Atomism – Getting Physics Right Accidentally

More right than he knew.

Start the Wayback Machine

It's time to drop some straight physics on you all. No, wait. Time to drop some history. Oh, hold on. Get ready for some history of physics! All the way back to 5^th century BC Greece. This story starts with the metaphysical philosopher Leucippus.

Without going too deep into Greek philosophy, which is at the same time interesting and incomprehensible, Leucippus was trying to resolve an argument. One side argued that the universe was static and eternal where motion and changes were just an illusion, while the other spoke of a universe where the concept of change was the only thing that truly existed. Leucippus tried to make peace by hypothesizing that everything is made of some indivisible building block, but that these fundamental pieces could experience motion and constructed and that exists. Leucippus and his student Democritus named these particles atomos, or atoms; literally Greek for "uncuttable." For 2,400 years Leucippus' and Democritus' theory of Atomism was more correct than they probably ever imagined.

It would take thousands of years to figure out what exactly these "Atoms" were, but now we know there are, in fact, tiny particles that make up the entire physical world around us, not counting light and radio waves. Atoms of different types (elements) create the different materials and objects we see. 

Gold - Heavier Than You Might Expect

Heavy. (Img: Bullionvault)

A gallon milk jug filled with gold would have a mass of 73 kilograms, or 161 pounds, instead of 3.8 kg (8.35 lbs) for a gallon of milk.  A cubic foot of gold is 547 kg or 1205 lbs, and would be worth about 21 million dollars today.  All of the gold mined in human history, 165,000 tons, would form a 20 meter (66 foot) cube, about the size of a five story office building. 

Iceberg! Straight Ahead! (well, really far North, actually).

Peterman glacier,
the source of the island

On Thursday, August 5th, a massive glacier island cleaved itself off of Greenland, that not-so-green island way up North. It was about 100 square miles in size and is the largest glacier in the Arctic to have come loose since the '60s! It's not really known yet if the glacier will catch on land and freeze back in this Winter, or if currents will push the island through the obstacles in into the main ocean. If it did, it would likely interfere with shipping!

Greenland glacier calves island four times the size of Manhattan

Huge ice sheet breaks from Greenland glacier

Links: Crazy Bus, Regeneration, and the Beauty of Alaska

Engineers in China have come up with a pretty elegant solution to the problem of overcrowded streets and buses stuck in traffic. They put the bus on stilts and it just drives over the other traffic while only taking up a tiny strip of road on either side.

China Hush: Straddling Bus


Possibly the holy grail of medical technology is human regeneration. It's the idea that we might coax the human body into growing back a lost limb or heart tissues that has led to all kinds of research. Healing cuts in your skin and broken bones are minor forms of regeneration that happen naturally, but, unlike simpler animals like amphibians, we can't regenerate larger parts of our body, probably because evolution forced us to trade long life and cancer resistance for wildly growing cells that can rebuild parts from nothing. This week plenty of news came out related to regeneration research. Here are a few stories. We are still a long way from regenerating a lost limb, but scientists are working on it.

NY Times: Two New Paths to the Dream – Regeneration

BBC News: Surgeons Rebuild Windpipe with Stem Cells

Nature: Skin Cells Converted to Heart Cells (more technical)

Jim Harris Photography

Last today, an incredible photo-essay of a backpacking trip through Alaskan mountains and glaciers. If you are one for beautiful nature pictures, you probably won't be able to stop scrolling down the page. The picture on the right is just one of many.

33 Days Across Wrangell-St. Elias NP, Alaska: The Southern Spiral


Also, this.

Mauna Kea, Rising From the Sea Floor

Hawaiian islands from the sea floor. 

Mount Everest is regularly called the tallest mountain on Earth, and by one measure that is true. Everest stands 8,850 m (29,035 feet) above sea level, and no other mountain reaches higher. But Everest sits on the Tibetan plateau, 5000 m above sea level, and rises only about 3800 m (13,000 feet) above the surrounding terrain. Big, but if the bulk of the mountain was set next to Denali or Kilimanjaro it would be dwarfed. 

