Science In Daily Life

The Invention Of The Atomic Clocks - Louis Essen was born in 1908 in a small city in England called Nottingham. His childhood was typical of the time and he pursued his education with enjoyment and dedication. At the age of 20 Louis graduated from the University of Nottingham, where he had been studying. It was at this time that his career started to take off, as he was invited to join the NPL, or National Physics Laboratory. It was during Louis’s time at the NPL that he began working to develop a quartz crystal oscillator as he believed they were capable of measuring time as accurately as a pendulum based clock. Ten years after joining the NPL Louis had invented the Essen ring. This was an eponymous invention which took its name from the shape of the quartz which Louis had used in his latest clock and which was three times more accurate than the previous versions. Louis soon moved on to newer areas of research and began to study ways to measure the speed of light. During World War II...

The Invention of Television - The transmission of images obsessed inventors as early as 1875 when George Carey of Boston proposed his cumbersome system. Only five years later, the principle of scanning a picture, line by line and frame by frame - still used in modern television sets - was proposed simultaneously in the USA (by W.E. Sawyer) and in France (by Maurice Leblanc). The first complete television system - using the newly discovered properties of selenium - was patented in Germany in 1884, by Paul Nipkow. Boris Rosing of Russia actually transmitted images in 1907. The idea to incorporated cathode -ray tubes was proposed in 1911 by a Scottish engineer, Campbell Swinton.  Another Scot, John Logie Baird, beat American inventor C.F. Jenkins to the mark by giving the first public demonstration of - a dim and badly flickering - television in 1926 in Soho, London. Britain commenced experimental broadcasting almost immediately thereafter. Irish actress Peggy O'Neil was the first to...

The Interesting Eagle Nebula - The Eagle Nebula, associated with open star cluster M16 of the Milky Way, was named for its dramatic similarity to the appearance of an eagle.  Located 7000 light years from Earth, it is a component of the constellation Serpens (for Serpent).  It was discovered in 1746 by P.L. de Cheseaux but it was not until twenty years later that the famous astronomer Charles Messier discovered it nebulosity.  Not naked to the naked eye, it can be seen under the power of a low-to-moderate power telescope. The Eagle Nebula is what is categorized as an emission nebula.  An emission nebula is created when electrons are stripped away from molecules through the process of ionization and then recombine with protons emitting quanta of light.  Usually the photons emitted lie in the red end of the spectrum creating a red-looking nebula.  This is largely true for the Eagle Nebula with much of its glory being due to a brilliant display of red colors ...

The History of Calendars - Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7. Their "old new year" is a week later, on January 14. It is all Julius Caesar's fault ... The Romans sometimes neglected to introduce an extra month every two years to amortize the difference between their lunar calendar and the natural solar year. Julius Caesar decreed that the year 46 BC should have 445 days (some historians implausibly say: 443 days) in order to bridge the yawning discrepancy that accumulated over the preceding seven centuries. It was aptly titled the "Year of Confusion".  To "reset" the calendar, Julius Caesar affixed the New Year on January 1 (the day the Senate traditionally convened) and added a day or two to a few months.  He thus gave rise to the Julian Calendar, a latter day rendition of the Aristarchus calendar from 239 BC. After his assassination, the month of Quintilis was renamed Julius (July) in his honor. The Julian calendar estimated the l...

The Fourth Law (of Robotics) - The movie "I, Robot" is a muddled affair. It relies on shoddy pseudo-science and a general sense of unease that artificial (non-carbon based) intelligent life forms seem to provoke in us. But it goes no deeper than a comic book treatment of the important themes that it broaches. I, Robot is just another - and relatively inferior - entry is a long line of far better movies, such as "Blade Runner" and "Artificial Intelligence". Sigmund Freud said that we have an uncanny reaction to the inanimate. This is probably because we know that – pretensions and layers of philosophizing aside – we are nothing but recursive, self aware, introspective, conscious machines. Special machines, no doubt, but machines all the same. Consider the James bond movies. They constitute a decades-spanning gallery of human paranoia. Villains change: communists, neo-Nazis, media moguls. But one kind of villain is a fixture in this psychodrama, in this par...

The Fossil Record And Creation Science - The Fossil Record And Creation Science - Young earth creationists commonly point to the fossil record in order to support their position. In one instance, the article "The Fossil Record: Becoming More Random All the Time" by John Woodmorappe, has some very good points to it (Footnote 1). Read it if you like, (its a long one), but you don't have to much farther than the abstract to see problems. Actually, some are problems, and some are deceptions. The abstract states that "The reality of the geologic column is predicated on the belief that fossils have restricted ranges in rock strata." Of course it is...this has been the "reality" all along. His wording makes it sound as if the geologist has been up to some deceit...but this is not the case. He goes on to claim, "as more and more fossils are found, the ranges of fossils keep increasing." Welcome to the world of science! This is nothing new. As new di...

The Energy Waste Dilemma - With the price of gasoline on the upswing(again, April 20, 06), there seems to be little sign that we Americans are at least trying to conserve fuel, though there are pockets of concerned groups that are making their voice heard, mainly against Oil Company price gouging. At the same time the automotive advertising media seems to be pushing the higher gas consumption Suv's and cars. Granted, along with trucks, etc., these are the prime fossil fuel guzzlers, but they are by no means the only culprit for our increasing fuel dependency, be it fossil or renewable.    With all due respect to mr. Edison, inventor of our non-directly fueled commercial lighting system, which was design for practicality and therefore efficiency at the time had not been entered into the  picture. The goal was only to provide a method of supplying the world with inexpensive, widely available commercial lighting. From this gigantic effort, we know, the incandescent light bu...