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Sunday, December 4, 2011

Cause of the Seasons (an exerpt from a book I'm writing)

More to the point, how should I proceed?  I think perhaps here that an explanation of the seasons should make a good a starting point as any, given that it really isn’t a difficult scientific problem and that someone so dear to me proved a classical type B in refusing to listen to the solution.  You can judge as well at this point:  do I make a clear, coherent theory of the seasons such that a school child could understand it, or do I leave you still scratching your head?
Let us begin.  I know that somewhere in your primary education you learned that Earth moves by a double motion: it revolves around the sun, in a time period known as a year, and it also rotates on its own axis (an imaginary line connecting the north and south geographical poles), in a time period we call a day.  Abstract knowledge is not enough here, remember; an act of reasonable, logical imagination is needed.  Thus, I’ve provided a picture of this double motion, as seen from some vantagepoint way out in space:
Here the sun is at the center of the picture, and Earth is the blue spheres revolving about her (of course, there’s only one Earth; the six in the picture simply show it at different points in its orbit).  Although it doesn’t demonstrate Earth’s rotation about its own axis, it does show the axis, as the faint blue lines drawn through the various Earths, tilting from bottom left up toward the right.  Earth spins on that axis, which, you’ll notice, doesn’t change direction as the planet orbits the sun – hint, this is the key to the explanation. Oh:  The terms periapsis and apoapsis refer to the points in Earth’s orbit when it is closest and when it is furthest from the sun; for the orbit is not a perfect circle, but is actually, as Johannes Kepler realized in the 16’th century, an ellipse in which the sun is at one focus (of two foci) of the ellipse.
[I should not assume anything.  You can make an ellipse yourself by using the following directions:  place a piece of paper on a table; stick two pins some distance apart from each other (not too far from each other or too far from the center of the paper, or the ellipse will fall off the paper and the experiment won’t work); take a piece of string with the two ends tied together (making it a loop) and place the loop around the two pins and a pencil that is in contact with the paper (it should yield a triangular shape for the string); with the pencil inside the fully stretched out string (remember, the string is stretched about only the pencil and the two pins), draw the naturally closed shape on the paper, keeping it taut as you draw all the way around.  This shape is an ellipse and the two pins the foci of the ellipse.  It looks, as you can see in the Earth/sun picture, like a squashed circle; and that’s a good way describe it.]
All planetary orbits, including Earth’s, are ellipses with the sun at one focus; that, recall, is one of (the three of) Kepler’s Laws of planetary motion.  Now, you might think at once that this explains the seasons; for when Earth is closest to the sun it will be summer, and when it furthest, winter will grip the planet.
You might be tempted towards such an hypothesis.  Instead, what should immediately smack you on the head is something you’ve known for a very long time:  Earth’s seasons aren’t neatly divided into summer and winter.  When it is summer in the northern hemisphere it is winter in the southern, and vice-versa.  Indeed, if you look at the picture of Earth’s orbit, you’ll see that the northern winter solstice (the first day of winter) occurs just two weeks before periapsis, or the closest approach to the sun.  The same is true of the northern summer solstice and apoapsis.
So this hypothesis won’t wash (though I have seen it seriously proposed).  What hypothesis will pass muster, as in being consistent with observable facts?  I hinted before that it lay with Earth’s axis, and indeed in here the solution presents itself.  Go back and look at the Earth/sun picture yet again, especially at the different Earths’ axes, and observe something I haven’t pointed yet.  Do you see it?  Don’t worry if you don’t because the significance isn’t all that obvious until you think about it.
If you haven’t spotted it yet, here it is.  The axes are not straight up and down with respect to Earth’s orbital plane (the imaginary flat and infinite surface the orbit naturally fits inside), but are tilted with respect to that plane; and furthermore, as said, they retain the same tilt all the way through Earth’s orbit – um, at the risk of getting ahead of myself, this is an example of Conservation of Angular Momentum, one of the great conservation laws of physics (and is truly what makes the world go round!).
The axis tilt in this case is about 23° (degrees), in the system where 90° or a right angle is just two connecting lines perpendicular to each other () – you should have picked this up from high school geometry, but may have forgotten so I repeat it here.
Look at the periapsis Earth point, near the upper right corner of the diagram.  The whole explanation for the seasons can be made here, because what I am about to say will apply to all the Earth points.  This is almost the particular point (it is really at the winter solstice, the first day of winter, December 21) where in the northern hemisphere the axis tilts furthest away from the sun, and, conversely, in the southern hemisphere tilts furthest towards the sun.  This is the key to the seasons.
Look at this particular point I’ve chosen carefully.  Northern Earth appears to be, in fact is, leaning away from the sun, while the southern part of the planet is leaning toward it.  For observers standing on both hemispheres, the northern one not only sees fewer sunlit hours during a winter’s day (which is why we say winter has shorter hours, though this is not really true; all days are 24 hours long, nighttime and daytime parts combined), but also the angle of the sun is lower in the sky, spreading the portion of sunlight per ground area (space on Earth’s surface) thin.  For the southern observer, it is high summer for the precise same reasons:  more sunlit hours during the day, and a high sun in the sky, concentrating its rays on a minimum area.  Can you see this?  I hope that, maybe with some effort, you can.
    No wonder it is cold in winter and warm in summer, and that the two hemispheres have opposing seasons!  The small difference in overall sunlight received from Earth’s orbit being an ellipse (it is, in fact, only very slightly elliptical, nowhere near as much as implied in the picture) makes only a small perturbation (change) to the effects of Earth’s tilted axis. 
     In the interests of not over-simplifying things and so “dumbing science down” (all attempts will be made to avoid doing so in this book, or at least keep it on the shortest leash possible), I need to be a little more forthcoming – although you can skip the following if you feel the need to do so, a need which I’ll just hope you will resist.  I have pretty much stated flat out that Earth’s orbital axis is about 23° and always points in the same direction, and that is due to the so-called immutable Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum.  In fact, looked at from year to year, or even century to century, this is basically true, which is why my explanation of the seasons can stay afloat.  But, as always, the real picture is more complicated than this.  There are other motions of the Earth.  First, the angle is not always 23° but “wobbles” about somewhat over hundreds of thousands of years.  Also, the direction of the tilt also moves, in a circular fashion, over a period of about 25,000 years.  This means that 12-13,000 years from now the northern and southern seasons will have switched and we’ll be celebrating the winter holidays (Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, Festivus, etc.) during the beginning of summer, just as those in Australia and South America do today.  Easter too will come in the fall, not spring.  (This all assumes any of us humans will still be here to celebrate them, by no means an automatically true proposition.)  These relatively minor movements can also be perturbed into larger ones, at least in theory, by the gravitational influences of the other planets, or by passing stars or other large objects as they come and go near the solar system over periods lasting millions of years.  If you are interested by the way, our large moon largely, and fortunately I hasten to add, shields us from most of the more extreme perturbations; I say fortunately, because it is unclear whether life, or at least complex life, could exist if Earth were that unstable in its motions.  Interesting are the whims and wills of the universe!

