Rafflesia arnoldii Photo credit ma_suska

The biggest flower in the world is the Rafflesia arnoldii, a.k.a. the Corpse Flower, so named because when blooming, it smells of rotting flesh. This flower is unusual in design in that it appears to have no stems, leaves or roots. The Rafflesia arnoldii grows as a parasite on the Tetrastigma vine. This flower takes over a  year to blossom, and sadly, is an endangered species. It lives in the rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia and Malaysia and its habitat is disappearing such that scientists don’t know how many of this plant are left.

The Rafflesia arnoldii is a non-photosynthetic plant; it gathers all the nutrients it needs for growth from the Tetrastigma vine. The Corpse flower blooms to over a meter wide and can weigh up to 11 kg. The stench of rotting meat attracts flies and beetles for pollination. This flower not only smells like a rotting corpse, it looks like flesh as well; with large, blood red petals with white spots.

The Rafflesia arnoldii bud has been eaten as a delicacy in Thailand. It is used in some parts of Malaysia to aid women after childbirth, to staunch bleeding and shrink the uterus, although the chemical properties haven not been extensively studied; so any health claims have not been verified. It may even be toxic as it contains tannin and phenol. Rafflesias have also been used in religious ceremonies.

Crab Nebula taken by the Hubble Telescope

For two words so similar, they could hardly be more different in meaning. Astronomy is the study of celestial objects; in short, objects outside the Earth’s atmosphere. Astrology is a philosophy that teaches that placement of celestial objects – the sun, moon and stars determines and influences your personality. Astronomy is a science whereas Astrology is is a pseudoscience.  Historically, the two disciplines were related but parted ways in the 17th century when core scientific principles such as the Earth revolves around the Sun which is the centre of the solar system became widely accepted as fact.

Put in another way; Astronomy is the study of celestial objects and Astrology is the study of how the position of said celestial objects affects mood, personality and world events. Astrology is not empirically provable. There is no evidence that the predictions made by Astrology are true and many followers of Astrology suffer from Confirmation Bias – that is, they tend to believe outcomes that support their preconceptions: cherry picking the evidence as it were. Simply put, they believe that Astrology is true and confirm their belief by only paying attention to the data that supports their belief and ignoring evidence against.

Astronomy’s divergence as a separate science began in earnest with the invention of the telescope. Until then; ancient civilizations studied the predictable movement of the sun and stars and used this data for celestial navigation and calender making. The science of Astronomy as we know it today could also be called Astrophysics.

Scanning electron microscope image of gold. Individual gold atoms are visible.

In layman’s terms, an atom can only be one atom of one element on the periodic table. You can have an atom of oxygen, or hydrogen. Anymore than one atom; even of the same type (2 oxygens, or 2 hydrogens) is a molecule. One oxygen, one hydrogen and one hydrogen combine to make water, a molecule.

Atoms are basic units of matter, consisting; in most cases, of protons, neutrons and electrons (most hydrogen has no neutrons). Protons are positively charged, meaning they exert a positive force when near other objects of matter. Electrons are negatively charged. Neutrons carry no charge. Think of the ends of batteries. When you insert batteries into a device, the ends must oppose each other. The little nubbin on the top of a battery is the positive end, and the flat end is the negative end. If you are placing two batteries into your, let’s say, xbox 360 remote, one battery will be positive side up and the other will be negative side up. Like charges repel each other whereas opposite charges attract each other. When batteries are placed in this matter, electricity is pulled through the entire device to complete a circuit allowing you to kill that dragon on screen.

Atoms can gain or lose electrons, not protons. Therefore, an atom or molecule that is negatively charged has gained electrons and and one that is positively charged has lost electrons. This is where understanding ions can be a bit confusing: a gain in electrons is denoted by a minus (-) symbol and a loss in electrons is noted by a (+) symbol. The most common examples of ions are H+ and OH- and/or Na+ and Cl-. H+ is hydron. It is an anion of hydrogen (“an” means without, so anions are minus electrons resulting in a positive charge). It is also a measure of acidity on the Ph scale. OH- is hydroxide. It’s a polyatomic cation (“ca” means with, so cations are with extra electrons resulting in a negative charge). OH- is also a measure of alkalinity on the Ph scale. One H+ and one OH- combine to form water; a neutral molecule.

A molecule is two or more atoms combined into a neutral group. Molecules have the same number of protons and electrons so they hold neither a positive or negative charge. Two or more atoms joined together that hold a positive or negative charge are called polyatomic ions (the prefix “poly” means many, but in this specific case, it means two or more).

In summary, I could go into minute details about the nature of atoms and molecules, but to simplify, atoms are single units of one element on the Periodic Table of Elements. Molecules are two or more atoms, of the same or different element bonded together to make a neutral grouping.

Speed is a scalar quantity; that is, it can be described by a number only; for example 10 kilometers per hour. Velocity is described as a numerical value plus a direction. It is a vector quantitiy; meaning that it measures a total displacment of an object or person. If you were running and made a complete circuit; finishing from where you started, your velocity would be zero because you haven’t made any net gain in distance. Vector quantities, therefore have both a speed and a direction. You will increase your velocity as long as you keep moving in one direction. So that same runner, running the same distance in a straight line for 5 kilometers west at 10 kilometers per hour has travelled a total distance of .5 kilometers west.

