Wecycle Project!

Tired of opening bottles the old fashioned way?

Say goodbye to busted teeth and those awkward stares from strangers by making your own recycled bike chain bottle opener!!

For this project you'll need an old bike chain, a bike chain cutter, a bike chain link set, and your favorite tasty bottled beverage!


Step 1: Get an old bike chain (be sure to clean it very well by using the right cleaners and let it soak for a few hours!!)

Step 2: Grab a chain cutting tool (if you don't have one go to your friendly neighborhood bike shop, they should have a few laying around!)

Step 3: Cut 12-16 links off your bike chain

Step 4: Admire your handiwork...very well done, good job you!

Step 5: Get your bike chain links

Step 6: Connect the two ends of the bike chain with your link

Step 7: Place on the bottle and pop-that-top!

Step 8: Enjoy your tasty bottled beverage!

What came first the chicken or the egg?

Science is the process by which we can ask and answer questions about our natural world.  Everything from your most routine activities all the way to the quest for our universe’s origins are fair game for the field of science!  So, let's put science to the test and answer an age-old question: What came first the chicken or the egg?

So without the egg there would be no chicken, right?  However, at the same time without the chicken would there be an egg?  Well, actually, yes there would be.   This is the story about the long and detailed process of evolution. Eggs are used by any species that sexually reproduces.  So to trace back the history of eggs we must look back at some of the earliest species that sexually reproduced.

First of all, some of the earliest eggs date all the way back to early sponges, literally hundreds of millions of years ago.   After millions upon millions of years of natural selection on mutations and variations an early avian species was produced, we’ll call this a “proto-bird”.  This early bird laid eggs that would, again after generation upon generation of natural selection, turn into a wide variety of bird species.

One of those bird species was what we could call a “proto-chicken”, meaning it was some variation of what we know as a chicken, but not exactly what we have available on Earth today.  Well, that “proto-chicken” laid eggs and eventually the species started to morph and change slowly due to natural selection and voila, an egg was laid that would hatch and give birth to what we now know as a chicken.  The egg allowed for the chicken to be born.

Now, why that chicken crossed the road is a whole different story all together...

A skyscraper made out of wood?!?

There are currently over seven billion humans on this planet.  As this population grows we'll need more and more homes for all these people.  With limited resources and a constant watch over our impact on the environment, a big question gets brought up frequently for future of residential construction…can we make housing more eco-friendly? 

As access to resources and the growing population enter a new era in the housing conversation, so will the creative minds in the engineering and architecture industries.  Sometimes these new issues require some old fashioned thinking.  That's exactly what Canadian architect Michael Green had in mind when he set out to design and build a 30 story skyscraper made out of wood.  Wait a minute, doesn't wood catch on fire?  Won't this be a big safety issue?  Well, wood does catch on fire, but throughout history various cultures have used wood as a means of shelter and clearly most of these individuals were able to survive.  With that said, Michael Green and his crew have built in several fire prevention techniques into the blue prints ranging from sprinkler systems to fire traps.  The remarkable part about the building is not its safety features, its something totally different. 

Generally making a large building like this would involve concrete construction.  The current process by which we put up buildings actually releases thousands of pounds of green house gases into the atmosphere.  This is where the wooden skyscraper stands apart!  The wood used for this construction spends its entire life soaking in green house gases where as the process of making concrete construction adds to our global climate issues.  This building is eco-friendly by simply using materials that don't add to the greenhouse gas emissions! 

For those worried about rotting wood and other natural issues that would make this building's longevity a concern, no worries, there are many wooden structures around the world that are thousands of years old.  In fact there is a pagoda in China that stands over 500 feet tall and has been up for over eight centuries now!  

Will these eco-friendly designs catch on?  Architects like Michael Green are knocking on wood and hoping they will! 

Cloaked Nano-particles

Everyone’s familiar with the old fable about the wolf in sheep’s clothing.   In this story a wolf dresses up like a sheep and sneaks past the farmer to go straight to his fluffy targets.  Well, a similar story is currently unfolding in the medical field and it could have a huge impact on cancer patients.  

Scientists are working on taking a nanoparticle and wrapping it in the outer membrane of a white blood cell in order to let it sneak past the watchful eye of the immune system.  As of now the immune system is able to detect foreign objects like nanoparticles and remove or destroy them within minutes.  Dressing the nanoparticle up to look like a white blood cell allows the immune system to let it pass into the bloodstream without much commotion.  These camouflaged medical deliveries could last in the body for up to hours at a time. Remarkably, these nanoparticles would go directly to the source of the malignant cells.  In other words, these nanoparticles can deliver specific types of drugs to specific cells.  In this instance the idea is that chemotherapy could be delivered straight to cancer cells only.

This would be a huge step forward in the medical field.  Currently the most commonly accepted form of cancer treatments involve a broad range treatment, meaning we have yet to isolate the treatment to only cancer cells.  These masked nanoparticles, in theory, would be able to go straight to the malignant cells and let the rest of the body system carry on as business per usual.

