Good Tips for Acquiring Science Supplies

Editor:

You can still get some science materials today. Two organizations about which I am aware ship many chemicals to individuals. The quantities are generally one ounce or less. The prices are reasonable. They also provide equipment in unit quantity for decent prices.

www.homesciencetools.com and www.onlinesciencemall.com (formerly macnanbio.com).

If you can establish a relationship with a local school, you can buy materials and have them shipped to the school. You might exchange a few lectures/demonstrations of what you're doing in science for this privilege. Always prepay the materials you order and make sure that the shipping address is to a staff member at the school. You might have to have the school fax a pro forma purchase order to the supply company.

Look in your own back yard. Unable to order live materials from the supply companies, I picked up pill bugs right outside with no ordering problems and no cost. When done with the experiments, I simply released them where I found them.

Finally, try ebay.com. I bought some sodium metal there at a much lower price than the chemical supply houses charge. The seller was great and provided excellent service.

I'd love to hear the strategies that others use to obtain their science materials.

Harry Keller
www.smartscience.net

Readers, Harry has provided good answers to questions often asked by amateur scientists. Please share your tips on buying science supplies. Send your tips here, and we'll place the best in "Backscatter." Editor.

Restoring Thomas Alva Edison's Menlo Park Laboratory

Editor,

While there are many sites associated with Thomas Alva Edison, the Menlo Park laboratory that is so well know from history books has been sorely neglected. Many confuse Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory with those still standing in West Orange. The West Orange site is operated by the National Park Service and well represents Edison’s later years. In contrast, at Menlo Park Edison was the dynamic young “Wizard” who invented the phonograph, perfected the incandescent lamp and generated about 400 total patents between 1876 and 1881.

It is our vision to honor Edison’s legacy at Menlo Park by restoring the Edison Memorial Tower. The plans include a new Museum that will provide educational opportunities for families and student groups throughout the region. No other Edison site or hands-on museum has our vision of presenting core curriculum science and technology concepts interwoven with the historical narrative of Edison’s remarkable Menlo Park years.

We are facing a short deadline for raising matching funds for a grant from the U.S. Mint, based on an Edison commemorative coin issued several years ago. We need approximately $250,000 by June 30th of this year. Unless the full amount of the Mint grant is matched, the entire $379,000 will be lost. This would be a tragic setback.

We ask you to support the Edison Tower restoration and the new Menlo Park Museum to honor the legacy of Thomas Alva Edison and create unique learning opportunities for the next generation of young inventors. The Edison Memorial Tower Corporation is a 501 (c) (3) organization, so your donations are tax deductible as allowed by law.

Sincerely,

Thomas W. Dowling
Executive Director
Edison Memorial Tower Corporation

DO THE EXPERIMENT!

Dear Dr. Shawn,

I have a question for you. I am doing a project on plants and soda. I know which ones will die and live. My question is how fast the soda will affect the plant? Since the soda will be like acid rain, will the plant crumble like paper being crumbled up?

Tony

Hi Tony,

The reason why we do experiments is to answer questions just like the one you asked. I don't know what will happen for sure, though I think I can make a very good guess. You see, I have never done this particular experiment. And I have never read the results of someone who has. So I just can't say for sure. To find out what will happen, you must DO THE EXPERIMENT. You have the power to discover the truth yourself! You don't need to rely on experts and authorities for everything. You can roll up your sleeves and force nature to give you the answer.

That's a pretty powerful thing if you think about it.

So please go do the experiment. Then get back to me and tell me what you discovered!

I await the opportunity to learn from YOU.

Yours for great science,

Dr. Shawn

Shawn Carlson: Can a Particle Travel Faster Than Light?

Dear Shawn,

I was reading up on Cherenkov radiation and was curious about something. Cherenkov radiation is emitted when a charged particle is traveling through a medium at a speed faster than the speed of light in that medium. The blue glow of a nuclear reactor is produced by this radiation, when a charged particle moving faster than light forms an electromagnetic “shock wave” while traveling through an insulator.

The velocity of this particle is given by the equation  vp = bct, where b = vp/c ratio of velocities. The velocity of the electromagnetic wave vw = c/n, where n = the refractive index of the medium. In the same time, t, the distance traveled by the particle = vpt = xp, and the distance traveled by the EM wave = vwt = ct/n.

Therefore, is it correct that the velocity of the EM wave is restricted by the refractive index to the speed of light in that medium, but the particle has no such restrictions?

