Category Archives: General Science

Great Demonstration of Harmonic Motion

Posted on 5-January-2012 by mathscinotes

One of the engineers was sending this around today. I thought it was amazing.

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How Much Does A Cloud Weigh?

Posted on 12-August-2011 by mathscinotes

Introduction We have had a lot of rain in Minnesota this summer. As I sit here staring at the rain falling hard outside, I occurs to me that a cloud must be a very heavy thing in order to drop … Continue reading →

Posted in General Science | 6 Comments

Solar Photons

Posted on 4-June-2011 by mathscinotes

I was watching "How the Universe Works" on the Science Channel and they had a really interesting discussion on stars and photons. During the show, they mentioned that photons generated in the center of the Sun take 4000 years to get to the surface. From the surface, the photons only take 8 minutes to get to the Earth. As part of my campaign to promote active television watching, let's take a look at where these numbers come from. As part of this effort, I will use Mathcad for the calculations and as a programming tool for a simple simulation Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, General Science | 2 Comments

Oxygen on Earth

Posted on 9-April-2011 by mathscinotes

As my regular readers can tell, I do not passively sit and watch television. While I am watching a program (history or science-oriented, nothing else), I have my computer right there and I actively research what is being said during the program. Last weekend, I was watching an interesting program on the History channel called "How the Earth was Made". This particular program was about the formation of the Earth and it contained an excellent section on the generation of atmospheric oxygen (transcript of program). In my opinion, the star of the show was a little rocky structure called a stromatolite (Figure 1). A stromatolite is a layered, rock-like structure formed when shallow-water sediments are trapped in films of microorganisms. Continue reading →

Posted in General Science, History of Science and Technology | 15 Comments

Railroad Math

Posted on 7-February-2011 by mathscinotes

Introduction I was listening to an advertisement where CSX made the claim that they move 1 ton of freight 423 miles for 1 gallon of fuel. This is an interesting measure of efficiency. Let's see if we can confirm this … Continue reading →

Posted in General Science | 5 Comments

Calculating the Earth's Age

Posted on 22-December-2010 by mathscinotes

I have been listening to the audio book The Disappearing Spoon, which is an excellent tale about all of the elements of the periodic table. Of particular interest to me was the discussion of how geologists date the age of the Earth using ratios of uranium and lead. The book also discusses determining the ages of meteorites and the Sun. The discussions were interesting enough that I thought I would look up some additional information. As frequently happens, I was amazed at the amount of information on the web about this subject. This technique has been around since 1956, when it was first used to date meteor fragments from a well-known impact site (Figure 1). Continue reading →

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