My Science School

The sky is blue because air molecules in our atmosphere filter blue light out of the colour spectrum. A clear cloudless day-time sky is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light.  When we look towards the sun at sunset, we see red and orange colours because the blue light has been scattered out and away from the line of sight. The white light from the sun is a mixture of all colours of the rainbow.  This was demonstrated by Isaac Newton, who used a prism to separate the different colours and so form a spectrum.  The colours of light are distinguished by their different wavelengths.  The visible part of the spectrum ranges from red light with a wavelength of about 720 nm, to violet with a wavelength of about 380 nm, with orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo between.  The three different types of colour receptors in the retina of the human eye respond most strongly to red, green and blue wavelengths, giving us our colour vision.

 

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Swapan Chattopadhyay is a particle accelerator physicist noted for his pioneering contributions of innovative concepts, techniques and developments in high energy particle colliders, coherent and incoherent light sources, ultrafast sciences in the femto- and atto- second regimes, superconducting linear accelerators and various applications of interaction of particle and light beams.

Fields

• Physics

Institutions

• Northern Illinois University and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (2014–)


• Cockcroft Institute (2007–2014)


• Universities of Liverpool, Manchester and Lancaster, UK (2007–2014)


• Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (2001–2007)


• University of California at Berkeley (1974–1982, 1984–2001, 2010–)


• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (1976–1982, 1984–2001)


• CERN (1982–1984, 2008–)

Known for

• Particle accelerator science and technology

Awards

• Fellow of American Physical Society,


• American Association for the Advancement of Science,


• Institute of Physics (UK), and


• the Royal Society of Arts (UK)

To know more about Swapan Chattopadhyay Click Swapan Chattopadhyay

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Srinivasa Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician who lived during the British Rule in India. Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems considered to be unsolvable.

During his short life, Ramanujan independently compiled nearly 3,900 results (mostly identities and equations). Many were completely novel; his original and highly unconventional results, such as the Ramanujan prime, the Ramanujan theta function, partition formulae and mock theta functions, have opened entire new areas of work and inspired a vast amount of further research.

Known for

• Landau–Ramanujan constant


• Mock theta functions


• Ramanujan conjecture


• Ramanujan prime


• Ramanujan–Soldner constant


• Ramanujan theta function


• Ramanujan's sum


• Rogers–Ramanujan identities


• Ramanujan's master theorem


• Ramanujan–Sato series

Awards

• Fellow of the Royal Society

Fields

• Mathematics

Institutions

• Trinity College, Cambridge

To know more about Srinivasa Ramanujan Click S. Ramanujan

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Everyone’s blood contains the same basic stuff, but mixed in with that stuff are ‘’antigens’’. These special proteins act like an ID tag for a person’s own and not a foreign invader. Antigen combinations make different blood types – eight in all – which are passed along from parent to child just like eye color and other genetic traits. If you get in an accident and lose a lot of blood (or get sick and need a fresh supply), you’ll have to go to the hospital to get a ‘’transfusion’’ of someone else’s red stuff. Transfusions are simple procedures and the most common type of hospital procedure but they always start with the doctor determining the patient’s blood type. If you get a transfusion of the wrong type, your immune system will think it’s an infection and go on the attack!

 

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Remove all your bones – along with the joints and muscles pinned to them – and you’d end up a shapeless, motionless bag of blood and organs. Your skull and spinal vertebrae, made of tough deposits of calcium and other minerals, are like armor for your brain  and nervous system. Special bone marrow in your vertebrae  and elsewhere is your body’s blood factory. Your muscles and joints, meanwhile, set your human machine in motion.

 

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A mix of special cells and liquid ‘’plasma,’’ blood delivers all the good stuff (oxygen vitamins, minerals, and chemicals called hormones) to the cell in your body and carries away all the bad stuff (carbon dioxide and other waste) for disposal. Red blood cells transport oxygen, while white blood cells fight infection. Special cells called platelets seal the leak when blood vessels break – a process called clotting. An oxygen-carrying protein called hemoglobin is what gives blood its red color.

 

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You can’t always guess a child’s appearance just by looking at his or her parents. The study of genes – called genetics – is achieving breakthroughs all the time, but much about heredity remains mysterious. Combinations of genes can affect other genes, leading to unpredictable characteristics or features that lurk in the genetic background for several generations. Our genes are riddled with so-called junk DNA that doesn’t seem to express itself in any noticeable way. Environment and diet also play a large role in shaping a person’s weight, skin tone, and other physical characteristics.

 

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While you admire your good looks in the mirror, don’t forget to thank your parents. Genes come in pairs: one from Mom and other from Dad. It’s the combination of genes that bring about – or ‘’express’’ – various physical traits (in a process called heredity). Some genes are more influential on your appearance than others. The genes for dark hair are dominant over the genes for red and blond hair, making dark hair more common.

