ScienceIQ.com

Bicycle Chain for Fleas

Sandia National Laboratories has engineered the world’s smallest chain. The distance between chain link centers is only 50 microns. In comparison, the diameter of a human hair is approximately 70 microns. This micro-chain has been made on the surface of a silicone substrate using photo-lithographic techniques, just like computer chips are made. It ...

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FleaBicycle
Astronomy

Introduction to Constellations

'Constellation' is the name we give to seeming patterns of starsin the night sky. 'Stella' is the Latin word for star and a constellation is a grouping of stars. In general, the stars in these groups ... Continue reading

IntroductiontoConstellations
Medicine

Legionnaires' Disease

Legionnaires' disease, which is also known as Legionellosis, is a form of pneumonia. It is often called Legionnaires' disease because the first known outbreak occurred in the Bellevue Stratford Hotel ... Continue reading

LegionnairesDisease
Astronomy

Sputnik and The Dawn of the Space Age

History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a basketball, weighed only 183 pounds, and took ... Continue reading

Sputnik
Biology

Ergot, Witches & Rye. Oh My!

Did you know that a disease of rye is connected to LSD and witches? Ergot is caused by a fungus that attacks a number of cereal grains, but rye is most severely infected. The healthy grains are ... Continue reading

ErgotWitchesRyeOhMy

What Is Reduction?

WhatIsReductionLong ago, in a laboratory far, far away...before the development of the atomic theory we now use, scientists believed in a principle called animism, and that the chemistry of different materials was controlled by different proportions of certain reactive principles. Under certain conditions, a material that formed from the increase of a specific reactive principle could be made to revert to its original form. This was made to happen by reducing the proportion of a particular reactive principle that it contained.

Metals, for example, were observed to change into oxides by the absorption of and combination with the active principle of 'air'. As the amount of this principle increased, so did the transformation of the metal. Now, if this 'oxide' was heated strongly enough or treated with certain other materials, the amount of 'air' it contained could be reduced, and the oxide would revert back to the original metal. (Magic!)

Eventually the process became known simply as 'reducing' or 'reduction'. Investigation and research revealed the underlying electronic process of reduction. In reduction an atom or element gains control of a certain number of electrons from a material called a reducing agent. The gain of electrons by a chemical species is reduction. Reduction always occurs simultaneously with oxidation. For example, in the course of a reaction to form two C - O bonds, in the oxidation of a carbon - carbon double bond by potassium permanganate, the manganese atom is itself reduced and gains control of five electrons to go from an oxidation state of +7 to +2.