I don't care what people say, I still love the sport!

In honor of the Olympics I am going to talk about one of the major natural phenomena that almost all of the winter athletes have to take into account: friction.

Friction is a force resisting motion of solids, liquid layers and elements in contact. Basically, friction is the force opposite of motion. When you think of friction, you are probably thinking about kinetic friction. This is the friction created by two objects when moving relative to each other. A specific type of kinetic friction is fluid friction. This is when a solid object moves over/through a liquid of gas. Friction is created because of charge particles.

Flashback: Every object is comprised of little tiny itsy bitsy molecules that have charges.
Molecules have a nucleus with a positive charge (protons are positive and neutrons are charge neutral) and the nucleus is surrounded by negatively charged electrons. Most molecules end up have an overall net charge of zero, but charges can change.

When two objects move past one another, their charged particles are passing one another. You should know that two opposite charges do not like one another. When charged particles are forced past other charged particles, resistance (friction) and heat (thermal energy) is created. Need a visual? Rub your hands together. They don’t just slid past one another easily (friction) and they will start to warm up (thermal energy).

That was a nice little intro into friction, but trust me, after taking physics you will learn there is a LOT more to friction (actually, I feel like I say that in almost every post – I guess just know I am giving you very basic foundations of scientific knowledge in these posts). Now I want to apply it to one of my favorite winter sports: curling.

In curling, a person pushes their stone down the ice in hopes of knocking the opponents stones out of the way and landing closest to the center of the target - very simple concept, but lots of physics to think about.

After the stone is released, friction between the stone and the ice will cause the stone to gradually slow until it stops. To reduce this friction, the ice of curling matches is not smooth. It is sprayed with water to create a surface with lots of tiny ice bumps. This reduces the amount of ice surface area the curling stone will come in contact with and thereby reduces the amount of friction the stone will encounter. Sweeping the path in front of the stone creates friction and the thermal energy (heat) actually smoothes and softens the ice a little (about 1.5 degrees) to help guide the curling stone. Until very recently people thought the ice being swept in front of the stone actually melted – thermal imaging cameras destroyed that theory a few months ago. The sweeping actually only softens the ice.


Researchers were hired by the Canadian government to study the physics of curling (they released the data above) and I would love to tell you more of the results they found, but the Canadian government has them under confidentiality contracts until June 2010. Canada really wants gold this year!

Here is a link to a video with footage of the thermal imaging cameras: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/02/05/f-tech-physics-curling.html?ref=rss

Well maybe if Kathie Lee was selling it to me...

Are people really this stupid?

Last night while taking a break from the Olympics and watching Will and Grace, I saw two back-to-back commercials that really annoyed me…

The first was for Lysol’s new, *touch free* antibacterial soap dispenser. Apparently every kitchen needs one to prevent the spreading of germs. Ok, stop and think for a second – stopping the spread of germs on a bottle of soap. Besides the fact I cannot stand when people use the word germ (that will be another post), the biggest issue I had with this commercial is that you are about to wash your hands! Who cares if “germs” get on the soap pump – anyone that touches it is going to wash their hands anyways!


The second commercial was for antibacterial Windex. Who the hell needs their windows to be free of bacteria? Am I missing something? Do people lick their windows every so often? Not to mention, what bacteria (that will bother a human) can actually survive and grow on glass? It is not exactly an ideal place to live and find nutrients. I acknowledge that Windex is a multi-surface cleaner, but has anyone taken the time to read the fine print? It claims Windex kills 99.9% of common household germs, but then there is a “‡”. What this double dagger then goes on to tell us (if you go to the website) is that 99.9% means 7 bacterial species. And to kill 3 of those 7, including salmonella and E. coli, you need to spray it on the surface until wet, allow it to sit for 5 minutes and then wipe clean. Who does that? No one!

This is true for almost all of the products that claim they kill 99.9% of common household germs. They only kill a few types of bacteria and most of the time they don’t even do that because people do not use the product correctly. Oh yeah, and don’t forget that most diseases are actually viral and are therefore not even affected by antibacterial products.

UGH! Sorry, that was a little bit of a vent/rant, but this is just a topic that really bothers me. What should you take out of this (besides the obvious – don’t buy those two products)?

You don’t need to use antibacterial soap. Soap is a very simple molecule to understand. To save you boring chemistry, just know that when soap is in water is able to encapsulate dirt, oil and bacteria. It basically forms a little bubble around the particles. Once encapsulated, it can easily be rinsed off and down the drain. Regular old soap, by its very chemical nature, is antibacterial! The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that antibacterial soaps are pointless and the best thing a person can do is wash with ordinary soap and warm water. But people are scared of bacteria so companies got smart and started marketing antibacterial soap.

