My Science School

Christiane Nusslein-Volhard is a German geneticist, who was the co-recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her research on the mechanisms of early embryonic development. Christiane Nusslein-Volhard was born in Heyrothsberge, Germany, in 1942. Christiane studied biology at Goethe University in Frankfurt and biochemistry at Eberhard-Karl University, Tubingen, before undertaking graduate studies at the Max Planck Institute.

Upon completing her PhD in genetics in 1973, Chritiane joined the University of Basel. There she undertook gene study on Drosophila, or fruit flies, an important model organism in genetics. In 1978, she joined the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg. Christiane and her research partner Eric wieschaus studied the embroyonic development of fruit flies and, around 1980, succeeded in identifying and classifying the 15 genes that direct the cells to form a new fly. Their findings had major implications for our understanding of human reproduction, as well. In 1981 she returned to Tubingen, where she served as director of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology from 1985 to 2015. She won the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1991 and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1995, together with Eric Wieschaus and Edward B. Lewis.

Chritiane expanded her research beyond Drosophila to vertebrates. In the early 1990s, she began studying genes that control development in the zebra fish Danio rerio. Her investigations in zebra fish have helped elucidate genes and other cellular substances involved in human development.

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What you need:

Cornstarch Water

A cup

Food or poster colours (optional)

A bowl

A sound system (computer speakers work too)

A plastic sheet

What to do:

1. Measure a cup of cornstarch and toss it into the bowl.

2. Now measure out half a cup of water. Add the colour into the water and mix it.

3. Pour the water slowly into the bowl. Keep mixing with your other hand.

4. Once all the water is mixed in, pick up the mixture in your hand and press it into a ball.

5. The mixture should turn into a ball into your hand, but once you open your fingers, it should slump into liquid form again. If that doesn't happen for you, try adjusting the amount of cornstarch and water.

6. Now, lay your speaker flat on a table, with its audio side facing up. Make sure the sound system is off.

7. Cover the face of the speaker with the plastic sheet.

8. Now pour the mixture that you just made on the sheet so that it is right over the audio mesh.

9. Switch on the music and turn up the volume.

What happens:

The goop starts to boogie (if it doesn't just nudge it off the plastic a bit)! And with the right music, it can contort itself into some strange creepy shapes.

Why?

The goopy mix of water and cornstarch is known as ‘oobleck’. Its secret is suspension. The cornstarch doesn't dissolve in the water: its particles just remain suspended in the water. If you let the oobleck rest, you'll find that the cornstarch settles down at the bottom of the bowl.

Oobleck's behaviour is dependent on pressure. When you squeeze it, you apply pressure which makes the cornstarch particles clump together. When the pressure is released, the com starch separates again. So, it behaves like a solid as well as a liquid.

The dance of the oobleck is actually sound waves moving through the mixture. In this case, lower pitch sounds make the oobleck dance around more than those at higher pitches. But you be the DJ and mix it up to find what works best!

Picture Credit : Google

What you need:

A coin

Glass Water

A saucer

What to do:

1. Place the coin on a flat surface such as a table.

2. Place the glass right over the coin.

3. Cover the mouth of the glass with the saucer and peek in through the sides of the glass. The coin should still be

4. Now, remove the saucer and fill the glass with water. Cover the visible. mouth with the saucer once more.

5. Look in through the sides of the glass.

What happens:

The coin has disappeared!

If you remove the saucer and look through the top of the glass, the coin's still there.

Why?

This happens because of a special property of light known as refraction. Refraction is nothing but the bending of light as it travels from one medium to another. This is different from reflection where light simply bounces back when it hits an obstacle.

Refraction occurs because the molecules of a medium are usually packed closer together than the molecules of plain old air. So the light is unable stick to a straight path when it enters water or glass or anything denser than air.

In this case, the light rays are bent so much as they move from the coin towards you (Metal> Glass> Water> Glass > Air) that they are unable to make it to your eyes. That is why you cannot see the coin.

Picture Credit : Google

There are three spoons in a steel tumbler. One is made of copper, the second of steel and the third, of plastic. A dried pea is stuck on each of the spoons, at the same height, with blobs of butter. Suppose you pour boiling water into the tumbler, which of the peas would fall first? What you need: Three dried peas, butter, a steel tumbler, boiling water, and a copper, a steel and a plastic spoon.

What you do:

1. Stick the dried peas onto the spoons with blobs of butter same height.

2. Now, pour some boiling water into the tumbler.

3. Observe which pea falls first. What happens?

The pea on the copper spoon will fall first

Why?

Both copper and steel are good conductors of heat, while plastic is a bad conductor of heat. Heat from the water will travel up the spoons, melt the butter and release the peas.

As copper is a better conductor of heat than steel, the pea on the copper spoon will fall first.

