Larry Scheckel

QUESTION:

How are volcanoes formed?

ANSWER: 

The Earth’s surface consists for huge plates that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.  These plates float on a liquid-like layer called the mantle. These large tectonic plates are in very slow but constant motion. Sometimes these plates move toward each other and sometimes they’re moving apart. The friction causes earthquakes and volcanic eruptions near the edges of the plates.

Periodically, a tectonic plate will sink down into the mantle layer and become so hot that the rock melts. Scientists call this material magma. This molten rock eventually makes it way to the surface through cracks.  When it reaches the surface, we call it lava. When layer after lava builds up a volcano is formed.

There are various types of volcanoes, depending on what kinds of material make up the lava, the amount of gas trapped in the lava, and how much pressure builds up. When the molten rock moves to the surface through the Earth’s crust, and releases the pent-up gases, volcanoes erupt.

Volcanoes occur most often at plate boundaries. The most common is the Ring of Fire, a horseshoe shaped string stretching from the western side of South America, western side of North America, across the Bering Sea, down to Japan, Philippines, and into Southeast Asia. This Ring of Fire contains about two-thirds of the active volcanoes today.

The most active volcano in the world is Kilauea in Hawaii. It’s a great tourist attraction with a beautiful Visitor Center.  Adventurous souls can walk over the hot lava ‘till their soles get start to melt and also watch lava fall into the Pacific Ocean. Kilauea, inside Volcano National Park, has been in constant eruption since 1983.

There are more than 1500 active volcanoes on Earth. The one we are most familiar is Mt. St. Helens, in southwest Washington State, that erupted on Sunday, May 18, 1980 killing 57 people. Good portions of Washington and Oregon were covered with ash. Esquire Magazine named Mt. St. Helens  “ash hole of the year”.

Mt. St. Helens has two do-not-miss attractions. The Forest Learning Center has an unforgettable “eruption chamber”, life-like forests, beautiful views of the mountain, and many exhibits.

The Johnson Ridge Observatory, open only during the summer months, has a big-screen movie presentation.  When finished, the curtains open and the visitors enjoys a spectacular view of Mt. St. Helens.  David Johnson, a volcanologist, was camped out on this ridge when the volcano blew. His final words were “Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it”. His body has never been found. The Johnson Ridge Observatory is named in his honor.

QUESTION:

Why do you get pink colors when you put a garden hose inside a copper pipe and put the pipe in a campfire?

ANSWER:

Yes, a campfire is magical and mesmerizing, with the coals glowing and flames flickering, and sparks popping and showering. There is something very primeval in that fire. Perhaps it goes back to our ancestors, where fire was their only source of warmth and cooking food.

Campfire lovers have been known to take a short length of copper pipe, perhaps 12 to 18 inches long, and drill several quarter-inch holes every 2 or 3 inches on all sides of the pipe. They then insert an old garden hose into the pipe. A hose should be just a little bit smaller in diameter than the pipe. The cheap vinyl hoses seem to work best, rather than the more expensive rubber kind. Toss the assembled copper pipe and inserted garden hose into the fire.

The vinyl hoses contain PVC (poly vinyl chloride), and chlorine reacts with the copper pipe to form copper chloride. You get some blues and green flames from the reaction. Lithium chloride will produce pink flames, and strontium chloride red flames.

To enhance the campfire experience, a real romantic might want to play “Waltz of the Flowers” from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite.

Stay upwind of the campfire. Do not inhale the fire’s smoke. One never knows all the chemicals that are in that stuff.

Some campfire enthusiasts with make little wax patties with various embedded chemicals. Put a small amount of chemical (quarter inch) into a Dixie cup. Pour melted candle wax into the Dixie cup to just cover the chemical. Quickly stir to get the chemical mixed in with the wax. Let the stuff cool and harden, then peel off the sides of the paper cup. The wax patty is ready to toss into the campfire.
Copper sulfate can be found in swimming pool supplies. Borax, calcium chloride, and Epsom salts can be obtained in cleaning and laundry supplies.

Copper sulfate will yield a green color. Borax will supply a light green color. Calcium chloride delivers a blue hue, and Epson salts generate a white color. Sodium chloride is just regular table sale and will produce a gorgeous orange flame.

Where do the colors come from? There is some neat physics and chemistry here. Let’s take copper. When copper is heated, the atoms are excited. That means that the electrons go to orbits further away from the nucleus and to higher energy states. When the electron returns rapidly to its ground, home, or steady state, the orbit is was in before being “excited”, the atom emits a piece of energy in the form of a photon, a little particle of light. In the case of copper, the level of return corresponds to green light.

