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Nature's Exceptions to Our Rules

We all learned in grade school that animals are classified into different categories: Mammals have fur, are warm blooded, give birth to their young and feed their babies milk. Birds have feathers, lay eggs and don't have teeth. Reptiles are cold blooded and lay eggs. Fish have gills and are cold blooded. Seems pretty simple, right? ...

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NaturesExceptions
Physics

Nuclides & Isotopes

An atom that has an unbalanced ratio of neutrons to protons in the nucleus seeks to become more stable. The unbalanced or unstable atom tries to become more stable by changing the number of neutrons ... Continue reading

NuclidesIsotopes
Astronomy

Lunar Explorations

Ever since the beginning of intelligent life on Earth, the moon has been a focal point of human curiosity. Galileo’s discovery in 1610 that the moon had craters, valleys and mountains, instead of the ... Continue reading

LunarExplorations
Geology

There's Oil Down There

Ever wonder what oil looks like underground, down deep, hundreds or thousands of feet below the surface, buried under millions of tons of rock and dirt? If you could look down an oil well and see oil ... Continue reading

TheresOilDownThere
Engineering

Sundials, Ancient Clocks

The earliest and simplest form of sundial is the shadow stick. The time of day is judged by the length and position of the stick's shadow. Some nomadic peoples still use this method for timekeeping. ... Continue reading

SundialsAncientClocks

Natural Gas - The Blue Flame

NaturalGasTheBlueFlameIt is colorless, shapeless, and in its pure form, odorless. For many years, it was discarded as worthless. Even today, some countries (although not the United States) still get rid of it by burning it in giant flares, so large they can be seen from the Space Shuttle. Yet, it is one of the most valuable fuels we have. Natural gas is made up mainly of a chemical called methane, a simple, compound that has a carbon atom surrounded by four hydrogen atoms. Methane is highly flammable and burns almost completely. There is no ash and very little air pollution.

Natural gas provides one-fifth of all the energy used in the United States. It is especially important in homes, where it supplies nearly half of all the energy used for cooking, heating, and for fueling other types of home appliances. Because natural gas has no odor, gas companies add a chemical to it that smells a little like rotten eggs. The odor makes it easy to smell if there is a gas leak in your house.

The United States has a lot of natural gas, enough to last for at least another 60 years and probably a lot longer. Our neighbor to the north, Canada, also has a lot of gas, and some gas pipelines that begin in Canada run into the United States. The United States is looking for more ways to use gas, largely because it is easy to pipe from one location to another and because it burns very cleanly. More and more, we are using gas in power plants to generate electricity. Factories are using more gas, both as a fuel and as an ingredient for a variety of chemicals. While natural gas is plentiful, there is still some uncertainty about how much it will cost to get it out of the ground in the future. Like oil, there is 'easy' gas that can be produced from underground formations, and there is gas that is not so easy. If we can find better and cheaper ways to find more of the 'easy' gas and produce some of the more difficult gas, we can rely increasingly on natural gas in the future.