Picture Credit : Google

What you need:

Matchsticks and bits of a cycle valve tube

What you do:

a) Square

1. Make a square out of the matchsticks and bits of the cycle valve tube.

2. Press the opposite corners of the square.

b) Triangle

1. Make a triangle out of the matchsticks and bits of cycle valve tube.

2. Now, try pressing or shaking the triangle.

What happens?

a. The square is unable to resist the pressure. Its right angles give way and distort into a rhombus or a diamond shape.

b. The triangle's shape remains intact. The triangle is the only rigid shape. All other shapes like hexagons, pentagons, squares and rectangles are wobbly and shaky.

Can you make the square rigid?

Yes. Insert a long babool thorn (or a long needle) through two diagonally opposite valve tube joints of the square. The thorn divides the square into two triangles which make the square rigid. Similarly, the structural members of railway bridges and electric towers are divided into triangles which make them rigid.

The roofs of village houses are made of bamboos and wooden beams that are always arranged in triangles.

Picture Credit : Google

Shadows occur when light is partially or totally absorbed, reflected or just deviated by something in its way. Some regions becoming dimmer than others. If a flame is the only source of light, it will not cast a shadow because it is not in the way of any other light. But what if it is found near a brighter source? In this case, it actually can cast a shadow, even if it is often difficult to see it. Flames are made of gas and dust heated at very high temperatures, often including smoke which can cast shadows. Flames can also absorb part of the light and not be fully transparent. Besides, hot gas in flames can cast shadows by itself, as its movements affect the trajectory of light. Hot air movements similarly explain the dancing shadows sometimes observed above hot tar on scorching sunny days.

A fire flame can have a shadow because the flames include hot air, soot, and combustion products, you will see fires cast shadows if you illuminate a flame with a stronger beam of light source. In a light beam, the shadow zone is the area where there is lower light than the majority of the beam.

 In the frequent form of flames consisting of hydrocarbon, the oxygen supply and the quantity of fuel-oxygen pre-mixing, influence the rate of combustion and the temperature level of the flame. And this is mainly responsible for the generation of distinct colors in a flame.

Picture Credit : Google

Researchers from the University of Arizona believe that Kamo'oalewa, a near-Earth asteroid, could well be a piece of our moon that broke off in the past. If that is indeed the case, it would make it the first asteroid known to have originated from the Earth's moon. These results have been published in a peer-reviewed paper in Communications Earth and Environment (Nature) in November.

Near-Earth asteroid

Kamo'oalewa is a near-Earth asteroid that is between 150-190 feet in diameter and gets as close as 14.5 million km to Earth. As a near-Earth asteroid, it is not part of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but instead, inhabits the inner solar system.

Even though it is very faint when viewed from Earth, astronomers managed to pick it up using their telescopes. While it looks like any near-Earth asteroid for the most part, its spectrum - the pattern of light reflected -was different from other asteroids.

Different spectrum

The spectrum of Kamo'oalewa suggested a silicate-based composition with reddening beyond what is seen in asteroids in the inner solar system, but rather matching with lunar silicates.

First discovered in April 2016, astronomers have been searching for an explanation for Kamo'oalewa for the past three years.

Using follow-up observations, they have now come to the conclusion that this asteroid could be made up of material from the moon. Additionally, the orbit of this asteroid is also similar to Earth's but slightly tilted, making it different from other near-Earth asteroids.

Along with the spectrum evidence, the tilted orbit further suggests that the asteroid came from the moon. And when that is proved beyond doubt, it would make Kamo'oalewa the first-ever asteroid that was actually once a piece of the moon.

Picture Credit : Google

Earth's Moon is the fifth largest of the 200+ moons orbiting planets in our solar system.

Earth's only natural satellite is simply called "the Moon" because people didn't know other moons existed until Galileo Galilei discovered four moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610.

With a radius of about 1,080 miles (1,740 kilometers), the Moon is less than a third of the width of Earth. If Earth were the size of a nickel, the Moon would be about as big as a coffee bean.

The Moon is an average of 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometers) away. That means 30 Earth-sized planets could fit in between Earth and the Moon.

The Moon is slowly moving away from Earth, getting about an inch farther away each year.

Earth's Moon has a core, mantle, and crust.

The Moon’s core is proportionally smaller than other terrestrial bodies' cores. The solid, iron-rich inner core is 149 miles (240 kilometers) in radius. It is surrounded by a liquid iron shell 56 miles (90 kilometers) thick. A partially molten layer with a thickness of 93 miles (150 kilometers) surrounds the iron core.

The mantle extends from the top of the partially molten layer to the bottom of the Moon's crust. It is most likely made of minerals like olivine and pyroxene, which are made up of magnesium, iron, silicon, and oxygen atoms.

The crust has a thickness of about 43 miles (70 kilometers) on the Moon’s near-side hemisphere and 93 miles (150 kilometers) on the far-side. It is made of oxygen, silicon, magnesium, iron, calcium, and aluminum, with small amounts of titanium, uranium, thorium, potassium, and hydrogen.

Long ago the Moon had active volcanoes, but today they are all dormant and have not erupted for millions of years.

Credit : NASA Science

Picture Credit : Google