It is a beautiful world we live in, and a basic understanding of light, color, atoms, and energy makes it even more beauteous!

QUESTION:

December 21 is the shortest day of the year, but why don’t the earliest sunsets or latest sunrises of the year coincide with that date?

ANSWER:

Ah, what a keen observer you are! The common wisdom is that June 21, the summer solstice, is the longest day of the year and that December 21, the winter solstice,  is the shortest day of the year. And that is true.

To get the shortest possible day (daylight), we want a late sunrise and early sunset. The dates of latest sunrise and earliest sunset depends on latitude. Here’s what happens in Tomah, Wisconsin. The latest sunrise is January 3  at 7:37 AM. The earlier sunset is  December 9 at about 4:24 PM.

Up to December 9, the sunrise gets later and sunsets earlier, so the days shorten. From December 9 to December 21, sunsets get later, and sunrises also get later, but advances faster than sunset, so  days continue to get shorter.

From December 21, the solstice, to January 3, both sunrise and sunset continue to get later, but sunset advances faster, so the days get longer. After January 3, sunrise is earlier and sunset is later, so each day is longer. December 21 (sometimes December 22) remains the shortest day of the year, with about 9 hours of daylight and 15 hours of darkness.

Why aren’t the latest sunrise and earliest sunset on the same day, namely December 21, the winter solstice?

Two factors are involved. First, the Earth’s axis is tilted 23.5 degrees with respect to its plane of orbit around the sun. Second, the Earth’s orbit around the sun is not a perfect circle, but rather an ellipse or oval shape.  It is the first, the tilt thing, that is most important.

The time of day when the sun gets to its highest point  in the sky is called solar noon and the time from one solar noon to the next one is called the solar day. The length of the solar day is not constant through the year. Around the winter and summer solstices (Dec 21 and June 21), it is a tad more than 24 hours and near the spring and fall equinoxes (Mar 21 and Sept 21), it is slightly less than 24 hours.

The length of the solar day is determined mostly by the rotation of the Earth on its axis, and a little bit by its revolution around the sun.

We don’t like to tell time using solar days, because we want every day to be the same, exactly 24 hours. So our clocks don’t run on solar time. Our clocks average out the variations in the solar day, making every day the same length, and so out clocks don’t agree with the solar day.

Solar noon rarely occurs exactly at clock noon. During the winter solstice, solar noon occurs at a slightly later time each day because the solar day is slightly more than 24 hours. So when we talk about “earliest sunset”, we mean earliest according to our constantly running clocks. The difference between clock time and solar time create the phenomenon.  If sundials were used to tell time, the latest sunrise and earliest sunset would occur on December 21, the winter solstice.

Question from kid in 4th grade at Wyeville Elementary School

What is meant by the sixth dimension and how that fit into Black Holes?

ANSWER:

            Modern science is composed of two theories that are seemingly incompatible. One theory, general relativity, championed by Albert Einstein, explains how big things work, like planets and galaxies. The other theory, quantum mechanics, successfully explains things that are very small, like atoms and subatomic particles. And there is a lot of  incompatibly between these two theories.

            Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is really an extension of Isaac Newton’s concept of how the world works. All the laws of nature, mass, energy, and motion that you and I experience in everyday life are explained by Newton’s Three Laws. Albert Einstein extended Newton’s Laws to things that move very fast, like close to the speed of light.            

            Einstein tried to find a single theory that would embrace all of nature’s laws; a single theory that would marry relativity, used on the astronomical level,  to quantum mechanics, used at the atomic level. Einstein spent 40 years trying, but was not successful. Discovering a single unifying theory, a single master equation, is today’s Holy Grail of science.

            Now, the talk is all about something called  “string theory”, sometimes referred as the “Theory of Everything”. These scientists are discussing eleven dimensions and parallel universes. Strings are tiny bits of energy, vibrating like strings on a guitar.

            The first three dimensions are length, width, and depth. The fourth dimension is space, the fifth dimension is time. Six dimensional space has six degrees of freedom, and uses six coordinates or points to specify a location in space. Three of these dimensions are translational along an x, y, and z coordinates and the other three are sets of rotations.

