My Science School

Max Delbruck was a German-American biophysicist, recognised for his contribution to molecular genetics. He won the 1969 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on bacteriophages-viruses that infect bacterial cells.

Max Delbruck was born in Berlin, Germany. In 1930, he received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Gottingen. As a physicist, Delbruck worked as an assistant to Lise Meitner and studied irradiation of uranium and neutron. But sooner, he became interested in bacteriophages, after his meeting with Wolfgang Pauli and Niels Bohr. In 1937, Delbruck left Nazi Germany for the United States, having won the Rockefeller Foundation scholarship to do research on the genetics of fruit fly in California Institute of Technology (Caltech). While at Caltech, he studied bacteria and their viruses called bacteriophages. In 1939, Delbruck discovered a one-step process for growing bacteriophages, which after a one-hour latent period would multiply to produce several hundred thousand progeny. He co-authored The growth of bacteriophage along with Emory L Ellis with this finding. In 1943, Delbruck and Salvador Luria announced their discovery that a bacterium that has been infected by a bacteriophage can undergo spontaneous mutations so that it becomes immune to the phage. He conducted many studies on bacteriophage and paved the way for an explosion of new findings in the field of molecular biology. In 1945, he formed the Phage Group along with Salvador Luria, Alfred Hershey and other scientists to gather and discuss ideas on genetics.

In the late 1940s, Delbruck shifted his focus on sensory perception and studied how light affected the growth of the fungus phycomyces. As he did with the phage research, Delbruck formed a Phycomyces Group to gather and discuss ideas.

In 1969, Delbruuck won the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine, which he shared with Alfred Day Hershey and Salvador Edward Luria, for their work in molecular genetics. In 1977, he retired from Caltech, remaining a Professor of Biology emeritus. He died of cancer in 1981.

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What you need:

• Red cabbage
• Water Vinegar
• Detergent
• Three glasses
• A blender
• A sieve

What to do:

1. Half fill the blender with water. Peel six cabbage leaves and put them in the blender.

2. Blend until you have red cabbage juice.

3. Sieve the juice into three glasses.

4. In the first glass, add a teaspoon of vinegar. Stir to mix

5. To the third glass, add a teaspoon of detergent. Mix that well too.

What happens:

The liquid in the first glass becomes red. The liquid in the third glass, to which detergent has been added, becomes green.

The liquid in the second glass, which is pure cabbage juice, stays purple.

Why?

It's simple chemistry. The vinegar is an 'acid' whereas the detergent is a base. What do these terms mean? If you taste the vinegar, you'll find that it tastes tangy. Detergent, on the other hand, tastes bitter (don't try it just take our word for it). If you rub detergent between your fingers, you will find that it feels soapy and slippery.

Broadly speaking, tangy-tasting liquids are acids while bitter- tasting substances that have a soapy texture are bases. More examples of acids include lime juice, fruit juices, even milk. Substances such as baking soda and cleaning liquids are examples of bases. Almost all substances can be classified as acids or bases. But since we can't go about tasting them we need other substances known as indicators to tell us if something is an acid or a base. Indicators are chemicals that usually change colour on coming in contact with acids and bases. In this case, red cabbage juice is an indicator. It turns red when mixed with an acid and on coming in contact with a base, it turns green. The second glass is neutral cabbage juice which acts as a reference to show you how drastic the colour change is.

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What you need:

Coins (preferably of the same size)

A dinner knife

A table

What to do:

1. Stack the coins one atop the other on a steady table. Keep the coin tower as straight as you can. You can decide how high you want your tower to be.

2. Now, hold your dinner knife as flat against the table as possible. Carefully (and quickly), swipe the knife to remove the coin at the bottom of the tower.

What happens:

If you're doing it right, the coin at the bottom should slide out, leaving the tower still standing! Repeat the swiping process to check how many coins you can knock out before your tower of money comes crashing down.

Why?

