The great thinkers of history have come across a few puzzling ideas that looked good on paper but just didn’t jive with common sense. These contradictory or ambiguous ideas are known as paradoxes. This video quickly highlights some of the most well-known paradoxes. There are many others.

For more in-depth explanations of paradoxical fun check out Jim Al Khalili’s book, Paradox: The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics. This book includes a brilliant explanation of the dreaded Monty Hall paradox.

Here is a fun introduction to Monty Hall presented by mathematician, Marcus du Sautoy:

“You never know for sure if there is anything in the search… It’s an endless quest without knowing what your quest is.” –not even Carl Sagan

This boy has some great answers to tough questions. He understands that it is okay not to have all of the answers yet and to continue searching. He does a great job of avoiding filling in gaps in his knowledge with guesses or made-up stuff.

He struggles a bit during the question about events in life being predestined but we get to see him counter with questions about the question and finally admit he might be wrong. Brilliant!

Impeller designed by Jay Harman of PaxScientific.com. The impeller’s design was inspired by “freezing a whirlpool”. Variations on the same natural algorithm are used by many organisms such as cala lilies as seen above, and sea shells.

Homo sapiens has been around for about 200,000 years, give or take. We’re well adapted to hunting and scavenging and socializing and getting by as humans. However, a lot of other living creatures can do very clever things better than us. Take flying for example. For millenia humans saw birds take to the air and longed to join them. After centuries of trial and error we finally learned their secret and soared like eagles. What else can we learn from the natural world that can help us do what other organisms have already mastered?

Using an adaptation from a living organism for our own use is known as biomimicry. Biomimicry inspired something else that you may use every day, Velcro. Inventor, George de Mestral, saw the burrs attached to his dog’s fur after a walk. He studied the burr bristles under a microscope and noticed that the little hooks on the end were snagging his dogs fur and his clothing. From this he developed a material with tiny hook-like structures that became the reusable fasteners that we know so well.

The pictures below show how the hook parts of a piece of Velcro are similar in shape to the hooks at the end of each organic burr bristle.

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Janine Beyrus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, is considered the pioneer of the philosophy of asking nature the best way to do things. Her ideas have influenced scores of  inventors, researchers, engineers, designers, and programmers. Here is her TED Talk from 2009 in which she convinces us how much nature has to teach us:

Janine Beyrus mentions asknature.org in her TED Talk. I hope you will go check it out and use it to get inspired to make, solve, or improve something the way nature intended.

Who is this @Cmdr_Hadfield tweeting from space with such infectious enthusiasm and posting sensational pictures of Earth from orbit? His name is Commander Chris Hadfield. He is a Canadian astronaut who is currently serving as a flight engineer aboard the International Space Station. We were so charmed by his tweets that we searched out this pre-launch interview with him. He is every bit as cool on video and great at describing his mission as an astronaut.

In March, Commander Hadfield will go from flight engineer to commander of the International Space Station’s Mission 35. He will be a real life spaceship captain just as he says in the video.

Instant kid science dance party pop hit! <3 <3 <3

More Parry Gripp tunes here.

via deepseanews.com

Duro-Aina Adebola, Akindele Abiola, Faleke Oluwatoyin, and Bello Eniola engineered this generator that turns urine into electricity.

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A group of four girls ages 14-15 demonstrated their urine-powered generator at the recent Maker Faire Africa in Lagos. The girls’ project also generated a lot of excitement and interest on the web over this last week. Although it won’t be able to compete with the energy output of coal or gasoline, this technique puts forward the possibility that urine could be tapped as one of many (cough) um, clean energy sources. There is probably a stinky pee smell, but clean in this case means it doesn’t give off CO2 emissions or other pollutants.

Let’s take a look at their process—

The Maker Faire Africa blog listed their method as such:

• Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which separates out the hydrogen.
• The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, which then gets pushed into the gas cylinder.
• The gas cylinder pushes hydrogen into a cylinder of liquid borax, which is used to remove the moisture from the hydrogen gas.
• This purified hydrogen gas is pushed into the generator.

Along the whole way there are one-way valves for security, but let’s be honest that this is something of an explosive device…

The generated electricity powers a light bulb which is mostly hidden by the middle girl’s knee in the picture above.

The girls designed their system based on this paper by scientists from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Ohio University. Here is a more reader-friendly article on the paper that you might want to check out before you decide to explore the  scientific paper.