            There does happen to be a real life example of six dimensions. NASA has a spacesuit that an astronaut could fit into, and can operate outside the Space Shuttle.  This  MMU (Manned Maneuvering Unit) allowed an astronaut to move in all axis or degrees of freedom;  side to side, right to left, up and down, pitch, roll, and yaw. The astronaut is said to move in all six dimensions.

            No one really knows how many dimensions make up the universe. It is a very exciting field of research. Black holes may provide clues to aid astronomers in determining the number of dimensions that make up the universe. The extremely strong gravitational field of a black hole complicates the issue. Inside a black hole, time becomes a dimension, giving rise to the four dimensional term “space-time”.

            PBS has a three-part series called “The Elegant Universe” with author and physicist Brian Greene.  PBS also has four-part series called “The Fabric of the Cosmos” that is excellent and does a nice job of trying to explain some of these obtuse and very complex ideas.

            We’re never really sure what will be the outcome of all this research. In the 1920’s, there was lots of speculation on the value of quantum mechanics. “What good is it?” was a frequent question. It turns out that all modern electronics, smart phones,  flat screen television, GPS, lasers, microcircuits, LED’s, all came about because of the research used quantum theory. 

Two book signings this month. First on Dec 1 at Burnstad’s Holiday Extravaganza, and another on Monday Dec 12 for the retired teachers of Monroe County. Its been a quiet week here in Lake Tomah, paraphrasing Garrison Keiller. No snow here in Tomah, Wisconsin so far this season. I do like snow, ’cause  I took up cross-country skiing last winter, the first winter I was retired from teaching. Like to go up to Milliston to the Black River State Forest. They do an excellent job of grooming the trails. I bouoght a season pass. Went about 8 times last winter.  Got the Christmas decorations up around the house. We do a modest amount. Our whole row of 6 houses are very beautiful. Invite you to drive by and see them.

QUESTION:

How many women have won the Nobel Prize?

ANSWER:

            The Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiology/Medicine, Literature, and Economic Science are awarded annually in Stockholm by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science. The more famous  Nobel Peace Prize  is awarded annually in Oslo, Norway on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death. The King and Queen of Norway attend.

            Four women have earned the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the best known is Maria Curie in 1911 for the separation of pure radium. Her daughter won the Chemistry Prize in 1935 for the discovery of artificial radioactivity.

            Two women won the Nobel Prize in Physics, again it was Maria Curie in 1903 for the discovery of radioactivity. The other was Maria Goeppert Mayer (1963).

            Ten women won the Nobel Prize in the field of Physiology and Medicine. Best known would be Rosalyn Yalow (1977) for her work radioisotope  tracing and  Barbara McClintock (1983) for her efforts in genetics.

            Pearl Buck is one of twelve  women awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her 1938 Nobel Prize cited  her “rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China”. Her best known book is “The Good Earth”, which also won the Pulitzer Prize.

            The first and only woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences is Elinor Ostrom (2009) “for her analysis of how common property could be managed by groups using it”. 

            Fifteen women have won the Nobel Peace Prize. The most recognized would be  Jane Addams(1931) founder of Hull House in Chicago and  Mother Teresa(1979), a native Albanian nun who founded missions in India, starting in Calcutta.   

            There is one woman that history now recognizes really got cheated out of a Nobel Prize. That would be Lise Meitner. Born in Austria in 1878, Meitner was half of the team that discovered nuclear fission. Meitner and Otto Hahn worked together at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, Germany. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Lise Meitner, born of Jewish parents, was protected by her Austrian citizenship. But after the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria into the Third Reich in March 1938, her situation became desperate. She made a daring undercover escape to the Netherlands, then traveled to neutral Sweden.

            She corresponded with Otto Hahn and the two met in Copenhagen in November 1938. They planned to carry out a new round of experiments on the fissioning of uranium, but Meitner could not go back to Nazi Germany, so the experiments were done by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann.

            It was Lise Meitner and her nephew, Otto Frisch, who correctly interpreted the results of the experiment that detected the element of barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons.  Now the whole world knew that the uranium atom could be split, with a tremendous release of power,  and several neutrons released.  A chain reaction and the atomic bomb was possible. Otto Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1944. Missing was Lise Meitner. The leading magazine “Physics Today” concluded in 1964 that  “personal negative opinions lead to the exclusion of a deserving scientist” from the Nobel Prize.  Element 109,  ‘Meitnerium’,  is named in her honor.

QUESTION:

What is the Turing Test?