In some of the gamma ray detector telescope experiments such as VERITAS, the detector is able to measure the Cherenkov radiation of a particular particle as it interacts with the earth's atmosphere. Does
this mean that the atmosphere is the medium and that the cosmic ray  is moving faster than the speed of light through it?

In addition, is there any relation between the Cherenkov radiation of these particles and the aurora borealis, where they are producing light (photons) by reacting with the earth's magnetic field?

Thank you,

Scott Little

Hi Scott,

No known particle can travel faster than light travels in a vacuum. (Actually, there is a class of particles called tachyons that certain physical theories allow for that could travel faster than light. For tachyons, the speed of light in vacuum is still an absolute barrier. Just as no massive particle can be accelerated beyond the speed of light, no tachyon could be decelerated below that speed. Of course, no one has ever observed a tachyon in the wild.)

Now to your questions.

First... Yes. The speed of light depends on how the electromagnetic field interacts with the medium through which it travels. Matter has inertia, and as the wave interfaces with matter the inertia of the electrons slows the rate at which energy can be transferred along the path.  It is a wonderful and remarkable fact that this drop in speed is characterized so simply by the index of refraction.

Second... Yes.  The atmosphere is a medium with an index of refraction.  A cosmic ray can travel through the air faster than light travels through the air.

Third... No.  The Cherenkov radiation is far too feeble to be seen with the naked eye against the background of the starry sky.

Hope this helps you.

Shawn Carlson


Colorful Question for Dr. Shawn

Dear Dr. Shawn,

Hello there. I have a 4th grader and we need a little assistance. Our topic is which color bird seeds do birds like best. We need some info but can't find anything out there except different brands of bird seeds. Any ideas to make this report really stand out? Thank you for your time.

Hi [name deleted],

I say drop the color question and test different brands. When you find the brand that does the best, then you can ask why and do follow up experiments. If you are set on color, you may want to soak seeds in different vats of dye made from various food colorings. In either case, the best way to do the experiment is to hang two bird feeders side by side, fill each with different seed and then measure how long it takes for the level of the seed to fall a given distance (say 1/4 of the way down the side). This will tell you something about the local population's preference for the seed. But it won't tell you anything about different preferences of different species.

Beyond this, for different tips on how to make your work stand out, I suggest you check you Dr. Shawn's Super Science Fair Support Center at www.scifair.org. There are tips on every page and you'll also find great information through the pull-down menus at the top of the page.

Yours for great science,

Dr. Shawn


The Butterfield Color Encoder

Editor,

I was just very pleasantly surprised to find an article on your web site dealing with the Butterfield color encoder. Information on this device is very hard to come by, other than the patent drawings.

As a serious student of historical color television technology, and a witness to this process in the 1960s, I have read everything I can find on the subject, and have conversed with a TV station engineer who "was there."

The ultimate goal is to see if I can build an all-electronic encoder, with several improvements to diminish the flicker problem. I have built my own model of the original encoder (with some success, even!), but need to study the fine points further. I
believe that even in this day of cheap color TVs, there may be a specialized application for this, to help folks with color vision deficiencies. Even if it doesn't help, the purely historical fun of reviving a "lost art", if you will, is most compelling.

Your article mentions a VHS tape of a carpet soap commercial so encoded. Would you be willing to make a copy and sell it to me, either VHS or DVD? Studying this frame-by-frame would be of tremendous help to me in finding out the finer points that were proprietary information at the time of the patent.

Thank you for a great site!

Regards,

George T. Russell II

Readers, can you help George? A search of the The Citizen Scientist archive gives only two hits, one the original article and the other a letter from Henk Buisman which states (in part) "I contacted Art Winfree's children, and they reported back that I was the second person this year to request this tape. Unfortunately, they can't find it. I would love to show a video recorded with this technique. Would you know of any other resource that I can go to buy a VHS/ DVD of this effect?" If you have information on this topic, please send a letter to Backscatter. Editor.

How Fast do Pills Dissolve?

Hi Dr. Shawn

My daughter is doing a science project and her topic is "How Fast do Pills Dissolve?"

Please give me some ideas of how to make her project easier. It is difficult for her to do it alone, and we have to help her as much as we can. But we don't want to do the project for her; we want her to do it, too. My daughter has ADD, and it is very hard for her to concentrate.

Please help me. Thanks.

