What’s your question?
One of my primary goals of this blog is science education. I want to share my love of science with everyone and answer people’s nagging questions about science, the environment, and the world around them.
So … it’s your turn. Gimme your questions! Once this blog gets going I’ll do this once a week, but in these early days I want to answer as many as I can. Leave a comment in to this post with your science question and I’ll try to answer as many as I can. Those I don’t know the answer to or can’t find … I’m going to tap into my stash of heavy hitters. I’ll do the best I can to answer your questions!
Hit me!
Tags: science questions, science answers
April 11th, 2006 at 11:17 am
OK, here’s one. Any truth to the email forward that says putting plastic (e.g. rubbermaid) in your microwave is unusually hazardous? I think the email mentions something about melting the plastic and digesting dioxins.
April 11th, 2006 at 11:23 am
That is a great question … let me look up the studies that have shown that. But the quick answer is yes. The first study was actually a high school science project a young woman did on plastic wrap. It has been studied by others and shown to be true.
April 11th, 2006 at 11:56 am
I already know the answer to this, but many do not. Let’s please establish that gum does not take 7 years to digest
April 11th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
Another great one! Hmm maybe Mythbusters have done this one.
April 11th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Hmm maybe Mythbusters have done this one.
That would be an episode I really wouldn’t want to watch. Just thinking about ways they could prove this
*shudder*
April 11th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Well they’d probably just put it in a flask with stomach acid and a control with water. They did this for the test of whether Coke/cola dissolves steak, teeth, pennies.
April 11th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
Ah. My dirty mind was thinking of other…nevermind.
April 11th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
[…] The question was posed here to my Questions post: […]
April 12th, 2006 at 6:46 am
My son’s class is studying about various forces right now. His question at dinner last night was a two-parter: As you get closer to the center of the Earth, does it get hotter? and Does gravity pull harder the further underground you go?
Which of course his lame-O parents didn’t really answer for him, because we got all sidetracked with opposite forces and examples gravitational forces as seen with moons-around-planets, planets-around-stars…
yeah, house of NERDS is what we are. lol
April 12th, 2006 at 7:18 am
Hey Deb …
Great questions. The first one is easy … you bet! In fact the deep dimond mines in South Africa are very hot themselves. The mantel, the next layer down from the crust, is molten rock (magma … it’s not lava until it breaks the surface), the temperatures and pressures increase all the way to the core, with current thinking has as a semi-molten ball of iron-rich material under tremendous temperature and pressure.
Now the gravity question … wow that’s a great one! Time to e-mail my old Geo advisor Dr. Bob!
April 17th, 2006 at 10:20 am
Hmmmm… Well, it DOES get progressively hotter as you get deeper underground, though even the upper mantle is only partly molten. The outer core is molten iron with some nickel, but the inner is solid - even though it’s hotter - because the pressures are so great that the iron can’t go to a less-dense state by melting. [The force of gravity increases the closer one gets to the center of gravity of an object.]
It’s the flow in the liquid outer core around the solid inner core that sets up the Earth’s magnetic field, though I’m not sure they’ve figured out exactly how that happens yet. One problem is that at the high temperatures down there (so high the iron would BOIL at the low pressures we have here at the surface!), normal magnetism ceases to function.
And the next time someone tells you “evolution is just a theory,” remember that scientifically, a theory is as close to fact as you can get: both magnetism and gravity are theoretical concepts, but they work! :-)
April 17th, 2006 at 10:36 am
Thanks Dr Bob!
Okay world meet my science mentor, Dr. Bob Nelson of the Colby College Geology Dept. Dr Bob got me hooked on pollen analysis, paleoecology, Quaternary geology, and geomorphology. He is also a world-leading expert in beetles and using beetle remains to reconstruct past (and present) climates and environment.
Guys, this is the man would picked me out of my Geology 101 class (I share the same last name as another geologist in Maine … Arthur Hussey) and the rest is history.
His geography tests in Geo101 are legend (I did quite well thank you) and his field trips … well they were always cool in my book.
Guys Dr. Bob is one of those profs you all should have in college. He believed in me, took me under his wing, and kept my passion for science alive.
Thanks for stopping by Dr Bob.
April 20th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
[…] I’ve been talking a lot about teachers lately, good and bad. And in in my What’s your question post, my geology advisor Dr Robert Nelson (always called Dr. Bob) put in a comment. Well Dr Bob is one of those great teachers. He truly was a mentor for me. Gave me confidence, encouraged me, pushed me, challenged me. He expected a lot from me and when I let him down, it hurt. […]
May 2nd, 2007 at 4:57 pm
What happens to solids when they get hotter?
What happens to solids when it gets cooler?