Category: Science and Tech

Bizarre Starfish Wasting Syndrome

By Anupum Pant

Up in the Washington state a videographer and also a diver, Laura James noticed a couple of  dead Starfish on the coast one day. The dead bodies looked like something mysterious had happened. There were broken bodies and splats all over the place as if the fish had been zapped by a laser.

Laura videographed some of the tens of thousands of starfish bodies all over the north america’s pacific coast. No one was sure what was actually happening. And then there were reports of these mysterious starfish deaths from all over the west coast of North America.

For some time, only the sunflower starfish were thought to be affected by this. However, on further investigation, it was found that almost 12 different species of starfish were dying mysteriously all over the west coast (and some on the east coast too). When this was confirmed to be an epidemic of some sort, they started calling it the sea star wasting syndrome and notified the scientists.

Ben minor, a western Washington university professor of biology started collecting sea stars at the coast. They found a number of normal sea stars. Later when the search continued a pile of sea star arms and twisted parts of them were found at different places. Some of the live starfish were collected and were studied in the laboratory.

It was confirmed that the starfish which were affected by this epidemic experienced twisting arms and lesions first and then the arms crawled away in different directions, tearing the body of a starfish apart. All of it in under 24 hours. This bizarre disease then left a spill of inside parts of the fish and broken body parts all over the place.

No one knows for sure what causes this bizarre disease among the sea stars.

The Highest Unclimbed Mountain

By Anupum Pant

Gangkhar Puensum, meaning three mountain siblings, is the tallest mountain in Bhutan with an elevation of 7,570 meters. Since the 80s several attempts have been made to climb this mountain – a part of which lies in Bhutan and the other part in Tibet. None of the attempts have ever been successful.

However in the year 1999, a team of climbers from Japan, after a protracted attempt to get a permit, were able to reach the top of one of the three peaks – Liankang Kangri – from the Chinese side of the mountain. Later, protests from local people in Bhutan made them stop.

So technically, the highest peak has never been climbed by anyone till date. Gangkhar Puensum remains the highest unclimbed mountain. The reason mostly is because obtaining a permit to climb it is almost impossible. It is prohibited by the government of Bhutan.

The prohibition by the government has mostly to do with the lack of rescue services at that place, and due to the local belief which considers the peak sacred – a home to holy spirits.

Gangkhar Puensum is certainly one of the uncharted mysterious places in the world where no one has gone and probably never will.

The Landolt Clock Reaction

By Anupum Pant

Steve Spangler Never ceases to amaze me. Once again I found this old video of him on the Ellen show. These are a few experiments he does on the stage…

  • Lights a tube light with his bare hands and Ellen’s.
  • A transparent liquid suddenly instantly changes colour.
  • Blows the hydrogen and oxygen mixture on Ellen’s hand.
  • And makes someone from the audience walk across the table on a non newtonian fluid.

Steve doesn’t exactly explains what happens there, but the second experiment is my favourite. It is the one in which he asks Ellen to pour two transparent liquids into each other and mix them well. Then Ellen waits for a few seconds and the liquid instantly turns into an ink like colour.

The magical effect is actually a chemical reaction known as the Landolt Clock Reaction. It actually involves 3 different solutions (read about them). The reaction happens quicker once the mixing starts and leads to a third reaction which happens immeasurably fast. It’s totally instantaneous and thus the transparent solutions turn into a bluish black iodine starch complex. As steve’s website puts it…

The sudden change from a colorless solution to the blue-black solution is the result of four sequential reactions. First, the bisulfite ions (HSO3-) reduce some of the iodate ions (IO3-) to form iodide ions (I-). Next, the iodide ions (I-) are oxidized by the remaining iodate ions (IO3-) to form triiodide ions (I3-). The solution now consists of triiodide ions (I3-) and soluble starch. In the third reaction, the triiodide ions (I3-) get reduced by the bisulfite ions (HSO3-) to become iodide ions (I-). That continues until all of the bisulfite has been consumed. Finally, the triiodide ions and starch combine to form the dark blue-black starch complex that looks like ink.

See more at: SteveSpanglerScience

Staircase to the Moon

By Anupum Pant

Broome is a coastal town in the Kimberley region of west Australia. Every year when all the conditions perfectly fall in place, a very interesting and brilliant natural spectacle occurs. They call it “Staircase to the moon“. It indeed looks like stairs reaching to the moon. Thousands of tourists and the local people gather to watch it happen.

