really important that you "get it right" the first time. You can't easily go back and "try again" or repeat your survey. Your experiment needs to be well-planned and really well thought out from the beginning.

Before you are ready to talk with your volunteers, spend time figuring out what kind of data you need to gather to prove or disprove your hypothesis. Taking time to make samples of the kinds of graphs or data tables that you hope to produce will help you understand what information you need to collect. After making these samples, make a list of the kinds of data that you need to gather (e.g., height, age, color-preference, weight, etc.). Using the list of relevant data points, you can write questions for your survey that will help you gather the right kinds of data. As you work on your survey and design your project, be sure to consult the following important Science Buddies resources:

• Designing a Survey
• Sample Size: How Many Survey Participants Do I Need?
• Science Fair Project Question

Projects for the People

The following science projects from the Science Buddies directory of project ideas involve a survey component. If you are considering your own topic, looking at the procedures for these project ideas can help you construct your own independent survey-based science project.

• The Bouba-Kiki Effect (Difficulty: 2)

• Teachers Rule (Difficulty: 3-4)
• Do Males and Females Play the Same Types of Games? (Difficulty: 4)
• Can You Make a Happy Song Sad?* (Abbreviated project idea) (Difficulty: 5)
• Hands-on Shopping: More Likely to Buy if You Can Give It a Try? (Difficulty: 5)
• It's Written All Over Your Face: The Science of Facial Expressions (Difficulty: 5)
• The Nose Knows Smell But How About Taste? (Difficulty: 5-8)
• Uh-oh! What Do We Do With Our E-waste? (Difficulty: 6-7)
• Testing the Accuracy of Eyewitness Testimony (Difficulty: 7)
• Gamers: Myth or Man? (Difficulty: 7-8)

This week, a team of astronomers at the Keck Observatory announced the discovery of Gliese 581g, a planet orbiting Gliese 581, a red dwarf star twenty light years away (and part of the constellation Libra). Gliese 581g is one of six planets that have been detected around this star, but it is the first that seems to "fit" the requirements for life, which led Steven Vogt to term it the "Goldilocks planet."

Vogt, one of the leads on the team that discovered Gliese 581g, is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz and a member of the Science Buddies Advisory Board.

Goldilocks is "a well-worn analogy," said Vogt, "but in this case it fits. We had planets on both sides of the habitable zone—one too hot and one too cold—and now we have one in the middle that's just right."

Similar in size to the Earth, Gliese 851g is orbiting in the "habitable zone" around the star, a distance not too close and not too far away—a distance where liquid water could be found. Astronomers describe the planet as "potentially habitable," and one media account of the news included this headline: "Odds of Alien Life on Newly Spotted Exoplanet are '100 Percent' Says Its Discover."

According to reports, Gliese 581g has a nearly circular orbit of almost 37 days and a mass 3 to 4 times that of the Earth. According to Vogt, the increased mass potentially indicates that Gliese 581g has a rocky terrain—and enough gravity to anchor an atmosphere. The planet does not rotate, however, as the Earth does. Instead, it is "tidally locked" to the star. This means that one side of the planet is always in daylight and one side is always in darkness. This might also mean that the likelihood of life on the planet sits somewhere in the middle.

The Powerful Keck

Astronomers deem the discovery of Gliese 581g as "fast," but time and distance are relative when it comes to astronomy and astrophysics. The news of Gliese 581g emerges based on 11 years of observations at the Keck Observatory by a team of astronomers led by Vogt (University of California, Santa Cruz) and Paul Butler (Carnegie Institution of Washington D.C.).

Using the Keck's HIRES spectrometer, the team was monitoring changes in the radial velocity of Gliese 581, changes that can indicate the presence of an orbiting planet. The process is time consuming. "It's really hard to detect a planet like this," Vogt said. "Every time we measure the radial velocity, that's an evening on the telescope, and it took more than 200 observations with a precision of about 1.6 meters per second to detect this planet."

The team's radial velocity observations were balanced by night-to-night "brightness measurements" conducted by team members using robotic telescopes at Tennessee State University. The brightness studies offered a way to ensure the radio velocity changes were indicative of a new planet and not due to other star activity.
The Keck Observatory sits at the top of Hawaii's dormant Mauna Kea volcano where the twin Keck telescopes offer astronomers an unparalleled precision view into distant space. Standing over eight stories tall, and with primary mirrors that are 10 meters in diameter, these are the world's largest optical and infrared telescopes.

Student Exploration

Students interested in exploring the use of sophisticated astronomy equipment to make observations may find the following Science Buddies project ideas illuminating:

• Using the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory Satellite (SOHO) to Measure the Motion of a Coronal Mass Ejection (Difficulty: 7-9)
• Using the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory Satellite (SOHO) to Determine the Rotation of the Sun (Difficulty: 7)

Or, to really get down to the nitty-gritty of what's involved, start from the ground up and build your own telescope (Difficulty: 9-10).

Official Keck announcement: http://keckobservatory.org/news/keck_observatory_discovers_the_first_goldilocks_exoplanet/