A Prodigious and Rapidly Expelled Purge

This morning, I was listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson's Stark Talk Radio Show as I was driving to the YMCA. One of the topics Tyson and his panel (active astronaut Mike Massimino and comedian Chuck Nice) discussed was farting in space. Now this is something I knew was possible once I heard it, but I'd never thought about it--it turns out you can propel yourself across the International Space Station by farting!

How you may ask? Well via Newton's Third Law of course! Every action has an equal and opposite reaction; ergo, by ejecting gas (an action) with an X amount of force, you can accelerate your body (a mass) with the ejection's reaction. That's exactly how rockets and balloons work! Think about it. Rockets expel gas at high velocity out one direction so that they can go up at a high velocity in the other direction! However, because a rocket is so huge and a gas molecule so small, rockets use up a lot of gas to move. Note that non-chemical rockets, such as VASIMR, do not face this problem since they do not use chemical reactions for power. I'll explain why tomorrow!

Return from Johnson Space Center

Last week I went to Johnson Space Center as a part of the Texas High School Aerospace Scholars Program, and it was wicked to say the least. However, probably the best part of the entire experience was listening to Norman Chaffee, who helped engineer on the Apollo Service Module, as he gave us a guided tour of the Saturn V rocket at JSC. Put simply, learning about the world's most powerful rocket by a man who helped design it was nerdgasmic. 

At any rate, one of the interesting tidbits of info Mr. Chaffee shared with us concerned the microgravity problems faced by the engineers of the Saturn V's upper stages. Once the first and second stages had lodged the rocket into earth orbit (and thus freefall), the liquid hydrogen fuel of the third stage would begin to slosh around and form into spheres (due to surface tension)--this posed a big problem as the engines of the third stage could not use empty space. Ergo, engineers attached small rockets (which probably used solid fuel) to nudge the entire stage forward, which would then force the "floating" hydrogen into the engine (by moving the fuel tank forward instead of the hydrogen back). Kinda cool, huh?

By the way, you know how in the Apollo launch videos the discarded rocket stages suddenly catch fire a couple seconds after jettison? Thanks to Norman Chaffee, I now know why! First off, each stage of the Saturn V rocket (including the Launch Escape System) was separated pyrotechnically (hence the sparks at 0:23 of the staging video). Second, hydrogen burns clear. As a result, you don't see a flame during Apollo staging, but you do see the previous stage burning up for a second before it escapes the heat of the invisible hydrogen flame.

(Bonus: the workers on the barges that transported the hydrogen fuel to Kennedy had to walk around waving brooms in front of themselves just so they didn't walk into an invisible flame.)

To sum it up, the Saturn V rocks, Norman Chaffee is a badass, and NASA kicks ass!

A Bond Too Far

This is a story I wrote for extra-credit in Chemistry, but I thought it would do well in a science blog as well.

A Bond Too Far

Lithium and Oxygen, two elements who thought they’d be together forever, were being transported to an HP battery manufacturing plant. The two lovers were transferring their last electrons through ionic bonding when a scooper picked up the lithium oxide (Li₂O) couple and threw them into a furnace. At first, the furnace was cool and isolated; but soon, the temperature started to rise and the air began to glow dry. The hot climate was too much for oxygen; and so, the couple was forever split.

Oxygen, now broken hearted, floated in the air as she desperately watched the conveyor belt take her lithium husband away. Suddenly, she realized that she was not alone. Millions of other oxygen particles like her were watching their husbands go away. Oxygen, in a desperate attempt to find a partner for consolation, covalently double bonded with another oxygen molecule. Although the last-minute partner ship quelled electronegative love, it could never replace the ionic relationship Oxygen shared with Lithium. Finally, the convection current pushed the oxygen couples into the air—Oxygen thought she’d never see Lithium again.

Lithium, now desperate for any companionship, looked around in vain only to see other lithium widowers. He did not want to be with them; fortunately for Lithium, he had been selected not for a lithium ion battery, but for a Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. Thus, Lithium was separated once more and led to an isolated, dim, and cozy chamber. Suddenly, a flirtatious fluorine atom seductively made her way towards Lithium…

“Hey there, handsome. Are you alone?”

“No!” Lithium cried as he remembered his oxygenated past.

“Are you sure you don’t want to bond with me?” Fluorine question as she pulled Lithium ever closer to her electronegative bosom.

“Yeeees—er I mean NO!” Lithium  exclaimed as his valence shell rose to a higher energy level, unable to resist the bond that could be.