For it to happen the weather, sunset, moonrise and the tide conditions all need to be perfectly right. Before I tell you what happens there, look at a picture of this natural phenomenon. (Or it won’t seem very interesting if I tell you about it first).

Staircase-To-The-Moon

This happens only during the low tide at the coast when the moon is rising. During the low tide, the mudflats get exposed and the rising moon creates this mesmerising reflection on the sand.

The natural phenomenon can also been seen from other coastlines at Onslow, Dampier, Cossack, Point Samson Peninsula, Hearson Cove and Port Hedland.

Plastic Material Out of Banana Peel

By Anupum Pant

Banana peel is the most useless part of a banana, or is it? At least, not for young Elif Bilgin from Turkey. Elif, a 16-year-old girl from Istanbul, Turkey saw something useful in something as ordinary as a banana peel and sought to fight petroleum-based pollution by creating a bio-material from it which could probably be used as a replacement for plastic.

Experimenting for more than 2 years, and after numerous failed attempts, Elif was able to develop a simplified method involving very little equipment to create a new plastic from banana peel. She dreams that this bio-plastic will completely replace petroleum-based plastic some day and will probably used to make cosmetic prosthesis and in the insulation of cables.

Seeing Your Own Eye Blood Vessels

By Anupum Pant

Blind spots are fine and I’ve known for years how to spot your own blind spot. You can make 2 spots on a paper separated by 4-5 inches, close your right eye and look at the right side spot with your left eye. If you do that and move forward or backward ( and rest at about 15 inches from the surface you drew on), you’d find a point where your left eye’s peripheral vision would not render the left side spot. You’d have found your blind spot.

But there is something more interesting, I never knew. You can actually see the blood vessels of your eye, with your own eye. Here’s how…

Take a sheet of paper (or card), and poke a pin hole in it. Then close one eye and holding paper close to your eye, jerk around the paper in little circles. At the same time, make sure you are looking at a bright white area through that hole. You could open up MS paint, make the whole canvas white and stare at it through the hole. Try to focus on the white screen and not the paper (or card)…

The video probably explains it better.

Liquid Nitrogen Experiments

By Anupum Pant

Short of time and keeping up with a busy schedule, I looked around for something interesting to learn today and I found this cool video of very interesting experiments that were done with liquid Nitrogen on ScienceDump. There are 11 such experiments that are shown in the video…

The first one is a Liquid Nitrogen explosion, something like this professor did some time back. To demonstrate his students how Liquid Nitrogen expanded, he blew up a container of Liquid nitrogen to toss 1,500 ping-pong balls. [Video]

Is an Aeolipile, or a rocket styled jet engine made using liquid nitrogen A.K.A Hero engine. Liquid nitrogen heats up inside a container, expands and comes out of tiny orifices to create a jet that makes the container spin. A simpler version of it can be done using a ping pong ball (again). [Video]

The third one simply is a demonstration of what happens when you eat a biscuit dipped in Liquid Nitrogen.

Fourth one again is something you’ll have to see to get really impressed by what some solids at very low temperatures can do. A nice demonstration of something similar is done on this video. [Video]

Fifth one! Oh, the Leidenfrost effect. We’ve talked enough about it already. [Here]

Others are all pretty interesting too. The eight one probably takes the cake – brings back a dead creature to life, or does it…. But I won’t spoil them for you. Watch the video now…

A Few Amusing Physics Phenomena

By Anupum Pant

Veritasium has always amused us with very interesting physics phenomena over the years. And now, as always, the channel has asked its users to send their answers to these 5 interesting physics mystery.  Here have a look at them…

Do leave a reply on his channel if you think you know why these happen.

For all of the 5 things, I do have my own theories but I’d rather wait till the next week when Derek will release the solution video. I do not want to publish my haphazard theories, which might be wrong.

However, I’m quite sure about one thing. Why does cereal get attracted by a magnet?

That is mostly because it has iron in it. By iron I mean real iron in its pure form. In fact, you can even extract iron from cereal. The best part is that it is not even difficult. All you need is cereal, a neodymium magnet, water, a bowl and a resealable bag.