ANSWER:

During WW II, the Germans had a top secret code machine called Enigma, that looked like a typewriter in a wooden box,  had rotors that turned on spindles, and one or more of those rotors would turn with each key press.

Most of the German military message traffic was encrypted on the Enigma machines.  They considered  Enigma to be unbreakable. The British set up a 55 acre estate outside of London, called Bletchley Park, to prove them wrong. The intelligence produced by breaking the German code was termed “Ultra”.

The British and Americans knew virtually all the troop movements, U-boat strategies, and aircraft movements during the war. Ultra led to the defeat of Rommel in North African. Just before the D-Day landings in June, 1944, the Allies knew the location of 56 of the 58 German divisions on the Western front. The “main man” working at Bletchley Park was the mathematician,  Alan Turning.

In 1950, Turning proposed a test to see if a machine (computer)  could think and learn like a human. The test went something like this. A person engages in a natural language conversation with the machine. All participants are separated from each other. If the person cannot tell the machine from another human, the machines is said to have passed the Turing test.

Since 1950, the Turing test has been constantly brought up in the discussion of artificial intelligence. It has also been widely criticized. In order to exhibit intelligent behavior, the machine or computer must be able to learn,  which means it must be able to change or modify its responses based on new information. It must be able to capture information, sift through it, and improve its response. That is what humans do.

Turing later proposed a test known as the Imitation Game. A man and woman go into separate rooms and guests try to tell them apart by writing a series of questions and reading the typewritten answers sent back. Both the man and woman try to convince the guests they are the other.

ELIZA  and  CAPTCHA are more modern natural language computer programs that  aim to distinguish humans from computers.

Alan Turing died in 1952 from cyanide poisoning  just short of his 42nd birthday. The year 2012 is the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing’s birth. The “father of computer science” will be honored at Bletchley Park and Cambridge, England.

The cult classic science fiction movie “Blade Runner” starring Harrison Ford, which came out in 1982, depicts the Voight-Kampff  test to distinguish humans from replicants. These bio-engineered robots have escaped and come back to Earth illegally.

The replicants are supposed to have a four year life, but they’re trying to extend it. Wanting to live longer? Seems very human to me!

ASK YOUR SCIENCE TEACHER                 by Larry Scheckel

This week’s question was asked by: 

QUESTION:

Do horses sleep standing up?

ANSWER:

This question was a source of endless argument  for the three Scheckel brothers growing up on that Crawford County farm outside of Seneca. We never did come to any definitive conclusion. We even snuck out of the house one summer night and went to the barn where Dolly, Prince, and Lightning were standing in their stalls. We couldn’t figure out if they were sleeping or not sleeping.

Therefore, I  finally got this answer straight from the veterinarian’s mouth.  Dr. Steven Doll is an expert on horses. Dr. Doll says that horses have a suspensory ligament apparatus in the lower leg that locks up.  Their legs can lock in place, enabling them to fall asleep without falling over. So, it turns out that horses do sleep standing up and horses also sleep lying down.

Historically, horses were prey for wildcats, lynx, and mountain lions, and did not feel  safe sleeping on the ground. Most of their sleeping was done during the day rather than at night, when predators were out hunting. Horses have straight backs, so they cannot get up quickly. If an enemy mountain lion were to come along while on the ground, the horse  might not be able to get up fast enough to make an escape.

In the wild, horses only lie down in a herd and a select few will opt to remain upright. It is their defense designed to protect the herd from predators.  Horses are at their “weak” moment and are vulnerable to attack.

When the horse is standing still, it is able to relax such that there is little fatigue. Except for a few minutes each day when it is in deep sleep, the horse can remain upright. If necessary, it can remain upright for several days before it lies down. It can “rest” in the upright position because of the ‘stay mechanism” of the forelegs and hind legs. The joints are locked in position by a system of muscles and ligaments.
Horses  are not able to lie down for long periods of time. Rib cages only allow so much pressure for any amount of time. Average lying-down time for a horse is about  30 minutes.
Horses do occasionally take short naps lying down during the day. This helps them to rest their legs. You can sometimes find a horse stretched out on its side, asleep in the sun, or lying on the ground with its legs folded under.

A ligament is a strong flexible connective tissue that joins bone to bone. They are parallel bundles of collagen fibers. We humans have something akin to the horse.  We humans have a suspensory ligament  that holds the lens in the correct place in our eye.

Dr. Doll warns that a sleeping horse should not be disturbed.  A startled horse may kick.