When I was a kid, I’m always fascinated with the stars, the sun, comets, and the universe. At my early years, I already know some astrological terms that are not common to my age, may be just because my mom is a science teacher and she used to bring me to her classes while she discusses the solar system, the space and the universe. And at my young mind I already know our 9 different planets and their arrangement according to their distance to our sun. That’s why I was shocked when I heard that Pluto has been dropped as a planet so I try to figure out what happened and the reasons Pluto has been thrown out of their club.
As I was preparing into a sabbatical mode, searching for an answer regarding Pluto’s demotion. Another interesting and surprising information I got is that there was no official definition of a planet before, they just came about it recently after numerous findings of similar ice/rock mixtures like Pluto and even more massive (Whoa! there goes my six years of elementary schooling). Astronomers decided they would make a final decision about the definition of a planet at the XXVIth General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which was held from August 14 to August 25, 2006 in Prague, Czech Republic.
Lets go back in time during the discovery of Pluto to sequence the events that leads to the realization that it is not really a planet. Long before, it has been predicted by astronomers that there would be a 9th planet in the solar system and they called it the Planet X. It was 1930 when Clyde W. Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff Arizona finally discovered an object in the right orbit and declared that he had discovered Planet X. They called it Pluto, a name suggested by an 11-year old school girl in Oxford England (it wasn’t named after the Disney character, but the Roman god of the underworld). Astronomers were not sure about its mass until the discovery of its largest Moon, Charon in 1978. By knowing its mass they could accurately gauge its size. The most accurate measurement gives the size of Pluto at 2,400km (1,500 miles) across which is small even compared to Mercury, which is only 4,880km (3,032 miles) across. Some scientists are already skeptical if Pluto is really a planet due to its size.
Powerful new ground and space-based observatories have completely changed previous understanding of the outer Solar System. Instead of being the only planet in its region, like the rest of the Solar System, Pluto and its moons are now known to be just a large example of a collection of objects called the Kuiper Belt. This region extends from the orbit of Neptune out to 55 astronomical units (55 times the distance of the Earth to the Sun). Astronomers realized that it was only a matter of time before an object larger than Pluto was to be discovered in the Kuiper Belt. And in 2005, Mike Brown and his team dropped the bombshell. They had discovered an object, further out than the orbit of Pluto. Officially named 2003 UB313, the object was later named as Eris. It has approximately 25% more mass than Pluto. With Eris being larger, made of same ice/rock mixture and more massive than Pluto, the concept of nine planets in the Solar System began to fall apart and astronomers decided to make a final decision about the definition of a planet.
Now, an object to be a planet must meet these 3 requirements as defined by IAU
1.) It needs to be in orbit around the sun. (Checked)
2.) It needs to have enough gravity to pull itself together into a spherical shape. (Checked)
3.) It needs to dominate the neighborhood around its orbit. (This is the problem).
Pluto has been demoted because it does not dominate its neighborhood. Charon, its large “moon”, is about half the size of Pluto, while all the true planets are far larger than its moons. In Addition, bodies that dominate their neighborhoods, “sweep up” asteroids, comets and other debris, clearing a path along their orbits. By contrast, Pluto’s orbit is somewhat untidy.
Eight major planets managed to satisfy the definition, but not Pluto. The definition causes some semantic atrocities between some Astronomers. Since Pluto didn’t meet the 3rd criteria, they decided to tag it as a dwarf planet. So Pluto is a dwarf planet. There are many objects with similar size and mass to Pluto jostling around in its orbit and until Pluto crashes into many of them and gains mass, it will remain a dwarf planet. Eris suffers from the same problem.
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References:
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/04/10/why-pluto-is-no-longer-a-planet/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060824-pluto-planet.html/
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=624
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
Is Agapito Flores the real inventor of the Fluorescent Lamp?
Many Filipinos claim that Agapito Flores is the inventor of the Fluorescent lamp, which is one of the most widely used source of lighting in the world today. The fluorescent lamp reportedly got its name from Flores. But who is Agapito Flores?
Agapito Flores was born in Guiguinto, Bulacan Philippines on September 28, 1897. He worked in a machine shop and later moved to Tondo, Manila where he trained at a vocational school to become an electrician.
According to Dr. Benito Vergara of the Philippine Science Heritage Center, “As far as I could learn, a certain Flores presented the idea of fluorescent light to Manuel Quezon when he became president. At that time, General Electric Co. had already presented the fluorescent light to the public.”
Fluorescent light is a product of 79 years of the development of the lighting method that began with the invention of the electric light bulb by Thomas Edison. Among other inventors that claimed credit for developing fluorescent lamp were French physicist A.E. Becquerel (1867), Nikola Tesla, Albert Hall, Mark Winsor and Edmund Germer. Fluorescent tubular lighting systems were first made by Andre Claude, inventor of the neon sign, in France in 1932. Under the Mazda lamp agreement, Westinghouse and General Electric obtained Mr. Claude’s patent rights and developed the fluorescent lamp we know today.
Fluorescent lamps were introduced at the 1939 World’s Fairs in both New York and San Francisco. The introduction heralded a new light source of high efficiency, low brightness, long life and a new physical dimension.
Fluorescent lamp was not named after Flores. The term fluorescent first cropped up as early as 1852 when English mathematician-physicist George Gabriel Stokes discovered a luminous material called “fluorspar”, which he coined with “escence”. The National Academy of Science and Technology also dismissed Flores being the inventor of the Fluorescent lamp as a myth. “No scientific report, no valid statement, no rigorous documents can be used to credit Flores for the discovery of the fluorescent lamp. We have tried to correct the misconception, but the media (for one) and our textbooks (for another) keep using the Flores example,” a Filipino scientist wrote in her column at the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
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Agapito Flores was born in Guiguinto, Bulacan Philippines on September 28, 1897. He worked in a machine shop and later moved to Tondo, Manila where he trained at a vocational school to become an electrician.