There is also a good deal of scientific debate and skepticism over whether this is a useful or effective electricity generator. The comment thread below that blog post is a good sampling of the discussion.

Good science means hashing out the truth and not taking claims at face value.  The only way to know for sure if this process works is to replicate the girls’ setup. With appropriate mentoring and safety precautions, it would be great to see other kids working to recreate this idea. If it turns out that this works…awesome! Then young scientists can work to make improvements to the technique.

We look forward to the day we can feature the work of the first group of teens that powers a cell phone from this kind of pee-powered system. Game on.

]]> http://onegiantleapofawesome.com/2012/11/10/awesome-heros-wield-pee-powe/feed/ 0 msjuliemars PeePowerHeros http://onegiantleapofawesome.com/2012/10/27/awesome-hero-the-boy-who-harnessed-the-wind/ http://onegiantleapofawesome.com/2012/10/27/awesome-hero-the-boy-who-harnessed-the-wind/#comments Sat, 27 Oct 2012 17:44:07 +0000 msjuliemars http://onegiantleapofawesome.com/?p=542 ]]>

William Kamkwamba, Awesome Hero

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William Kamkwamba was born to a farming family in Malawi in Africa in 1987. His home and the homes of his neighbors didn’t have electricity or running water. The family’s crops depended on the amount rainfall that they received because their farm had no irrigation. When he was 14, a horrible drought struck Malawi  and the crops failed. Many Malawians died of starvation. William and his family survived but suffered horrific deprivation. His father was deep in debt from buying food for the family so couldn’t afford tuition. William had to drop out of school.

After surviving the famine, William was inspired by a textbook he borrowed from his local library called Using Energy to build a windmill to make electricity and eventually pump ground water from a well to irrigate the family’s farm. He was determined to give his family a more secure food supply with two maize harvests a year as well as an irrigated garden for a variety of vegetables.

William Kamkwamba slowly built his windmill from salvaged and modified scrap material. He describes how he did it in his autobiography The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. The ingenuity involved in the design and construction of his windmill is astounding. This book is *highly* recommended to all young people over the age of 12. Read it. Listen to it. Do it.

There is also a picture book version of William Kamkwamba’s story for younger children because it is *that* good.

Lily the astrofrog says, “I love water bears. They are the first known animal to survive the vacuum of space in low Earth orbit.”

That great video is by Hank Green and SciShow. Check out their whole YouTube channel. It rocks!

Tardigrades, also known as waterbears or moss piglets and even bug bears, are fascinating little creatures. If you have ever looked at soil under a microscope you might have seen some of these little guys. Under ideal lighting they almost look cute–like micro manatees with eight legs.

Shown: ideal lighting conditions

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Under a regular microscope they look like this:

A well-fed water bear.

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Tardigrades have evolved to be able to survive in extreme conditions including vacuum, high radiation, and temperatures from near absolute zero up to 151 degrees centigrade. They can also survive almost decade without water. They are truly amazing little creatures.

This is an excellent video introduction to tardigrades that explains what makes them so awesome.

Tardigrades might make a great science fair project. They are easy to find outside and are reported to love to live in moss. Get some moss wet and start scanning some of the water drops on your microscope slide. Notice what happens when the water bears dry out. What happens if you then add water? After doing some more research, test some of the claims made about the extreme survivability of tardigrades. Design an experiment that tests water bears under extreme conditions.

“Imagine this was a piece of Saturn’s rings. What a view!” That’s an inspiring thought isn’t it? That clip does a great job of making us feel a sense of wonder for the things scientists have discovered about the universe. For me, it approaches a mystical blissout but your mileage will vary.*

Wonder in the natural world, universe, and the excitement of scientific discovery is often what leads many people into a career in science. Daily exposure to the latest wonders is a great job benefit and can make for a rewarding career.

Unfortunately, scientific discovery doesn’t just offer us mystical blissouts. Scientific wonder has a flipside as seen in this video:

…a moment to shake the bricks out of our underwear…

Thank you, science, for showing us in minute gory detail exactly how boned we are if the Earth is hit by a meteor, asteroid, or comet. Yes, we have science to thank for the knowledge that we could be wiped out in a few hours if a giant rock from space slammed into the Earth. We have science to thank for the fact that we know that little germs arise from time to time that kill us off in great numbers. We have science to thank for the fact that we know that humans’ use of fossil fuels are changing the world in such a way that is going endanger our lives unless we change our habits. This is just a small sample of possible threats to our survival and life on Earth that science has uncovered for us.