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Why Bleach + Ammonia is Dangerous


You’ve probably heard that you should never mix household bleach with ammonia.  With a little research I’ve discovered the reason why.  Bleach is a solution of sodium hypochlorite, and sodium hypochlorite and ammonia react to form a number of products, depending on the temperature, concentration, and how they are mixed.  To be more precise, in bleach sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) dissociates into its ionic components

NaOCl → Na+ + OCl-
 
 
OCl- in turn reacts weakly with water to form:
 
 
OCl- + H2O → H+ + Cl- + HOCl, in which the H+ + Cl- portion is just hydrochloric acid.
 
 
Stronger reactions are:
 
 
NH3 + OCl- → OH- + NH2Cl
NH2Cl + OCl- → OH- + NHCl2
NHCl2 + OCl- → OH- + NCl3

The OH- produced in the last three reactions are probably more than enough to neutralize the hydrochloric acid made by the second reaction.  More importantly, the NHxCly compounds produced by the last three are severe irritants of the eyes and mucous membranes and are also toxic. NCl3 can also be explosive, in high enough concentrations. There still other reactions that produce toxic chemicals, but this alone should account for why mixing bleach with ammonia is such a no-no.
I think I understand me. If you think about things -- you know, life, the universe, and everything -- too much, you'll start freaking out. Unfortunately, that's exactly what I do. Life at the edge has its advantages too, however.

