Think Real Hard!

January 29, 2009

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.


Seeing the Sun in a New Light

January 28, 2009

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! I did!

January 27, 2009

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!