 

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            ‘Moonlight’ is a 2016 drama film written and directed by Barry Jenkins, based on the play ‘In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue’ by Tarell Alvin McCraney.

            The film is largely centred around the character of Chiron, and his life in Miami, starting as a shy child, continuing as an awkward teenager, and ending as a hardened adult.

            These stages of his life are presented in three acts, each one named for Chiron’s preferred name at that point: Act i: Little; Act ii: Chiron; Act iii: Black.

            The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning for Best Picture (producers Adele Romanski, Dede Gardner, and Jeremy Kleiner), Best Supporting Actor (Ali), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Jenkins and McCraney).

            Infamously, the movie was subject to the most notorious mix-up in the history of the Academy Awards, as an envelope switch resulted in ‘La La Land’ being announced as the Best Picture winner before its producer Jordan Horowitz announced the mistake.

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            ‘Spotlight’ won in the Best Picture category at the 88th Academy Awards. The movie is a biographical directed by Tom McCarthy, and written by McCarthy and Josh Singer. The film follows the real life story of the investigative team of the ‘Boston Globe’ (a leading news source) during the early 2000’s, as they researched and released the first major report on child abuse in the Catholic Church, a series which won them the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003.

           The story begins with Marty Baron’s arrival in Boston as the new editor of the Globe, and him assigning the Spotlight investigative team to follow a trail of lawsuits pertaining to a priest accused of child abuse some years in the past. As they dig deeper, meeting with traumatized victims, and complicit lawyers, they discover that the menace of child abuse runs deeper than anyone suspected.

            ‘Spotlight’ won the Academy Award for Best Picture along with Best Original Screenplay from six nominations total, making ‘Spotlight’ the first film from Open Road Films to win in either category.

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           ‘Birdman’ is a 2014 movie directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and starring Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Emma Stone and Naomi Watts.

            The movie follows Riggan Thomson (Keaton), a washed-up actor best known for playing superhero Birdman in a series of movies, as he tries to revive his career by writing, directing, and starring in a Broadway adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short story ‘What We Talk about When We Talk about Love’.

            Along the way, he faces various difficulties, both on and off stage, as he battles his own ego.

            At the 87th Academy Awards, ‘Birdman’ won four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Cinematography. Michael Keaton was nominated for Best Actor, Edward Norton and Emma Stone were nominated in Best Supporting Acting categories, and it also received nominations for Sound Editing and Sound Mixing.

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            The movie, ‘12 Years a Slave’ was released in the year 2013. It is an adaptation of the 1853 slave narrative memoir of the same name by Solomon Northup, a New York born African-American man who was kidnapped by two men and sold into slavery. The film was directed by Steve McQueen. The screenplay was written by John Ridley.

            The movie narrates the story of Northup, a violinist in Saratoga. He’s a loving husband, a devoted father, and a respected man of his community.

            His ill fate begins when two conmen trap him and sell him as a slave. He is given a new name ‘Platt’ and thus begins twelve years of misery, agony, and punishing work as Platt is sold from master to master. Still, he desperately holds on to hope that somehow, he will win his way to freedom, and get back to his family.

            ‘12 Years a Slave’ won three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress for Nyong’o, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Ridley.

 

            ‘Argo’ is a thriller directed by, and starring Ben Affleck, and produced by Affleck, Grant Heslov, and George Clooney. It is a somewhat fictionalized account of a real CIA operation in 1980 to extract six Americans during the height of the Iranian hostage crisis.

            The movie follows the storyline as a group of revolutionaries storm the United States embassy in Iran and take a number of staff as hostages. Six employees in a neighbouring building manage to escape, however, and take up refuge in the official residence of the Canadian ambassador. Ten weeks later, exfiltration expert Tony Mendez (Affleck) is asked by the CIA to help get them out of the country. With limited options, and the Iranian revolutionaries stepping up their search for the missing Americans, it’s up to the men led by Mendez and their CIA contact, Jack O’Donnell (Bryan Cranston), to get the six employees out.

            The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won three, for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing.

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            ‘The Artist’ is a 2011 French romantic-comedy-drama film emulating the style of cinema in the 1920s. Written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius, and produced by Thomas Langmann, the movie stars Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo.

            The movie tells the story of George Valentin, a star of the silent screen in 1920’s Hollywood whose career goes into decline with the Great Depression, and the advent of talking pictures. He falls in love with a young actress named Peppy Miller, played by Berenice Bejo, whose Hollywood career arc is the exact opposite of Valentin’s.

            The movie is completely shot in black and white. At the 84th Academy Awards, ‘The Artist’ received ten nominations, winning five awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Hazanavicius, Best Actor in a Leading Role for Jean Dujardin, Best Costume Design, and Best Original Score.

            At the 65th British Academy Film Awards, the film won seven awards, including Best Film, Best Actor and Best Screenplay. At the 69th Golden Globe Awards, the film won three.