Friday, December 2, 2011

The direct comparison of DNA and genes to their counterparts in computers has been done often, and with great success.  Looking at life at the level of digital information is a fruitful plantation which we've probably only begun to explore.  It can get evolutionists into trouble, however, and in a very specific way; it is odd to me, however, that no creationist (Intelligent Design Proponent, or IDP) seems to have hit on it.

A random error in a piece of computer code has, for all intents and purposes, precisely zero possible positive outcomes; it is almost certain to crash the program, or cause some other irreversible error, rendering the program useless.  Of course bugs do creep into software from time to time, but that just just strengthens the point:  how many times do you see a bug make software more useful or efficient?  Invariably, it leads either to recalls or quick "patches" being sent out to users.

So, reflecting on the digital nature of DNA/RNA, the IDP maybe believes he's spotted a fundamental flaw in evolutionary theory, at its most basic biochemical roots.  Mutations are the result in changes to the digital information in DNA (a change in a pair of bases, e.g.); an analogy to the digital nature of computers should suggest that a mutation with a positive outcome is as virtually impossible for the resulting organism as it is for a computer program.  Hence, the death of Darwinian theory.

Darwinian proponents should, I think, jump to two problems with this analysis.  The first problem, they might note, is that the DNA code is not created by a designer, for any specific purpose.  Truly random code might very well lead to improvements.  Actually, it should have equally probable positive and negative and neutral results.  Even code just non-random enough to yield living things might lead to enough positives to provide a plausible rebuttal to creationist-type thinking.

Although that, I believe, is a good objection, there is a much stronger one that can be made.  But to make it, we must abandon the all digital model of DNA and its products.  Those products in fact are quite non-digital, read analog, meaning varying by continuous degrees instead of in discrete steps.  The products are proteins.

Proteins are "macromolecules"; they have a very high molecular weight, because they are the results of many (often thousands) of small molecules called "amino acids" being chemically bonded together.  The exact sequence of amino acids (there are twenty of them used in biology) is determined by three successive base units in DNA, called trinucleotides.  These nucleotides are what are subject to random mutations, with the results being filtered through the sieve of natural selection.

If you're following this, you see that the exact chemical composition of a protein is determined by the sequence of trinucleotides in the DNA that wrought it.  But now you have to understand how proteins work.  Amino acids are very "sticky" molecules and cause all sorts of folding and modelling in the protein they comprise.  That folding and modelling (and size) is key to what each protein does and how it can do it.

So: what happens when a mutation occurs?  In its simplest form, a mutation simple swaps one amino acid in a protein composed hundreds to thousands of such acids for another amino acid.  With what affect for the protein's function?  Probably very little.  With most proteins, you can probably swap out dozens of amino acids with others, and the net result is nil; the protein's size and shape aren't significantly affected.  Even if it isn't nil, it's usually so small that it has almost a good a chance of being positive as negative.

Now that is prime fodder for natural selection to work on, especially when it has thousands to millions of years of differences in survival and reproduction to work on.  The whole setup couldn't be better for "evolutionists" (I really mean scientists here) to understand the subjects they study.

I think that is enough said about this subject.  Perhaps it's not as important as the attention I've paid to it suggests.  But I do think it provides good insight into evolution and how it works at the biomolecular level.
Are red pandas related to raccoons? The similarities are there. But not to the giant panda, which is a true bear. Maybe they both eat bamboo? Must be some reason they're both called pandas. Love to hear theories on this.
  
Here's what Wikipedia says (if I may borrow such a large quote):
"The red panda (Ailurus fulgens, or shining-cat), is a small arboreal mammal native to the eastern Himalayas and southwestern China.[2] It is the only species of the genus Ailurus. Slightly larger than a domestic cat, it has reddish-brown fur, a long, shaggy tail, and a waddling gait due to its shorter front legs. It feeds mainly on bamboo, but is omnivorous and may also eat eggs, birds, insects, and small mammals. It is a solitary animal, mainly active from dusk to dawn, and is largely sedentary during the day.