But another mountain you may already know is the point of this post. Mauna Kea, on the big island of Hawaii, is 4,205 m (13,796 feet) above sea level at the peak, but it's base actually lies 6,000 m (19,680 ft) below on the sea floor, for a total peak-to-base height of 10,203 m (33,476 ft), the most on Earth, land or sea. Also, check out the observatories on Mauna Kea.  I will leave you with this:

Yes, this is Hawaii. (NASA)

Links: Composting Plastics, Venomous Octopuses, and Serenading Sharks.

Here's another link post, so you don't have to read my silly writings!


Our first link is about biodegradable plastics, the development of which has been going on for several years and there have been some results. These "plastics" are actually made from plant material, such as corn starch or tree-produced sugars, and degrade in a compost environment in 6 months time. I wonder when we'll be seeing these plastics in our grocer.

Compostable Plastics have a Sweet Ending @ ScienceDaily.com

World Centric: Bioplastics, a producer of these decomposable plastics. 

Great White Shark

Second is a quite silly continuation of our Ode to Discovery's Shark Week, a man serenading Great White Sharks. He was actually in the water with the sharks and guitar, but I'm guessing they dubbed over the music :).

Seriously, the video's pretty funny.


And our final link also takes place in the ocean, but deals with something with a little less of a backbone. It wasn't until recently that scientists discovered that all octopi, not just the Blue-ringed Octopus, are actually venomous. A study into Antarctic octopi discovered four new species of octopus and two completely new toxins that these octopus carry.

Scientists Tap Into Antarctic Octopus Venom

Iiiiiiit's SHARK WEEK!

I lieu of Discovery Channel's Shark Week (which I look forward to every year), I give you the ridiculous looking "Goblin Shark" (Scientific name: Mitsukurina owstoni). It was named such because of the front of the shark, which looks much like a goblin's nose. That snout, called a rostrum, isn't just for show! It contains electro-sensitive organs that help it sense when other living things are nearby. It was first discovered in 1897 by a Japanese fisherman and, although many specimens have been recovered since then, there is still relatively little known about the shark. What is known is that it's a deep-water shark that rarely enters shallow water and is widely distributed. It's generally seen when caught accidentally by deep-sea fisherman or trollers, but this minimal harvest doesn't appear to be harmful to their population. Seriously, though, check out this video showing how the goblin shark attacks prey (or this man's arm).

Issues: High Fructose Corn Syrup: Part 2

What's in Your Diet

Yesterday, I wrote about the current research on high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), how there is an ongoing but unclear debate on whether HFCS is any worse for your health than sugar, and that scientists point to sweeteners and lack of exercise for Americans' trouble with obesity. One thing that comes up is whether HFCS and other sweeteners are becoming more common in our food. So, today I decided to perform an extremely unscientific experiment involving my own diet. After my latest grocery shopping trip, I went through the ingredient list of each item I purchased. I tracked which contained HFCS, sugar, both or neither. Results are below, with notes (S,H,D indicate order of ingredients of Sugar, HFCS, and Dextrose):

High Fructose Corn Syrup	Sugar	Neither	Both
Hot Dog Buns	Bread	Potato Chips	Cookies (D,H,S)
Hot Dogs (less than 2% H, more than 2% D)	Hot Pockets	Milk	Lemonade (H,S)
Pickles	Pasta Sauce	Cheese	Yogurt (S,H)
Stuffing Mix	Flavored Rice Mix	Ground Beef	Ice Cream**
	Tortillas (last ingredient)	Chicken
	Chocolate Bar	Fruits… Assorted
	Brownie Mix	Vegtables…Assorted
	Chicken Helper*

*Within the half dozen varieties of Chicken/Hamburger Helper (they were on sale) some listed sugar as high as the third ingredient, while others had none.

**Second to the lemonade, ice cream might be the best way to fill up on sweeteners. After cream and milk, the ingredients are, in order: sucrose, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, sugar.

There are a few things to point out here, but several ways to interpret the results. Remember this experiment is not designed to draw any scientific conclusions.