ScienceIQ.com

SARS: Mother Nature Strikes Again!

SARS, short for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, is big news this spring. By the middle of April 2003, over 2000 people had been diagnosed with it in China and Hong Kong, another few hundred in the rest of Asia, and over a hundred in the US and Canada. Over 100 victims had died. ...

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SARSMotherNatureStrikesAgain
Geology

Geology Played Key Role in the End of the Civil War

Depending on your perspective, Mississippi geology was either an aiding ally or formidable foe as Union troops tried to take control of the Mighty Mississippi. It was May, 141 years ago, and Major ... Continue reading

GeologyCivilWar
Astronomy

GP-B: More Than Just a Pretty Face

Questions about the ways space, time, light and gravity relate to each other have been asked for eons. Theories have been offered, yet many puzzles remain to be solved. No spacecraft ever built has ... Continue reading

GPBMoreThanJustaPrettyFace
Medicine

Mother Nature's Own Brand of Bioterror

We've been hearing a lot about smallpox lately, as a possible bioterror attack. But Mother Nature has her own brand of bioterror. Smallpox has been with us for about ten thousand years, since the ... Continue reading

Bioterror
Chemistry

Chemical Burning

Chemical burns are the result of very normal reactions that can occur between the offending material and living tissue components. People generally tend to regard their bodies as things outside of the ... Continue reading

ChemicalBurning

What Is Polarimetry?

WhatIsPolarimetryPolarimetry is the technique of measuring the 'polarization' of light. Most of the light we encounter every day is a chaotic mixture of light waves vibrating in all directions. Such a combination is known as 'unpolarized' light. When you turn on a lamp, for example, the light waves vibrate in all directions: up and down, side to side, or at any angle perpendicular (at right angles) to the direction the light wave is traveling out from the bulb.

If the light passes through certain materials or is reflected, the waves will tend to vibrate in only one direction and the light is said to be 'polarized'. Some materials contain long molecules which are lined up, like the slats on a wooden fence. As the light passes through this material, some of waves can pass through the slats, while others cannot. It's like trying to put a letter in a mail slot - the letter has to be lined up just right in order to get through the slot. By determining the amount and direction of polarization and how these change with wavelength, scientists can learn about what causes the energy to become polarized.

You can observe polarized light yourself by looking through a pair of polarizing sunglasses at the brightness of the blue sky about 90 degrees from the Sun (if the Sun is in the East or West, look North or South). As you rotate the glasses, the brightness of the sky will vary because the light has been polarized by being reflected in the atmosphere.