To make something antibacterial manufacturers will add other chemicals, usually triclosan. Triclosan will kill bacteria, but only if left on the surface for around 2 minutes. Who takes that long to wash their hands? Some bacteria have also been reported to have become resistant to triclosan and antibacterial resistance is a HUGE issue. If you have soap that contains triclosan – throw it out! Soaps can also add alcohol or small amounts of phenol to kill bacteria, but these types of soaps really should be reserved for people in medical and bioresearch fields.

He got big ego, such a huge ego...

A dear friend of mine (who is also about to become a year older) found these pictures for me. I'm a visual kind of guy so obvi I love them!

The first couple images are straight forward...






Sirius (a fairly close star) is the brightest star in Earth’s night sky. Pollux is 34 light years away and is the brightest star in the Gemini constellation. Arcturus is the second brightest star visible from the northern hemisphere (3rd brightest overall) and is the brightest in the constilation Boötes.


Rigel is a blue supergiant that is the sixth brightest star in the sky. It is the brightest star in the constellation Orion. Aldebaran is an orange giant star that is the brightest star in the constellation Taurus. It is 65 light years away from us. Now for the big boys…

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant and is one of the biggest stars known to be in existence. It is 640 light years away and is the second brightest (second to Rigel) star in Orion. Based on lots of complex math, Betelgeuse has a diameter estimated to be around 1000 times that of our sun. Betelgeuse is expected to become a supernova (see my past post about stars) within the next 1000 years. When this happens it will be so bright that it when people look up at the night sky from earth, it will be brighter than the moon!

Antares is also a red supergiant that is 600 light years away. It is the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius. This star is HUGE with a diameter of around 1,600 times the size of our sun. If you replaced our sun with Antares, it would eat up the inner planets and have its outer border between Mars and Jupiter.


What’s crazy is that there are almost certainly even bigger stars that we have just never seen!
If that doesn’t make you feel small and humble to the universe, you have an ego problem!

And here is the website the pictures are from, if you're interested: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/9LspdV/www.rense.com/general72/size.htm

This one blows my mind!

This girl, who does not even have a vagina, performed oral sex, got stabbed in the stomach and then got pregnant because sperm got into her abdominal cavity while doctors were fixing her stomach. How crazy is this?!

I told you how hard it actually is to get pregnant (that’s a way back post) – This is just crazy!

Here is the link to the story at abc news:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/incredible-sperm-survived-oral-sex-knife-fight-impregnated/story?id=9732562&page=1

Charlie the Unicorn!

Sorry sorry sorry!! I know I said I was going to post yesterday, but then I got swamped at work and just didn’t have the time. But today is a fun post. It’s about unicorns!

Well, actually it’s about the unicorn whale, the Narwhal.

The Narwhal is a cute little whale (if 3,500 lbs is little) found in the Atlantic and Russian portions of the Arctic. The most conspicuous feature of these animals is their large tusks. Inuit legend claims that one day a woman was hunting whale. She tied the rope to her harpoon around her waist and after harpooning a large Narwhal, she was pulled into the freezing water. She was transformed into a Narwhal herself and her long twisted hair became the tusk. Cute idea. Besides the obvious issue with the story, tucks are also only found on male whales.

So a tusk, huh? Of course I am going to ask a scientist’s favorite question: why?

First, what is this tusk? It is actually a left-spiraled incisor tooth that projects from the left side of the upper jaw. They are usually between 2-3 meters long (7-10 ft) and weigh about 10kg (22 lbs).

The most obvious reason for the evolutionary purpose of these tusks is for sexual bravado. A bigger tusk makes you a better man because you can fight with it and it looks pretty. This would mean that the tusk is important in creating social hierarchy within the group and would determine social ranks. Usually when this is the case, an animal uses its “bravado tool” – it shows it off or fights with it. The Narwhal has never really been seen fighting with its tusk. It hasn’t even been seen using it as a tool to break ice.

Recent studies by a Harvard professor found that the tusk is covered by millions of highly sensitive neurons. These neurons act as the whale’s environment detector. They are able to detect changes in temperature, pressure, salinity and water particle concentration. These are all things that are very important to survival.

The science community is still not sold on the sensor theory as the sole reason for these tusks. I think it is a little of everything - classic, “my rod is bigger than yours and I can feel things with it.”

Sorry, I was a little MIA

Hi friends!

I have to apologize for not posting last week – I know, I suck. For a bunch of reasons, I just needed to take the week off and focus. But don’t fret, I am still going to post and keep this blog updated with lovely little science tidbits. I’ll have a post for you a little later today.