According to Dr. Benito Vergara of the Philippine Science Heritage Center, “As far as I could learn, a certain Flores presented the idea of fluorescent light to Manuel Quezon when he became president. At that time, General Electric Co. had already presented the fluorescent light to the public.”
Fluorescent light is a product of 79 years of the development of the lighting method that began with the invention of the electric light bulb by Thomas Edison. Among other inventors that claimed credit for developing fluorescent lamp were French physicist A.E. Becquerel (1867), Nikola Tesla, Albert Hall, Mark Winsor and Edmund Germer. Fluorescent tubular lighting systems were first made by Andre Claude, inventor of the neon sign, in France in 1932. Under the Mazda lamp agreement, Westinghouse and General Electric obtained Mr. Claude’s patent rights and developed the fluorescent lamp we know today.
Fluorescent lamps were introduced at the 1939 World’s Fairs in both New York and San Francisco. The introduction heralded a new light source of high efficiency, low brightness, long life and a new physical dimension.
Fluorescent lamp was not named after Flores. The term fluorescent first cropped up as early as 1852 when English mathematician-physicist George Gabriel Stokes discovered a luminous material called “fluorspar”, which he coined with “escence”. The National Academy of Science and Technology also dismissed Flores being the inventor of the Fluorescent lamp as a myth. “No scientific report, no valid statement, no rigorous documents can be used to credit Flores for the discovery of the fluorescent lamp. We have tried to correct the misconception, but the media (for one) and our textbooks (for another) keep using the Flores example,” a Filipino scientist wrote in her column at the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
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Thursday, October 23, 2008
How Can A Microwave Cook?
It was during a radar-related research project around 1946 that Dr. Percy Spencer noticed something unusual. He was testing a new vacuum tube called a magnetron when he discovered that the candy bar in his pocket had melted. Intrigued, he placed some popcorn kernels near the tube and watched with an inventive sparkle in his eye as the popcorn sputtered, cracked and popped all over his lab. The next morning, he tried putting an egg near the magnetron tube and as he moved in for a closer look just as the egg exploded and splattered hot yolk all over his amazed face. This leads to the invention of the microwave oven with the magnetron tube as its heart.
But what are microwaves? Microwaves are electromagnetic waves just like light, electricity (AC) and radio that travel in waves. Now, that wavelike motion as they travel is defined by the unit Hertz. Hertz is a unit of frequency that measures the number of cycles completed in a specified time as they travel. In our house, the electricity travels in 60 cycles of wavelike motion every one second. That means our house electricity has a frequency of 60 Hz. Microwaves has a frequency between 300 Million Hz (0.3 GHz) to 300,000 Million Hz (300GHz). Microwave ovens are designed to produce only 2.45GHz and some has 2.5 GHz.
Although microwave is just an electromagnetic wave just like light, electromagnetic waves at its frequency range display some interesting properties; water, fats and sugars absorb them. When they are absorbed they are converted directly into atomic motion. The molecules in water, fats and sugars react to the microwave energy, making their molecules vibrate and produce heat. Microwaves in this frequency range have another interesting property; they are not absorbed by most plastics, glass or ceramics. Metal reflects microwaves, which is why metal pans do not work well in a microwave oven.
But what are microwaves? Microwaves are electromagnetic waves just like light, electricity (AC) and radio that travel in waves. Now, that wavelike motion as they travel is defined by the unit Hertz. Hertz is a unit of frequency that measures the number of cycles completed in a specified time as they travel. In our house, the electricity travels in 60 cycles of wavelike motion every one second. That means our house electricity has a frequency of 60 Hz. Microwaves has a frequency between 300 Million Hz (0.3 GHz) to 300,000 Million Hz (300GHz). Microwave ovens are designed to produce only 2.45GHz and some has 2.5 GHz.
Although microwave is just an electromagnetic wave just like light, electromagnetic waves at its frequency range display some interesting properties; water, fats and sugars absorb them. When they are absorbed they are converted directly into atomic motion. The molecules in water, fats and sugars react to the microwave energy, making their molecules vibrate and produce heat. Microwaves in this frequency range have another interesting property; they are not absorbed by most plastics, glass or ceramics. Metal reflects microwaves, which is why metal pans do not work well in a microwave oven.
Corned Beef Without The Corn...
For some reason, all of a sudden, while I was at the parking lot and getting ready to go home, this question suddenly popped-up out of my curious and ever questioning mind. Why do we call corned beef "corned" wherein is has no corn at all? Is it some kind of an oxymoron? So I went over the internet and do a little research over the word "corned beef". To summarize it all, this is what I got...
“Corned beef” is defined as a beef cured or pickled in brine. Brine is a salt water. Way back to the days before refrigeration, faced with the challenge of preserving fresh meat for the winter season, meat was dry-cured in coarse of “corns” of salt. Chunks of salts were rubbed into beef to keep it from spoiling and to preserve it. The word corn referred to the grains of coarse of salts packed around the beef brisket. Thus the meat was called “corned” beef in reference to the corns of salt (1620s).
It feels like, another mystery solved. Isn't always fun to know???
=)
“Corned beef” is defined as a beef cured or pickled in brine. Brine is a salt water. Way back to the days before refrigeration, faced with the challenge of preserving fresh meat for the winter season, meat was dry-cured in coarse of “corns” of salt. Chunks of salts were rubbed into beef to keep it from spoiling and to preserve it. The word corn referred to the grains of coarse of salts packed around the beef brisket. Thus the meat was called “corned” beef in reference to the corns of salt (1620s).
It feels like, another mystery solved. Isn't always fun to know???
=)
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