“You know you want me Lithium—you can’t resist,” Fluorine whispered as she moved ever closer before forming the ultimate electronegative bond with Lithium.

Their bond consummate, Lithium and Fluorine, now pronounced Lithium Fluoride, were transported to a LFTR reactor. However, the plane shuttling the couple flew consumed a certain oxygen molecule. As Oxygen was sucked into the giant turbojet engines, she saw Lithium Fluoride. Heartbroken, she combusted into a charred vapor with the fuel—forever alone. 

AP Dread

Friday I found out that this year's AP scores are officially in the mail; in fact, a couple of my friends had already received their scores! Now this year was a pretty big year for me AP-wise. Last year I, the kid who read Wikipedia articles on ancient and medieval history while waiting for programs to download, had gotten a 4 on the World History exam. Suffice to say, that 4 hurt, and I did not want to feel that pain ever again. Thus, I set a goal to get a 5 on each of my five AP exams (I kept repeating to myself "Five AP exams, 5 fives!" every time I prayed/meditated). Well tomorrow's the day of truth, and I'm nervous...

Alas, come what may, I must say I thoroughly enjoyed my AP courses. English III was an eye-opening class in terms of rhetoric, and my teacher really helped me out throughout the year in a lot of ways (thanks Ms. Stelly!). Computer science also opened my eyes, for I will never complain about software developers ever again! However, AP Chemistry was by far the coolest class I took this year. Furthermore, since this is a science blog, I thought I’d share the rather odd Iranian cultural oddity I discovered in my chemistry class.

One of the fundamental concepts in chemistry is that of solubility, or how many moles of something, a solute, get dissolved into Xliters of something else, a solvent (usually water). Additionally, if you want a solvent to dissolve more solute than“normal”, then you’d have to raise the temperature of the solvent. A higher temperature, or average kinetic (moving) energy, means faster moving molecules that can disassociate (dissolve) easier. The opposite is true for gases. Raising the temperature of a solvent when trying to “dissolve” a gas would not increase solubility since the gas would actually evaporate away thanks to the higher temperature (think of the CO₂ in cold coca-cola vs. that of hot coke).

            Today, I was making sour cherry juice when I remembered the counterintuitive way Iranians serve sour cherry juice. Sour cherry juice is a refreshing drink popularly served during the summer in Iran. Hosts/Hostesses pour sour cherry concentrate into ice-cold water and serve the undisturbed liquid to the guests—leaving the stirring to the guests. Now from a human perspective, everything makes sense: it’s hot, and you need something cold to drink, but from a chemical perspective, the whole thing is rather stupid. Why would create a solution with cold water when your solute is a liquid? THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE! The chemically-correct way would be to mix the concentrate into hot water, mix, and let the solution cool to room temperature before throwing in a couple of ice cubes when the host/hostess wants to serve the drink. The guests then don’t have to stir as much.

TL;DR: Iranians are counterintuitive when it comes to serving drinks. They force a cold solvent into dissolving a solute by raising the average kinetic energy of the molecules via stirring.

tan(philosophy)

Although this blog is mainly about science & math, today I want to go off on a philosophical tangent--I mean I don't call myself a polymath for nothing...

Last night, with the snaps, crackles, and pops of fireworks as whitenoise, I was busy reading Marcus Aurelius' Meditations (he's the wise old Roman emperor from Gladiator). At any rate, I came upon this rather confusing sentence,

"But if you won't keep track of what your own soul's doing, how can you not be unhappy?"

-wait whaaat?

I tried reading it in parts, "if you don't listen to your own soul" then  "how can you not be un-happy," but I still didn't get it, so I tried again, albeit with computer science!

if( !(listen to yourself) )
     you=unhappy;

-But that godforsaken"how" was still confusing me! Thus, I decided to combine computer science with math (computer science is not my forte).

f(x)=un
f(happy)=un-happy
"But if you won't keep track of what your own soul's doing"=if you ignore yourself
"how can you not be"=you're gonna be

With this in mind, I went at it again...

"If you ignore yourself
then
your gonna be f(happy)"

which is equivalent to

"If you ignore yourself
then
your gonna be un-happy"

Alas, I still didn't get it (it had been a slow day), so I substituted a synonym for "un-happy" via the transitive property and presto!

"If you ignore yourself..."
then
your gonna feel like crap."

Wise words Mr. Aurelius.

System.out.println("Hello World!");

Wassup!?! I still working out the kinks for this blog, but I'm trying to turn it into a kind of science/math/cool things blog. Wish me luck!