In summary, speed is a numerical value only and velocity has a numerical value and a direction. Velocity = change in direction/change in time; whereas speed is the absolute value of distance/time. Absolute value means that if an object is moving forwards or backwards, it will not have a negative number in front of it. So if you travelled 30 kilometers per hour backwards from your current position, you would not describe your speed as -30 kilometes per hour; it would simply be 30 kilometers per hour.

The Tsar Bomba was the biggest nuclear bomb ever detonated. The project to build the Tsar Bomba was commissioned by Nikita Krushchev in 1961 during the height of the Cold War. This bomb was detonated just one year before the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Tsar Bomba was a tool used by Krushchev to demonstrate Russia’s dominance in the nuclear weapons race. It was so big, that it had to be dropped by a plane and not by a missile launcher. The firepower of this baby was the equivalent of 10 times all of the explosives used in World War II: 50 megatons. Only one live bomb and one replica bomb were made as the bomb was too big and to damaging to be practical. The mushroom cloud was 60 kilometers high, and felt as far as Finland; breaking windows on houses!

Interestingly, one of the physicists who worked on Tsar Bomba’s development, Andrei Sakharov became strongly opposed to nuclear weapons. In the late 1960′s he ramped up his opposition to nuclear proliferation and helped to broker the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963. When ABM’s (anti ballistic missiles) came onto the scene), he was strongly opposed to them, saying that they would increase the likelihood of a nuclear war. He was awarded the Nobel Peace in 1975 for his work in promoting peace and for his role in establishing the Moscow Human Rights Committee. Sadly, he wasn’t allowed to leave Russia to claim the prize, so his wife accpeted it on his behalf. He was also strongly opposed the Soviet Invasion of Afganistan.

The difference between mass and weight is that mass is constant and fixed, while weight varies with location because weight is a measure of the force that gravity has on an object. Your mass on the Moon, the Earth and on Jupiter is the same; however your weight would change based on the amount of gravity being exerted on you. Earth’s gravity is -9.8 meters per second squared. When you step on your bathroom scale, your mass is exerting a force on a spring that is calibrated to the Earth’s gravitational field (-9.8 meters per second squared) in order to give you a weight reading.

Of particular note, is that the gravitational force exerted on the body can vary as much as 0.5% depending upon your location on the earth. In the image on the right, the different colors represent changes in the force of gravity. Wikipedia has an excellent chart that details the force of gravity in different cities around the world. In order for scientists to determine mass with better accuracy, a balance measure is used. A traditional balance is a beam with arms of equal length each holding a scale. The product of unknown mass is placed on the scale and measured against objects with known masses. This technique overcomes the variation in Earth’s gravitational field because both the known and the unknown masses are being equally acted upon.

To summarize mass versus weight, mass is constant and is a measure of how much matter an object contains, whereas weight changes according to the gravitational force exerted upon it.

Heat is the amount of total energy contained within an item; both potential energy and kinetic energy. Potential energy is stored energy and kinetic energy is moving energy. Temperature is a number that corresponds to the amount of kinetic energy in an object. When heat is introduced into a system, molecules move faster. When molecules move faster, they bump into each other harder and more often. These measure of the energy of these collisions is temperature. So, temperature can result from heat being introduced into an object; that is, heat is energy introduced into a system and one affect heat can have is to increase the temperature. Heat introduced into a system can also cause a phase change; like ice melting into water, with no subesquent speeding up of molecules, and therefore no temperature change.

In summary, heat is energy introduced into a system and is a measure of all the energy in an object. Temperature is proportional to the amount of kinetic energy an object has.

The smallest particle in the world is a tie between quarks and leptons. Quarks are the fundamental particles that make neutrons and protons in atoms. There are several different classifications of quarks based on their properties that break down into up, down, charm, top and bottom; I don’t make up the names, I just tell you what they are J Most quarks disappeared in the microseconds after the Big Bang, but can be recreated under certain conditions. Up and Down quarks are common and combine with two of their brethren to form either a neutron or a proton. A proton is made up of 2 Up and 1 Down quark with a net result of a 1 positive charge. Neutrons are made of 2 Down quarks and 1 Up quark and have a net charge of zero. The math doesn’t seem to add up, but I am sure there is some very complicated, quantum physics way of explaining why the different combinations of Up and Down yield either a proton or a neutron.

Leptons are more complicated to explain and I will do my best. Leptons are the other component particle to make up an atom. Leptons come in 6 flavors: electrons, muons, and the tau. The other three are these particles combined with their associated neutrino: electron neutrino, them muon neutrino and the tau neutrino. Neutrinos have very little mass and almost no charge and result from nuclear fusion and beta decay. Beta decay produces electron neutrinos and happens when neutrons change to protons or vice versa. The human body is penetrated by quadrillions of neutrinos every second and most come from our Sun.