A Labrats Mom

Dear [name withheld],

Perhaps you can use a digital kitchen timer. Have your daughter photograph two different pills side-by-side in a shallow bowl of warm water using a digital camera every minute (longer for slow-dissolving pills). For best results, the camera should be able to make close-up photos. Some timers go off when there's ten seconds to go. That gives her just enough time to get back to the pills and snap the photo.

The photographic record will be a time sequence of how the pills dissolve. No need to take numerical data. And since a picture is like a thousand words, she will have less to write to explain her observations.

I sure hope this helps you!

Yours for great science,

Dr. Shawn

International Asteroid Search Campaign Update

Patrick Miller sent the following notice to International Asteroid Search Campaign (IASC) collaborators and friends. Editor.

Greetings from the IASC,

You might be interested in checking out the following Internet site.  This is an article about the International Asteroid Search Campaign that was published on May 4th by The Citizen Scientist:
http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues_2007/2007-05-04/feature1/index.html

IASC planning for the 2007-2008 academic year is underway.  Campaigns are planned for both the fall and spring semesters, and most definitely you'll be kept informed and notified as the start dates near.  In addition to asteroids, SNe and KBO search campaigns are on the drawing board.

Each campaign runs for 30 days in between the full moon, and can accommodate 10-15 schools.  In the three campaigns held during the 2006-2007 academic year, a total of 32 asteroids were discovered, numerous NEO (Near-Earth Asteroid) confirmations were made, and one comet was confirmed.

Bob Holmes of the Astronomical Research Institute (Charleston, Illinois) is the one who spent many, many early morning hours capturing images for your students to analyze.  We owe him a tremendous note of thanks for his never-ending dedication, his love of astronomy, and his dream to put science directly into the hands of students.

Harlan Devore and his students at Cape Fear High School (Fayetteville, North Carolina) stepped in on many occasions to analyze images that didn't get processed within the tight timeline that the MPC requires to recognize a discovery.  Curtis Craig and his students at American Fork High School (American Fork, Utah) also analyzed some of these image sets.

Jeff Davis, freshman honors student at Hardin-Simmons University (Abilene, Texas), had the unenviable task of working directly for me and being responsible for software use questions and validation of the reports from the image sets that were analyzed by the students.

During the October-November 2006 campaign Dr. Chris Smith, National Optical Astronomical Observatory, provided real time image sets from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (Blanco, Chile).

I just sat back, drank coffee, and twiddled my thumbs while the experts above did a fantastic job for this first year of the International Asteroid Search Campaign.

Happy hunting!!

Patrick Miller


Update on an Experiment to Measure the Absolute Motion of the Earth

Editor,

I have placed the 80 slides from my Power Point presentation at the 2006 SAS Conference on my web site:
http://www.lanceosadchey.com/page33.html

Thanks in advance for posting this in The Citizen Scientist.

Lance Osadchey

Suggestion for an Experiment to Measure the Absolute Motion of the Earth

Editor,

This is in regard to Al Ryder’s suggestion for improving the experimental setup described by Dr. Lance Osadchey in the March 2007 issue of The Citizen Scientist.

Adding a diopter lens at the laser (not at the camera) is a good idea for an observatory setup, as it can clean up the image without reducing the measured effect. Perhaps Dr. Osadchey should consider it for his long term trials. I’ll keep it in mind, too, because I intend to try and duplicate his results in an experiment of my own.

However, I am not yet convinced that there is anything for an observatory to observe. The addition of a lens to reduce the laser image size will also reduce the size of accompanying image distortions due to thermal refraction and geometric effects – both of which we should be very interested in. Together with tiny shifts in weight as the apparatus is rotated, these are the sources of error best able to account for the observed deflection without introducing the idea of absolute motion. No effect due to absolute motion can be confirmed until these error sources can be accounted for. Therefore, measuring these error sources is just as important as measuring Dr. Osadchey’s predicted effect. A maximum value of laser deflection that is less than the average of any other cause of deflections is a null result, and you’ll never find those averages using a Diopter lens.

The goal at this point should be to reduce or eliminate this noise from the apparatus as much as possible and not clean the image up enough to conceal it.

C. Michael Edwards

Monarch Butterfly Watcher

Editor,

I enjoyed your article on monarch butterflies ("Forrest Mims' World of Science," May 2007). We have actually planted milkweed in our backyard. Rarely do I see monarchs in Colorado Springs, but every other summer we purchase the monarch rearing kit through the Monarch Watch web site and use our home-grown milkweed to feed them. It's a great summer project for the youngsters.

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