Those are just the natural threats. We didn’t need science to tell us that we are a threat to ourselves; however, science gave us the ability to war against each other in ways that would likely kill us all. The  mass military buildup of the Cold War is the shining example of how we are one of our biggest problems.***

Sometimes people find that thinking about these megaproblems is very unsettling. They seem so much bigger than us and over our heads. In the past, we have tended to either ignore the out-of-our league problems altogether or attempt to hand them off to something bigger than ourselves in the form of supernatural beings or forces.

(c)2008 Big Idea Entertainment

Many of us experience a great sense of peace and comfort against the terrors of life in our religious beliefs. However, when it comes to the greatest problems facing humanity we cannot allow ourselves the luxury to merely fret, wish, pray, or perform rituals as a way of warding off our biggest problems. We need to work on them.

The only way to overcome the big problems is through advancing our knowledge. At this time, the best way we know of to increase our knowledge is through the practice of science.

The more people and groups of people contributing toward solving the big, overwhelming problems the better. It could take many lifetimes before we can defend ourselves against the greatest dangers. In the meantime, though, a bounty of spin-off innovations and discoveries that improve our understanding of the universe, our quality of life, and security are sure to result from pursuing such goals. There is no doubt that this increase in knowledge will uncover as yet unknown threats and problems. Over time, though, we’ll get better at figuring things out and new problems will not threaten but inspire us with the possibilities of new and wonderous frontiers.

Chibithulu says, “To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth.”

*Personally, I could watch “Wonders of the Solar System” and “Wonders of the Universe” all day.**

**Sometimes I do.

***Dr. David Eagleman and many others are studying what makes us a threat to each other and possible ways to change our behavior  http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB048F2B20DBB4BE9

Polished sphere of amber with a beetle inclusion. (source)

Amber is fossilized tree resin from prehistoric conifer trees. The slow and sticky resin oozed out of a tree when it suffered damage and protected it like a gooey bandage. Eventually this resin would harden and shed off the tree where it would collect as part of the debris and sediment of the ancient forest floor. Over eons of time the resin matured chemically and fossilized into the hard plastic-like material that we know today as amber.

 
Fossilized tree resin from hundreds of millions of years ago is exciting, yes, but it’s what has been found in amber that is so much more riveting. Trapped within these organic stones you can often glimpse perfectly preserved organisms from the prehistoric past. Some of these unlucky deep time travelers include insects, spiders and their webs, seeds, pine needles, flowers, frogs, and even a lizard. These ensnared creatures and plant matter–known as inclusions–have been dated up to about 150 million years ago. Most of these organisms are now extinct but can be studied and classified by comparing them with current known species or known fossils.

Rock fossil of a feathered dinosaur (source)

Many of the most intriguing amber fossils are found in Canada and include a few types of feathers and protofeathers. Scientists collected and studied 11 samples of amber containing feathers and found that they were seeing a range of plumage that showed a development from primitive protofeathers to more complex feathers like those found on modern birds. They found that  some of these feathers are similar to the ones seen in rock fossil impressions of feathered dinosaurs. The more advanced feathers may have come from early birds. If you like reading about dinosaurs, amber, or prehistoric life, you will enjoy reading the original scientific paper by the scientists who are studying these fossil feathers in amber.

Possible dinosaur protofeathers.  (source)

Above are just two stages of the known stages of feather evolution. On the left are protofeathers which are very primitive and look like very fine hairs or filaments. Researchers have nicknamed these simple protofeathers “dinofuzz”. They are even studying the pigments–color-producing particles–on these feathers. Those pigments from feathers have been found in rock fossils as well, as seen in this video from researchers at Yale University.

If you have ever seen or heard about the movie or book “Jurassic Park” you may have heard that it might be possible to take DNA from an organism that has been preserved in amber. Unfortunately, at this time, that seems unlikely. DNA breaks apart quickly once an organism dies. However, amber is a fantastic preservative and if we are going to find ancient DNA somewhere it is most likely to come from just such an ideal source. Some scientists have had promising results in extracting bits of DNA from amber; however, it is a difficult and tricky process and other scientists have had trouble getting the same results. It could be possible to get a snippet or two of DNA but the DNA of a whole organism from many millions of years ago might be impossible at least for the foreseeable future.