The Weissenberg Effect

By Anupum Pant

Remember the time we talked about a boiled egg spinning on a pool of milk? If you don’t then it’s good to know that if you do spin a hard-boiled egg on a pool of milk (or any relatively viscous liquid) the milk mysteriously climbs the side of the egg, reaches the equator, and then sprinkles around beautifully. It’s fun to see it happen. This is something similar…

The thing we see today is called the Weissenberg effect and this is how it works.

You take a spinning rod and put it into a solution of liquid polymer (which is usually very viscous). And when you do that, you see that the liquid polymer magically climbs the walls of the rod.

Some liquids reach a little high and never beyond. While others can climb up really high. The difference in heights to which different liquids can climb to is demonstrated in the following video very clearly. The three liquids used in it are as follows:

  1. Guar gum solution crosslinked with sodium tetraborate
  2. Pancake batter
  3. and Dyed glue crosslinked with sodium tetraborate.

[Read more]

A 2-Minute Exercise to Do Better in Interviews

By Anupum Pant

Is there a job interview or a public speaking gig coming up for you? Well, you don’t have to worry as much as you are doing right now because Amy Cuddy is here to save you.

Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist at Harvard Business School, talks about a power pose – a 2-minute pose – you could strike before going into an interview which has been proven to have a significant difference in your performance at anything that requires confidence (like an interview).

She introduces this concept in the a very convincing TED talk that I’ve attached below. If you do not need much convincing, you could skip watching the talk and just do this before you go into an interview or go to the stage for something.

  • Find a quiet place where no one will see you and make fun of you.
  • Strike a superhero pose. If you don’t know what that means, stand like this. For 2 minutes. Done! Otherwise, here is a nice infographic based on Cuddy’s research. [Link]
  • If you don’t, at least do not stoop and close your shoulders while waiting in the lobby because it certainly affects you negatively.

Apparently, according to an experiment by Amy Cuddy and Dana Carney of Berkeley, 86% of those who posed in the high-power position (the superhero pose) opted to gamble, while only 60% of the low-power posers (closed poses) felt comfortable taking a roll of the dice.

Moreover, a significant difference was found in the saliva samples of both the high-power pose people and the low-power pose people. Who’d have thought that a simple 2 minute pose could make chemical differences in your body!

On an average, the high-pose people saliva showed an 8% increase in the testosterone level, while the ones who did the low-power pose had a 10% decrease of the same. That is phenomenal, if you ask me.

Also, the hormone related to stress, Cortisol decreased by 25% among high-power posers and increased 15% among low power posers. (A decrease in cortisol levels is better for activities like interviews)

The 52 Year Old Fire

By Anupum Pant

Centralia, a small town in Pennsylvania sits on massive deposits of an A-class quality of coal – Under the town, in every direction, the coal veins span across several miles (50-80 miles long). In the 50s it used to be a bustling little town of about 2000 people, and yet the population of this town has dwindled to 10 now.

Some it has to do with the fact that Centralia has a fire burning underneath. A massive fire that accidentally started more than 50 years ago, and it still continues to burn, even today.

In May 1962, five volunteers were hired to clean up the landfill for Memorial day celebrations. Unlike every other time, when landfills were located at some other places and were set to fire to clean up, this time they were on an abandoned strip-mine pit next to the Odd Fellows Cemetery. Like the fire used to die off all the time, the fire set on that day (May 27th, 1962) never got extinguished. And then entered the labyrinth of abandoned coal mines beneath Centralia. The fire still burns…

Today, Centralia is no more than a ghost town. Several places here have huge cracks in the ground spewing hot steam.

centralia coal fire

By many, the fire is believed to be the sole factor in converting this bustling 50s town into a ghost town. However there’s much more to it than just the fire. Radiolab gives a great insight on it…

Although there is a 1 hour-long documentary on Youtube about this, do not forget to have a look at this short documentary about the town. “The Unknown Cameraman”, an urban explorer presents..

The Giant Japanese Hornet is an Intense Killer Machine

By Anupum Pant

For the sake of knowing, scientists have given the Japanese Giant hornet a name – Vespa mandarinia japonica – a name normally you need not remember. However, there is a thing you should always remember about them. See the picture of this insect below and remember what it looks like. And if you see it coming towards you while you are holidaying in Japan, just run for for your life. This is the Japanese Giant Hornet:

giant hornet

Yes, this giant hornet is a deadly killer machine. You should fear it because…

Well, first of all they are large and fearsome and have stingers that are more than 6 mm long. They use these to inject a relatively large amount of venom into the target – A kind of venom which attacks the nervous system and damages tissues. The venom is also known to destroy red blood cells, which can result in kidney failure and even death in some cases.

