As always, in January, people are
attempting to stick to their New Year Resolutions. The gym is
crowded, the swimming lanes are full, and I see more running shoes tied
to bags on the bus home. While sitting in front of my computer for
8 hours today, I was wondering if I use more energy when I am thinking really hard.
While I am thinking, millions of neurons
fire messages back and forth to each other and to the various tissues
in my body. These neurons need food, consuming a full 75 percent
of the blood sugar from the liver and 20 percent of the body’s total used oxygen. Astrocytes, the cells near the capillary walls, in my brain suck energy rich glucose from
the bloodstream and convert it into a form that the neurons can soak
up. The neurons then use it to increase the production of
neurotransmitters and, eventually, thought. The more energy the
area of the brain wants, the more glucose that part of the brain will
break down, so if I am thinking really hard (you better be too by now),
the neurons in the frontal lobes of my brain will burn a lot more glucose.
To survive, my brain (and your brain) requires 1/10 of a calorie
per minute. While doing the New York Times crossword puzzle (more
challenging on Thursday) tonight on the train, my brain will need to
kick it into thinking gear and will blast through 1.5 calories a
minute. Of course, that’s not as many calories as my swim practice
will burn tonight; however, if I do active thinking throughout the 8
hour work day that’s 720 calories. No wonder, I keep snacking on
M&Ms and diet coke.
Sunlight
isn’t exactly a familiar sight in the middle of a Chicago
winter; even when we do see it, it’s often in the blinding
reflection off the snow! So I was happy to find some really cool images
of the sun while surfing the internet. Unfortunately, they won’t make it
any warmer here, but they’re fascinating anyway. Perhaps what’s most
interesting is how little they look like the sun as we’re used to seeing
it.
First, there’s the raw footage of the sun depicted in the short film “Brilliant Noise,”
a compilation of images taken by a number of solar observatories and
presented without the extensive editing, retouching, and coloration that
goes into producing pictures like NASA’s captivating Astronomy Pictures of the Day.
As the filmmakers explain, the visual flaws in the film result from the
impact of cosmic rays and other natural phenomena upon the cameras used
to capture the footage, and they “wanted to leave these flaws in as
they reveal something about the tools man uses to capture these images.”
The soundtrack, too, is derived from the images captured, “directly
translating areas of intensity within the image brightness into layers
of audio manipulation and radio frequencies.” This Bioephemera article
over at ScienceBlogs, which drew my attention to “Brilliant Noise,”
contains a nice discussion of the ways we represent (and sometimes
misrepresent) raw scientific data. We don’t often
see observations presented this directly, and it’s pretty
cool. But there are very good reasons to touch things up a bit,
too.
The sun is shining over at WIRED Science, too, in a post about never-before-seen views of the sun. Thanks to NASA’s STEREO Mission,
we have the fullest views of the sun yet, and in about two years–on
February 6, 2011–the two orbiting observatories will capture a
complete, spherical view of the sun. Beyond sending back cool recordings, the STEREO mission is aimed at a better understanding of coronal mass ejections (CMEs)
and solar wind, which can affect cell phones and radio transmissions,
cause blackouts, and damage satellites. Plus, finding out more about the
sun might give us some insight into the general workings of stars.
Scientists have certainly figured out some awesome ways to show us the sun. Now, if only they could bring a bit more of it here…
Go to a Science Fair! Seriously, it will recharge your sense of science wonder, it did mine!
I had the opportunity to judge a science fair at the Marine Military Academy
in Chicago this morning. In between bites of bagel and cream
cheese, I was given science reports to read in a conference room before I
went to the library to see the students and their science
posters. My first student, I was also his first judge, was really
nervous. However, by the time I got to my third student, the
students were warmed up, had improved their spiel, not to mention
thinking about answers to questions that more than one judge asks.
So what did I talk to the students about? I was interested to
find out where they got the idea to tackle the science problem they did,
and how they decided on a particular experimental strategy.
One student explained that he was reading the Chicago Sun-Times,
and came across an article about how calcium chloride affected the
grass in the winter; consequently in his experiment he watered grass
with various concentrations of calcium chloride.
I wanted to hear about how the students decided what data to collect,
how they should analyze, and interpret that data, and whether they had
ideas about what additional data might settle any lingering
questions. Another student whose science fair project was about
plastic, made different plastics (glue being the variant material) to
determine what plastic was the strongest. Although, she observed
the various strengths of the plastic, she did not test them in any
quantitative way. So I asked her how she would go about doing
that. She was thinking about it, and said she would let me know (I
am still waiting).
Of course, I also asked what parts of the Science Fair project were
harder than they foresaw, or took unexpected turns. One student
whose Science Fair Project was on peripheral vision,
observed that for some people the color blue is easier to see than red,
and that circles are easier to see than squares. She had
some difficulty explaining why exactly this happened, but she threw out
some great ideas. I still don’t know.
All of the students in my judging group were really smart. They
had thought a lot about their Science Fair projects, and they were all
pretty good at talking me through them. As it turns out, the
science reports were not reliable predictors of which students would be
the most articulate. Some students clearly had their science
epiphanies while I was standing in front of them, where, for example,
they realized that they had stumbled upon an interesting and
unanticipated tangle of causal factors, and were starting to think up
clever strategies for teasing them apart. It was really neat to
see this happen!
I had an amazing morning at the Science Fair (you all made my week), a
big shout-out to all the students who participated! Go Science!
Science Chicago
is all about helping kids of all ages unleash their inner scientist. We
intend for this blog and our program at large to awaken Chicagoans to
the wonders of our region's scientific resources and the importance of
science to our future.
We look forward to your questions, comments, feedback and input. Feel free to email me anytime!
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