Poorna Katha

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Posts tagged with "science"

Dec 16
This is just Wonnnderful! sciencecenter: A squared plus B squared equal C squared!

This is just Wonnnderful!

sciencecenter:

A squared plus B squared equal C squared!

(Source: ForGIFs.com)

Reblogged 5 months ago from sciencecenter

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87,159 notes

science, school,

Oct 24

One mole of salt grains

Did the idea of a mole ever confuse you in school? The definition doesn’t help - “..amount of a substance that contains the same number of elemental particles as 12 gms of Carbon-12”

Say whut?

It took me a while to understand that a mole was just a number, no dimensions. And a little while later, I realised the wonderful, mind blowing idea behind it. It was so comprehensively buried! Because, when you think about it, what the idea of a ‘mole’ is saying is that the weight of atoms comes from protons and neutrons.

No matter how different Uranium is from Oxygen, the weight of each comes from the same subatomic particles. What an insight! Especially at a time when people believed that the atom was indivisible.

Read More

Posted 7 months ago

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chemistry, science, mole day,

Oct 24

A day late, but still, Avogadro/Mole day is still happening in some part of the world.

sciencecenter:

jtotheizzoe:

It’s National Mole Day!

You guys didn’t think I was going to let National Mole Day slip by, did you?

That’s right, it’s 10/23 … the day we pay homage to Amedeo Avogadro and his enormous number. The mole is an important concept in many scientific fields, but to be honest it’s almost impossible to wrap your head around the scale of it. Our feeble minds are not made to understand things like that (Also see: number of stars, grains of sand on beach, size of an atom).

This video will give you plenty of silly examples of just how big a number with twenty-three zeros really is. I especially like the marshmallow example. I want to live on that planet. Mmmmm … trillions of tons of s’mores!

Here’s 6.022 x 1023 high-fives and platonic hugs for all of my wonderful readers!!

(via The Atlantic)

I celebrated mole day this year at my college by handing out guacaMOLE and MOLEasses cookies. How did you celebrate?

Reblogged 7 months ago from sciencecenter

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251 notes

science,

Oct 19

We were on a trip to the planetarium with a bunch of class 5 students today. We get them to walk in pairs so that there is some kind of order and there is a simple way of ensuring that no one gets left behind. One of them had come to the planetarium many times earlier, so she was comfortable with the place. And kept wandering off from the group. I couldn’t keep quiet, of course, so I asked in a non-threatening way,

“Kiddo, why are you walking off by yourself?”

She threw up her ten-year-old hands, looked resigned, and said,

“Who knows”

A philosopher in the making?

Posted 7 months ago

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school, kids are awesome, science,

Aug 8

Water yarns

“If the water in a glass evaporates, can you never get it back? It is gone forever into the air?”

“No da, someone else can get it as rain”

“If rain water mostly comes from the sea, why is it not salty?”

“Can you drink rain water?”

“If you catch it in a bucket, won’t the bucket be dirty?”

“I usually just run out with my tongue out. I don’t need to find a bucket to fill up with water then”

“If our body is 70% water, how come we are not a puddle?”

“What will happen when you filter salt water? Is it still salty?”

“Why is sea water salty?”

“Because of rocks and sand and all go into the sea. Rocks are salty”

Posted 9 months ago

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science, school, kids are awesome,

Jan 11

-

“We’ve known for years that the Central Dogma, though basically correct, is overly simplistic. For example: Pieces of microRNA that don’t code for anything, pizza or otherwise, can travel among cells and influence their activities in many other ways. So while the DNA is ordering pizza, it’s also bombarding the pizzeria with unrelated RNA messages that can cancel a cheese delivery, pay the dishwasher nine million dollars, or email the secret sauce recipe to WikiLeaks.”

The Very Real Danger of Genetically Modified Foods (via outofcontextscience)

Reblogged 1 year ago from outofcontextscience

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33 notes

science,

Dec 31

Recursion

Logic like a benzene ring - a snake seizing its own tail - I do love you so

“You could lie there in the scanner and watch your brain light up. Then you could watch your brain light up some more in response to seeing your brain light up…”

From here

Posted 1 year ago

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1 note

science,

Dec 7

One tiny cell undergoing cell death

Oh.my.god.

SO.cool.

Click on the title! Go go go gooo

Posted 1 year ago

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science, photography, awesomeness,

Dec 6
Move over science fiction. Aliens are here among us sciencecenter: Embryonic turtles communicate to coordinate when they hatch Murray River turtles communicate with their siblings while they are still in their shells, buried under the soil, in order to coordinate when they hatch. Achieving this synchronicity isn’t easy. Although the eggs are always laid at the same time in the same nest, those at the top of the nest near the sun-drenched soil develop much faster than those buried deeper in the cooler soil. However, Murray River turtles are able to tell whether their fellow hatchlings are more or less advanced and adapt their pace of development accordingly, allowing the slow-coaches to play catch-up. [..] The team concluded that the embryos must be able to communicate with each other while they are still in their shells, but it’s not clear how. They suggest that it could be down to changes in the nest that trigger certain hormones that change the turtles’ metabolism. Embryos produce more thyroid hormone when oxygen levels fall. The fast-developing embryos could use up the oxygen levels around the next and emit more carbon dioxide. The reduction in oxygen could cause the slower developers to produce more thyroid hormone and therefore grow faster. I’m inspired. When’s the last time you put that much effort into cooperating with your siblings?

Move over science fiction. Aliens are here among us

sciencecenter:

Embryonic turtles communicate to coordinate when they hatch

Murray River turtles communicate with their siblings while they are still in their shells, buried under the soil, in order to coordinate when they hatch.

Achieving this synchronicity isn’t easy. Although the eggs are always laid at the same time in the same nest, those at the top of the nest near the sun-drenched soil develop much faster than those buried deeper in the cooler soil. However, Murray River turtles are able to tell whether their fellow hatchlings are more or less advanced and adapt their pace of development accordingly, allowing the slow-coaches to play catch-up. [..]

The team concluded that the embryos must be able to communicate with each other while they are still in their shells, but it’s not clear how. They suggest that it could be down to changes in the nest that trigger certain hormones that change the turtles’ metabolism. Embryos produce more thyroid hormone when oxygen levels fall. The fast-developing embryos could use up the oxygen levels around the next and emit more carbon dioxide. The reduction in oxygen could cause the slower developers to produce more thyroid hormone and therefore grow faster.

I’m inspired. When’s the last time you put that much effort into cooperating with your siblings?

Reblogged 1 year ago from sciencecenter

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science, reblogged,