The famous scientist, Sir Isaac Newton, has put down a law that states 'an object at rest stays at rest, or if it is in motion it will continue to move until it is acted on by an external force. This tendency of the object to maintain its state of rest or motion is called inertia. Simply put, it means that the coins in the stack will remain motionless where they are unless something causes them to move. That something is the force you apply with your knife. But when you try to move a coin slowly, the entire tower topples over.

You can blame friction for that. Friction is a resisting force that opposes the motion of one object's surface over another. When you try to move the bottom coin slowly, friction acts between the surface of that coin and the one above it. So the bottom coin drags the one above it that coin pulls the next coin along and crash! That is why you need to swipe out the bottom coin as fast as possible. The force you apply is so fast and hard that it overcomes the friction force, causing the bottom coin to shoot out smoothly.

Picture Credit : Google

What you need:

A can of normal flavoured soda

A can of diet soda (both cans should be of the same size)

A large container

Water

What to do:

1. Fill the container with water.

2. Drop the can of normal soda into the water.

3. Now, drop the can of diet soda in.

What happens:

 The can of normal soda sinks whereas the can of diet soda floats!

Why?

What is the difference between normal soda and diet soda? Both are made out of similar ingredients. But normal soda is sweetened using sugar, whereas diet soda uses artificial sweeteners such as aspartame.

And these artificial sweeteners are really sweet so they are needed in small quantities. On the other hand, a lot of sugar needs to be added to achieve the same amount of sweetness in normal sodas. So, this dissolved sugar increases the weight and the density (density is nothing but the number of molecules packed into a small space) of the soda.

As a rule, in order to float on a liquid, the density of the object needs to be lesser than the density of the liquid. Diet soda achieves this low density thanks to the low quantity of the artificial sweetener dissolved in it. So the diet soda can floats. The sugar-laden normal soda is denser and it sinks.

Picture Credit : Google

What you need:

Small Styrofoam balls (the kind used in confetti)

A cloth

Aluminium foil

A polycarbonate sheet (thick clear plastic you can find it at a furniture store in your area: you can even use a clear plastic lid from a kitchen container)

Four flat pieces of wood or small cardboard boxes

What to do:

1. Cut the foil into small square pieces. Wrap each Styrofoam ball in the aluminium foil square. Wrap at least 10-12 balls.

2. Shape a sheet of aluminium foil into a makeshift tray (keep the edges lifted up).

3. Weigh the comers of the foil-tray down with the blocks of wood.

4. Now, place the aluminium-coated balls on the foil.

5. Place the polycarbonate sheet on top of the wooden blocks so that it is lifted up.

6. Gently, nub the polycarbonate sheet with the cloth for a few seconds. Now, touch the surface of the sheet with your finger.

What happens:

As soon as you rub the plastic sheet with the cloth, the balls lift up from the aluminium tray and stick to the plastic. Then, when you trace your finger on the sheet, the balls begin to dance away from your finger!

Why?

The answer is static electricity? Static means stationary. When you rub two objects against each other (like the polycarbonate sheet and the cloth), they develop stationary electrical charges. To understand why this happens, we have to go to the microscopic level. Everything in our world is made up of tiny particles called 'atoms. These atoms are, in turn, made up of even smaller particles known as electrons, protons and neutrons. The protons and neutrons remain inside the atom but the electrons like to use any excuse to jump in and out of the atom. When you rub two objects together, the electrons from one object jump to the other. This exchange of electrons is what is termed as electrical charge.

Electrical charges attract or repel each other depending on their kind. If two objects have same electrical charges, these charges repel each other. Opposite charges, on the other hand, attract. The plastic sheet and the balls seem to have opposing charges on them.

So the balls stick to the sheet. When you move your finger on the sheet, you disturb the charge on the sheet, causing the balls to shift.

