ScienceIQ.com

What Is A Half-life?

When isotopes break down, or decay, they usually split apart into two smaller atoms. Excess neutrons and protons are often sent flying off through space, taking the excess energy of the atoms with them. Interestingly, one form of radioactive decay product is the 'alpha particle', which is in reality just a helium atom with no electrons. Measurement ...

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WhatIsAHalflife
Geology

Surprise! Lightning Has Big Effect On Atmospheric Chemistry

Scientists were surprised to learn summer lightning over the U.S. significantly increases regional ozone and other gases that affect air chemistry 3 to 8 miles above Earth's surface.The amounts of ... Continue reading

AtmosphericChemistry
Geology

Distant Mountains Influence River Levels 50 Years Later

Rainfall in the mountains has a major influence on nearby river levels, and its effects can be seen as much as 50 years after the rain has fallen, according to hydrologists funded by the National ... Continue reading

RiverLevels
Engineering

Airbags

An automobile airbag is a safety device: its sole purpose is to prevent an occupant of the vehicle from impacting with the surrounding structure. Typically, in a collision, Newton's laws of motion ... Continue reading

Airbags
Mathematics

How To Calculate The Area Of A Right Cone

The cone is another three-dimensional shape based on the circle. You could think of it as the cross between a circle and a right triangle. Its properties will have features of both shapes, and this ... Continue reading

AreaOfARight Cone

Bizarre Boiling

BizarreBoilingThe next time you're watching a pot of water boil, perhaps for coffee or a cup of soup, pause for a moment and consider: what would this look like in space? Would the turbulent bubbles rise or fall? And how big would they be? Would the liquid stay in the pan at all? Until a few years ago, nobody knew. Indeed, physicists have trouble understanding the complex behavior of boiling fluids here on Earth. Perhaps boiling in space would prove even more baffling.... It's an important question because boiling happens not only in coffee pots, but also in power plants and spacecraft cooling systems. Engineers need to know how boiling works.

In the early 1990's a team of scientists and engineers from the University of Michigan and NASA decided to find out. Using a freon coolant as their liquid, they conducted a series of boiling experiments on the space shuttle during 5 missions between 1992 to 1996. And indeed, they found some intriguing differences between what happens to boiling fluids on Earth and what happens to them in orbit. For example, a liquid boiling in weightlessness produces -- not thousands of effervescing bubbles -- but one giant undulating bubble that swallows up smaller ones!

Despite its entertainment value, this research is much more than a simple curiosity. Learning how liquids boil in space will lead to more efficient cooling systems for spacecraft, such as the ammonia-based system on the International Space Station. Knowledge of boiling in space might also be used someday to design power plants for space stations that use sunlight to boil a liquid to create vapor, which would then turn a turbine to produce electricity.