Secondly, just read what Wikipedia says about it…

Thirty to forty people die in Japan every year after having been stung, which makes the Japanese giant hornet the second most lethal animal in Japan after humans (bears kill zero to five people and venomous snakes kill five to ten people each year).

Thirdly, these hornets are known to move around in small groups of 20-30 individuals who manage to kill tens of thousands of bees in their own beehive, and then they steal their young ones. About 30 of these giant hornets can kill 30,000 bees in a single attack. They don’t just kill, they rip the bees apart mercilessly. Watch a video of them ravaging a beehive…

Also remember that it won’t come searching for you to sting you to death, until it senses threat.

It’s So Easy To Make A Speaker At Home!

By Anupum Pant

While doing a random experiment with the ordinary motor, a youtuber Andy Elliott who runs the channel mist8k (known for his awesome videos) mistakenly touched the 3.5 mm jack of a speaker cable to the motor’s wires.

This resulted in something very interesting. The sound being transmitted through the cable started coming from the motor. And consequently, he invented the very basic speaker. Then he made a video of him explaining how to make a speaker at home using just a copper wire, magnet, tape, jacks and a disposable plastic cup.

I first saw this on Gizmodo and I thought it deserved a mention in the engineering section of this blog. I can’t wait to try it myself and probably improve the “very basic speaker” to make a nice iPod dock in the future…

Here is what he does –

  • Uncoils a copper wire from a component of an old PC, turns it into a small circular coil of the size of the circular magnet and then tapes it to the back of a disposable plastic cup.
  • Then, makes a larger coil by winding it around a bottle cap and tapes it on top of the smaller coil.
  • Connects one end of the larger coil to the tip of the 3.5 mm jack and the other end of the coil to the base of the jack. The other end of this wire having the 3.5 mm jack is also a 3.5 mm jack, which goes into the computer’s (or any player’s) speaker plug.
  • Places a strong neodymium magnet on top of the coils and plays the music. That’s it!

The computer turns the sound signal into an electric current. This current flows into the jack and then into the coil. Thus, the coil produces a magnetic field of its own. This varying magnetic field coupled with the static magnetic field of the neodymium magnet makes the coil move. Which in turn moves the back of the cup (as it’s taped on it) and makes the air vibrate. As a result, sound is created.

Here’s the video where he teaches how to do it…

The Amusing Kiwi Beaks

By Anupum Pant

Kiwis have a fairly long beaks, but technically they have the shortest beaks of all birds. There’s a very funny reason for that.

Kiwis can’t see too well. However they have an exceptionally good sense of smell, thanks to their nostrils which are at the tip of their beaks.

According to another research done recently, Kiwi beaks have specialized sensors at the tip which help them to sense tiny vibrations. Combining both the exceptionally good sense of smell and the ability to detect minute vibrations using their beaks, kiwis are able to find creepy crawlies moving under a layer of mud.

Now, they have long thin beaks, physically. And at the end of the beak there are nostrils.

Officially the convention to measure the beak of a bird dictates that the measurement be done from the end of the tip to the nostril. And since Kiwis have nostrils at the tip, the distance from the tip of their beaks to their nostrils is very less (negligible). That distance is also, technically, according to the convention, the length of their beaks.

So, Kiwis officially have the shortest beaks among all birds, even if they physically have fairly long beaks.

A Fan With No Blades

By Anupum Pant

Fans have always had blades which chop up the air and send a turbulent gush towards you. Also, “you can’t put your head or hand through the traditional fan”. Although these things aren’t big problems that the device says it’d solve, I still like how different and innovative this thing is. Certainly worthy of sharing in my engineering section…

This one, one of the many amazing things invented by sir James Dyson, is a blade-less fan. Or as the man likes to call his invention – an air multiplier. As the name suggests, the device has no blades and yet it is capable of shooting out a steady stream of air on your face.

It’s amazing how it works. Watch Sir James Dyson himself explain it to you.