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Ice is slippery because there is a very thin layer of liquid water on its surface. Also because, unlike solids, liquids are mobile. Inside the ice, water molecules form a well-organised rigid structure. But on the surface, this structure does not hold and the water molecules get loose. This forms a liquid layer where water molecules can move, making the surface slippery. But ice is not always slippery. At very low temperatures - say, at-50°C, the liquid layer disappears and ice becomes completely solid and hence not slippery. It is notably impossible to skate at this temperature.

Mischa and Daniel Bonn, who are brothers, published a paper May 9th in the Journal of Chemical Physicsdescribing the surface of ice. Rather than a layer of liquid wateron the surface of ice, they found, there were loose water molecules. Mischa Bonn compared it to a dance floor that is "filled with marbles or ball bearings." Slipping across the surface of the ice is simply "rolling" on these molecular marbles.

Ice has a very regular, neat crystal structure, where each water molecule in the crystal is attached to three others. The molecules on the surface, however, can only be attached to two others. Being so weakly bonded to the crystal allows these surface molecules to tumble, and attaching and detaching themselves to various sites on the crystal as they move.

Even though slipping on ice is caused by essentially rolling over these water molecules, this layer of molecules is not the same as a layer of liquid water. These molecules and the slipperiness exist at temperatures far below water’s freezing point. In fact, the way these molecules move so freely and diffuse across the surface actually makes them look more like a gas, Daniel Bonn said.

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The largest planet in the solar system, the gas giant Jupiter is approximately 318 times as massive as Earth. If the mass of all of the other planets in the solar system were combined into one "super planet," Jupiter would still be two and a half times as large.

Jupiter has a mean radius of 43,440.7 miles (69,911 kilometers), about a tenth that of the sun. However, its rapid rotation — it spins once every 9.8 hours — causes it to bulge at the equator, where the diameter is 88,846 miles (142,984 km). In contrast, the diameter at the poles is only 83,082 miles (133,708 km). This stretched shape is known as an oblate spheroid.

If you were to walk around the equator of Jupiter, you would travel 272,946 miles (439,264 km), over 10 times the distance around Earth's center line.

Because Jupiter is made of gas, mostly, its surface is considered uniform. As such, it lacks high and low points — mountains and valleys — such as those found on rocky terrestrial planets.

Credit : Space.com

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What’s the closest planet to our own? Common sense would say the answer is either Mars or Venus, our next door neighbors. Of the two, Venus comes closer to the Earth than any other planet and its orbit is closest to ours. But as an article in Physics Today points out, over half the time Venus is not the nearest planet; Mercury is. In fact, the scientists behind the article crunched the numbers and found that on average, Mercury is the closest planet not only to Earth but to every other planet in the solar system as well.

The scientists developed a simulation of our solar system featuring all of the planets moving in their orbits. They let the planets orbit for thousands of simulated years, all the while calculating the distance between any two of them. The scientists then averaged those values together to find which planets are the closest to each other over time.

Surprisingly, they found that Mercury was the closest planet to all seven other planets. This might seem impossible, but it makes sense if you realize that every planet spends about half its time on the opposite side of the Sun. In Earth’s case, while Venus does get very close to Earth it also spends plenty of time very, very far away.

This is a very different way to calculate the ‘closest planet’ than most people use; typically, the distance from one planet to another is taken to mean the distance between the two planets’ orbits. But this result shows there’s more than one way to define our closest neighbor.

Credit : Physics Today 

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The heaviest artificial objects to reach space include space stations, various upper stages, and discarded Space Shuttle external tanks. Spacecraft may change mass over time such as by use of propellant.

Currently the heaviest spacecraft is the International Space Station, nearly double Shuttle-Mir's mass in orbit. It began assembly with a first launch in 1998, however it only attained its full weight in the 2020s, due to its modular nature and gradual additions. Its mass can change significantly depending on what modules are added or removed.

The ISS was originally intended to be a laboratory, observatory, and factory while providing transportation, maintenance, and a low Earth orbit staging base for possible future missions to the Moon, Mars, and asteroids. However, not all of the uses envisioned in the initial memorandum of understanding between NASA and Roscosmos have been realised. In the 2010 United States National Space Policy, the ISS was given additional roles of serving commercial, diplomatic, and educational purposes.