Research on this is continuing and hopefully more news will develop in the near future.

Pi

Science and math fans around the world have been celebrating Pi day for a while now. Pi is the 3.14 number that helps us understand circles, so what better day to celebrate than March 14? So, the question is what makes Pi so special?

From the wheels on your car to the orbit of distant stars in the cosmos are all put to paper using our old friend, Pi. These practical applications help determine the size, shape, volume, area, and circumference of circles. Imagine the Spalding basketball factory without Pi, we’d have some weirdly shaped basketballs…or whatever they’d be called. Pi’s use in our day to day lives surrounds these circular concepts, but wait, there’s so much more.

One of the amazing things about Pi is that it is an irrational number. Meaning, it goes on forever. The digits that comprise Pi take up more digits than some of the largest numbers we have, like the massive googolplex for example. In fact, in 2011 Pi was calculated out to over 10 trillion numbers! Mathematician Shigeru Kondo took 371 days to calculate Pi to 10,000,000,000,050 decimal places. Big stuff!

Here’s the kicker, when calculating all those trillions of digits for Pi, it was noticed that there are no repeating patterns in there. A truly random set of numbers strung together in an endless chain. What does one do with these large, endless, non-repeating numeric patterns? Those big computational issues come in handy for testing today’s supercomputers and their programming speeds.

So, from putting satellites in geosynchronous orbit, to testing super computers, to helping make that perfect pumpkin pie, Pi is an extremely well rounded number.

For more information check out the official Pi-Day page, but for a rock song about the number check out the video below.

A Sweet Way to Fuel the Future

What’s the future of fuel?  Well, there are many ideas that have been presented ranging from solar to wind to hydropower.  The growing energy needs of our planet will require some creative thinking and likely some ideas that don’t reside in the standard energy toolbox that we are accustom to today.  With that said, a sweet new idea has been brought to the table that involves using sugar to help fuel the world of tomorrow. 

An international group of researchers have been working with the US Department of Energy and have recently presented a very interesting idea on how sugar polymers could help provide a form of fuel that would work with our existing vehicles.

This discovery is centered on an enzyme that could enhance the growth of cell walls in plants.  The thicker cell walls would contain an abundance of a sugar polymer called Galactan.   In theory using this sugar polymer and a fermentation process, scientists could create fuel.  Not just any old fuel, but a fuel that works in existing engines. 

In addition to this, the plant in use would not be a food plant.  Currently we use corn to help make the ethanol as a vital component to the gas we use.  Corn is certainly an edible item that could be used to feed many people around the world, but a sizeable amount is going into the production of fuel.  This new idea would involve using non-food plants, thus not impacting the global production of food.

Wait, there’s more!  The process by which this fuel would be made would involve having large areas dedicated to vast fields to grow these plants.  Plants take in CO2 as they grow, thus (globally) consuming the CO2 that is put out by vehicle emissions.  The plants with enhanced cell walls would effectively be a carbon neutral process, meaning it balances out the input and output of CO2 in our atmosphere. Making this a step in the right direction for dealing with the large amount of unchecked emissions, which we experience today.

So, a carbon neutral process that doesn’t take food out of the mouths of others AND works in the existing vehicles we have today?  Galactan fuel is definitely a creative idea that warrants more research and attention!

Fuel your curiosity for this topic:

What is Galactan?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactan

What does it mean to be CARBON NEUTRAL?
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/carbon_neutral.html 

Why Planet Cell Walls?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21709/

Is anyone else talking about this?:
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2012/12/21/boosting-galactan-sugars-could-boost-biofuel-production/

What does a loom have in common with your laptop?

If you’re reading this you must be using some sort of computer. Most of us have an idea about the origins of our modern computer units, but sometimes explaining the lineage of these machines leads only up to the first design. The big question is - how did we get all the way to a computing machine? We could not have gone from fire or the wheel straight to iTunes, right? What’s responsible for the giant leaps and bounds in technology that make our life what it is today? The process of science, that’s how!

Clothing, oddly enough, has a distant relation to the machine that is allowing you to read these words right now. In the early 1800s, Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented a mechanical power loom that could weave really intricate patterns in fabric. The designs of fabric were rooted in a wooden slot card that controlled the loom’s weaving directions.

A few decades later, Charles Babbage used this slot card idea to create a machine that calculated numbers based on a paper slot card, his machine had the way cool name of ‘The Difference Engine.’ Instead of resulting in a lovely rug with intricate colored designs, Babbage had intricate data and numbers punched into a card. The detailed weaving concept inspired detailed data processing. 

Then, Herman Hollerith took Babbage’s paper slot idea to the next level by creating a system that could input detailed numbers and data on a larger scale. This invention was soon picked up by the U.S. Census Bureauand Hollerith was rewarded quite nicely. So, what does a math-freak do with a lot of money in the late 1800s? Well, this particular math-addict helped co-found a little company that we now know as IBM. The rest, as they say, is history…or cache and cookies.

For more information check these links out!

History of Computers

Punched Card's Pedigree