"The red panda has been classified as Vulnerable by IUCN because its population is estimated at fewer than 10,000 mature individuals. Although red pandas are protected by national laws in their range countries, their numbers in the wild continue to decline mainly due to habitat loss and fragmentation, poaching, and inbreeding depression.

"The red panda has been previously classified in the families Procyonidae (raccoons) and Ursidae (bears), but recent research has placed it in its own family Ailuridae, in superfamily Musteloidea along with Mustelidae and Procyonidae.  Two subspecies are recognized.

"Now Since the Procyonidae include raccoons, there is some (distant) relationship with the red pandas. The similarities must be due to convergent evolution, as members of Procyonidae show a large disparity in appearances (not so much is size, however)."

And that's the biology lesson for the day.  Only question left is, do red pandas have an additional "thumb" (really a modified wrist bone) or other appendage to help them strip bamboo, like their (very distant) giant panda cousins?  According to National Geographic Wild, they do, but I haven't (yet) found out whether it is the same wrist bone that is modified.  It would have to be another case of convergent evolution, and an amazing one at that if the same bone is modified (well, I shouldn't be so hasty to say so because the bone in question might be almost ideal for the modification).  Still, I'm going to look more into this subject because it's already amazing!


Next Steps

Here's my status:  I've registered for two courses at the Montgomery County Community College, paid for them, done and done.  The irony may hit you:  I have an MS in chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania (1988), BS from Drexel University (1986), and oodles of work experiences involving computer programming and other technologies.  So why am I going back to school?

Because I have been living off of disability the last few years, over an illness I couldn't control and which I feared many times would end my struggles.  Now that that illness sees finally under management if not full control, my goal is to find the best way back into the job market.  Getting degrees or certificates -- even just Associates' degrees -- has got to help, I believe.  So here I go.  Wish me luck!

Saturday, November 19, 2011

It's been a While, I know

I am very proud of the work I've done at ROHMAX USA, Drexel University, and a number of other projects I've worked on the last few years, but have finally decided to get some formal education in the field I've been working in, scientific computer programming.  To that end, I've applied to Mont. County Community College, to get a dual degree in software engineering and some other aspect of IT, which I'm not sure yet.  I'd like to continue my work at Drexel, but it is an unpaid research position, and right now I am too poor to afford that.

I'm also considering a rewrite of "Wondering About", producing a more condensed version which omits certain topics and concentrates on explaining others better (especially quantum mechanics and evolution).  These see to be the main criticisms of "Wondering About" (too dense) and rework my unpublished tome on the Periodic Table, "The Third Row."

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Saturday, January 16, 2010

I Published a Book!

Believe it or not, I really did. It's titled

Wondering About

Curiosity, Imagination and Science: A Personal Journey by an Unusual Mind

The book's web site is: www.amazon.com/Wondering-About-Curiosity-Imagination-Personal/dp/product-description/1450018491/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

To give you a flavor of what Wondering About is about, read the following press release:

Philadelphia, PA (Vocus/PRWEB ) February 28, 2010 -- Xlibris, the leading print-on-demand self-publishing services provider, announced today the release of Wondering About: Curiosity, Imagination, and Science: A Personal Journey, a new book of tremendous insight authored by David Strumfels.

Wondering About is a comprehensive guide that discusses the natural sciences and man’s everlasting struggle to learn what his place in the universe is, where he fits in, and what the true purpose of his existence is all about. By dealing with the many forms of science and philosophy, this release also serves as an intellectual autobiography – an expedition through Strumfels’ mind and his life as a human being. Through the author’s views and life experience as an individual who has spent his life struggling with Asperger’s Syndrome and how, despite these struggles, how it has also helped him retain his childlike curiosity, sense of wonder, and imagination; characteristics he hopes to inspire in others, and which never should be satisfied, and much more.

With its detailed narrative and numerous references, Wondering About: Curiosity, Imagination, and Science: A Personal Journey is specially written for the pleasure of gratifying curiosity and wonder. Readers who wish to order a copy are encouraged to visit Amazon.com.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

A Medley of Potpourri

Why, a Medley of Potpourri is just what it says; various thoughts, opinions, ruminations, and contemplations on a variety of subjects. All readers are invited to do the same

Gene

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene Chromosome ...