The ISS provides a platform to conduct scientific research, with power, data, cooling, and crew available to support experiments. Small uncrewed spacecraft can also provide platforms for experiments, especially those involving zero gravity and exposure to space, but space stations offer a long-term environment where studies can be performed potentially for decades, combined with ready access by human researchers.

The ISS simplifies individual experiments by allowing groups of experiments to share the same launches and crew time. Research is conducted in a wide variety of fields, including astrobiology, astronomy, physical sciences, materials science, space weather, meteorology, and human research including space medicine and the life sciences. Scientists on Earth have timely access to the data and can suggest experimental modifications to the crew. If follow-on experiments are necessary, the routinely scheduled launches of resupply craft allows new hardware to be launched with relative ease. Crews fly expeditions of several months' duration, providing approximately 160 person-hours per week of labour with a crew of six. However, a considerable amount of crew time is taken up by station maintenance.

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Olympus Mons is the largest volcano in the solar system. The massive Martian mountain towers high above the surrounding plains of the red planet, and may be biding its time until the next eruption.

Found in the Tharsis Montes region near the Martian equator, Olympus Mons is one of a dozen large volcanoes, many of which are ten to a hundred times taller than their terrestrial counterparts. The tallest of them all towers 16 miles (25 kilometers) above the surrounding plains and stretches across 374 miles (624 km) — roughly the size of the state of Arizona.

In comparison, Hawaii's Mauna Loa, the tallest volcano on Earth, rises 6.3 miles (10 km) above the sea floor (but its peak is only 2.6 miles above sea level). The volume contained by Olympus Mons is about a hundred times that of Mauna Loa, and the Hawaiian island chain that houses the Earthly volcano could fit inside its Martian counterpart.

Olympus Mons rises three times higher than Earth's highest mountain, Mount Everest, whose peak is 5.5 miles above sea level. 

Credit : Space.com

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It depends on which part of the space we are talking about. In general, it works like this: the closer to the stars, the higher the temperature. Another factor that weighs is the presence of matter: heat can be retained by it. As space becomes empty, temperature drops. In a vacuum (absence of matter), the temperature drops to 2.7 Kelvin or -270.45 Celsius. Only a few degrees above absolute zero (-273.15 °C).

There is no place colder than space. It has a lot of empty regions distant from heated bodies. The lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth was -89.2 ºC, in Antarctica. In interstellar space, where there is no absolute void (there are gases and dust grains), the temperature varies.

At the Earth’s thermosphere, where the atmosphere turns into space, the exact temperature can also vary substantially. However, the average temperature above 300 km is about 427 degrees Celsius at solar minimum and 927 degrees Celsius at solar maximum. But this does not mean that the space above the atmosphere is at this temperature. In fact, it is very cold. Only a body in this region that is illuminated by the sun can reach this temperature. In the dark areas of space, temperatures would drop a lot.

On the Moon, which has no atmosphere, temperatures vary a lot. When sunlight reaches the moon’s surface, the temperature can reach 127 degrees Celsius. However, when the sun goes down, temperatures can drop to – 173 degrees Celsius.

Credit : Curiosity Guide 

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Most 97-year-olds would probably feel accomplished just getting out of bed in the morning. John B. Goodenough, 97, just won the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

Goodenough won the award alongside Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino for their contributions to the development of lithium-ion batteries.

Goodenough is the oldest person to win a Nobel Prize. Arthur Ashkin was the previous record holder, having won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2018 at age 96.

"Live to 97 (years old) and you can do anything," Goodenough said in a statement. "I'm honored and humbled to win the Nobel Prize. I thank all my friends for the support and assistance throughout my life."

Born in 1922 in Jena, Germany, Goodenough earned a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1952, according to the Nobel Foundation. He went on to work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then at the University of Oxford, where he served as the head of the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory, according to the University of Texas at Austin, where he now works.

