Tuesday, August 31, 2010

What is Water Anyway? (Reflection on Reading)

http://discovermagazine.com/2010/may/20-things-you-didn.t-know-about-water

On this site, I read about different facts about, water, drinking water factories, and doctors advices. 5 of my favorite facts were.

E. coli doesn't sound so bad. In 1999 the Natural Resources Defense Council found that one brand of spring water came from a well in an industrial parking lot near a hazardous waste dump.
I found this very interesting because, being a consumer, I should know what type of water i am buying, and were its coming from.

You can make your own water by mixing hydrogen and oxygen in a container and adding a spark. Unfortunately, that is the formula that helped destroy the Hindenburg.
This was very interesting because at first when I read this i wanted to try it out. But then when i saw what it did to the Hindenburg, I started having second thoughts. This is a shame because by making your own water, that is lean and drinkable, you could help many organisations around the world, like in Africa were they do not have access to clean water.

Scientists at Oregon State University have identified vast reservoirs of water beneath the ocean floor. In fact, there may be more water under the oceans than in them.
I think that this is a very funny fact because it is basically saying that they found water... under water, and they find it amazing. But it think that it means that they found drinkable water.

Without water, ocean crust would not sink back into the earth’s mantle. There would be no plate tectonics, and our planet would probably be a lot like Venus: hellish and inert.
This was a very interesting quote because it was something I only partially knew. I knew that the tectonic plates float on the water, but i did not know that it is used so as to cool the hot magma trying to escape the earths core.

Recent evidence suggests that when the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago, comets had liquid cores. If so, life may have started in a comet.
I think that this is the most fascinating fact of them all because it is the coolest one. If you would be born on a comet rotating around the sun at high speeds and passing numerous other comets, asteroids, stars and even planets. I also think that if we were able to attach a probe to the next comet that comes close to earth, we could check to see if there are any bacteria, frozen in the ice by taking a specimen, or if there is take a sample of water.

My five fact about water:

Most of the earth's surface consists of water; there is much more water than there is land.

3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease.

A lack of water to meet daily needs is a reality today for one in three people around the world.

Roughly 70 percent of an adult’s body is made up of water.

The average toilet uses 8 liters of clean water in a single flush.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Going, going, gone (reflection on reading)

In this article the author(s) were talking about how rare the element helium is on our planet Earth. It talked about all the different organisations, and showed some facts about helium. it also talks about how helium is one on the most important substances on Earth that might become more rare than gold.

The element helium, though rare on Earth, is the second most common element in the universe after hydrogen. Helium, in space, over time creates stars, and sometimes even planets. Because of this, all planets and stars are full of helium, especially gas giants. Earth once had a great supply of helium that got boiled away by the suns rays. Over time the helium regenerated on Earth but is now once again being depleted, but this time by humans. One of the problems is that when helium is used, it is hard to contain, and usually escapes into the atmosphere.

Helium is an element used world wide. It is used by rocket scientist, engineers, and even ordinary people using them for a profit. they are used for liquid-fueled experimental rockets, semiconductors and optical fibers cannot be easily manufactured, and cryogenically cooled particle accelerators and medical MRI machines cannot function. Helium may also once be used as a fuel in future nuclear reactors. Ordinary people around the world are selling helium balloons for profits at a huge rate. Because of all these reasons, helium is depleting faster than it is regenerating. Scientists estimate that Earth will only have a supply of helium for only 40 more years.

There are few things that we can do to solve this depleting problem. and the solutions we have, will only help on a long term scale, but they will help. The main thing we can do is minimize the amount of helium balloons. Also, we could try, to send space probes, to gas planets, and try to collect some of the helium from there.

This problem does not only have to apply to helium. After helium is gone, people will find an alternative element, and the process will just repeat with different elements. for example, gold, which is very rare, and is soon going to be replaced by silver and diamonds.

Brake Fluid & Clorine Chemical


The first thing that happened was that the mixture let out a mass of fumes before lighting up into a fire. Then, the fire was suffocated in another round fumes of the same amount. At the end, the wight powder turned a grey-ish black-ish color.

Gummy Bear & Sodium Chlorate


Immediately after the gummy bear comes in contact with sodium chlorate, the sodium chlorate started to devour the gummy bear and burning it producing an extremely bright light before destroying the gummy bear completely.

Aluminum Foil & X


The solution is (at first) very still. then after about 15 seconds the bubbles start to rise and escape the tube. Soon after the once light blue liquid turns a very dark blue, and the white bubbles start turning gray and then into very fat, gray lava like substance. And then finally starts to give of gas before finally cooling off.

Liquid Nitrogen In a Swimming Pool (Water)


After the liquid Nitrogen touches the water it spreads and covers the entire top of the pool. The top then resembles son with smoke coming out. But then, as one of the crowd members jumps in we see that the water is still the same and the liquid nitrogen is merely covering it.

Sodium & Potassium In Water


At first you can see a very faint tail of smoke coming out of the water. then the sodium and potassium light up making a very bright yellow fire just before exploding. At the end many smoke fumes exit the glass wile it is cooling off.

Potassium & Water


When the potassium first entered the water it started to make a popping sound. Shortly after that, it burst into flames, and then turned pink and started to manurer in a circular fashion before going out.

Cesium & Water

As soon as the person in the video released the tine piece of cesium, and as soon as it made contact with the water, it bursted and made a lite show just like fireworks.

Lithium & Water


At first, when the lithium made contact with the water the water started to bubble as if it were boiled and then the little pebble-like piece of lithium caught on fire and started to move around in circles around the water and eventually stopped.

Bromine & Alcohol


The liquid in the bottle turned red, then started to bubble and give off smoke. after that the mixture rose, before it cooled of and retook its original volume and color.