It was at Oxford that Goodenough made the groundbreaking discovery that helped him win the Nobel, UT Austin officials said in a news release.

Credit :  CNN

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There are 57 women who have been awarded a Nobel Prize out of the more than 900 recipients. One woman—Marie Curie—received two Nobel prizes. 

To highlight all the winners, Stacker turned to data from the Nobel Prize website. These women have made outstanding contributions to the worlds of medicine, science, art, and peace-keeping. Just reaching this height of fame and recognition meant facing seemingly insurmountable challenges. Many women on this list had to contend with extreme sexism in male-dominated professions, but some Nobel Prize winners also had to overcome physical violence. All their stories are unique and equally inspiring.

Nobel committees have distinct methods for deciding winners. The Nobel Peace Prize, for example, is awarded by a five-person committee and anyone who meets the criteria can be nominated. For literature, however, nominations can only be made by qualified people. Despite the different nominating and selection processes, two rules apply to all awards: No person can nominate themself, and the names of the nominators and the nominees cannot be revealed until 50 years after winners are announced.

Credit : Stacker 

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Since the start, in 1901, there are some years when the Nobel Prizes have not been awarded. The total number of times are 49. Most of them during World War I (1914-1918) and II (1939-1945). In the statutes of the Nobel Foundation it says: “If none of the works under consideration is found to be of the importance indicated in the first paragraph, the prize money shall be reserved until the following year. If, even then, the prize cannot be awarded, the amount shall be added to the Foundation’s restricted funds.”.

Jean-Paul Sartre, awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, declined the prize because he had consistently declined all official honours.

Le Duc Tho, awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. They were awarded the prize for negotiating the Vietnam peace accord. Le Duc Tho said that he was not in a position to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, citing the situation in Vietnam as his reason.

Four Nobel Prize laureates have been forced by authorities to decline the Nobel Prize. Adolf Hitler forbade three German Nobel Prize laureates, Richard Kuhn, Adolf Butenandt and Gerhard Domagk, from accepting the Nobel Prize. All of them could later receive the Nobel Prize diploma and medal, but not the prize amount.

Boris Pasternak, the 1958 Nobel Laureate in Literature, initially accepted the Nobel Prize but was later coerced by the authorities of the Soviet Union, his native country, to decline the Nobel Prize.

Credit : The Nobel Prize

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The Nobel Prize in Physics 1901 was awarded to Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays subsequently named after him."

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, Röntgen also spelled Roentgen, (born March 27, 1845, Lennep, Prussia [now Remscheid, Germany]—died February 10, 1923, Munich, Germany), physicist who was a recipient of the first Nobel Prize for Physics, in 1901, for his discovery of X-rays, which heralded the age of modern physics and revolutionized diagnostic medicine.

Röntgen studied at the Polytechnic in Zürich and then was professor of physics at the universities of Strasbourg (1876–79), Giessen (1879–88), Würzburg (1888–1900), and Munich (1900–20). His research also included work on elasticity, capillary action of fluids, specific heats of gases, conduction of heat in crystals, absorption of heat by gases, and piezoelectricity.

In 1895, while experimenting with electric current flow in a partially evacuated glass tube (cathode-ray tube), Röntgen observed that a nearby piece of barium platinocyanide gave off light when the tube was in operation. He theorized that when the cathode rays (electrons) struck the glass wall of the tube, some unknown radiation was formed that traveled across the room, struck the chemical, and caused the fluorescence. Further investigation revealed that paper, wood, and aluminum, among other materials, are transparent to this new form of radiation. He found that it affected photographic plates, and, since it did not noticeably exhibit any properties of light, such as reflection or refraction, he mistakenly thought the rays were unrelated to light. In view of its uncertain nature, he called the phenomenon X-radiation, though it also became known as Röntgen radiation. He took the first X-ray photographs, of the interiors of metal objects and of the bones in his wife’s hand.

Credit :  Britannica 

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