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Showing posts from November, 2018

What is science? What is Pseudoscience?

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What is science? What is Pseudoscience? What is Science ? This is a  very interesting question, a mind blowing question actually.  When you actually sit down and think about it, this question is very vague,  there is no one answer to this question, there is no one authority or grand  institution that decides what science is. Science is such a wide enterprise  with so much going on that coining a definition to it is a source of problem.  There is so much going on in science that coining a definition for this word  may just raise more questions. There are various different definitions on the  internet, and most of them rotate around the same ideology, that science  has to do with research, gaining knowledge, analyzing , understanding the  natural world and things like that.   Where as, for pseudoscience, there are also different definitions, but not as wide as that of science. The definition of pseudoscience I found most appropriate is Pseudoscience is a collect

Mass number and Atomic number

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Mass number and Atomic number The mass number of an element is the total number of protons and neutrons found in the nucleus, in other words the total number of nucleons. The mass number can also be called atomic mass or nucleon number. The mass number of an element is different for every isotope of that element, as isotopes are atoms of an element with the same number of protons but different number of neutrons. The mass number is different from the atomic number, the atomic number is the number of protons found in the nucleus. The atomic number identifies an element, because no two elements have the same number of protons. On modern periodic tables, elements are classified according to their atomic numbers. So from this we can see that to calculate the number of neutrons in an element, we can simply subtract the atomic number from the mass number; #neutrons = Mass number - atomic number Citations: “Log in to Kognity.” Kognity , asoy.kognity.com/study/app/chemistry-

Industrial Revolution and its effect on Climate Change

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Industrialization is the process of transforming the human society socially, economically into an industrial society. This process involves vast economic and social changes such as urbanization,increased technical and advanced education and the increase in the middle class group. Industrialization is the extensive organization of an economy for the purpose of manufacturing;which has always involved large use of energy and alteration of natural systems. Although industrialization is the key to wealth and better living, it affects the environment and leads climate change because the main goals of industrialization are to improved food production, improved infrastructures and increase tourism opportunities. (1) Climate change can be described as the continuous change in the weather patterns. It is  manifested through sea level rise, increase in temperature and increase in heat waves. One of its driver is global warming ( an average increase in temperature of the atmosphere near the Eart

Modern flat Earth societies- Pseudoscience

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Modern flat Earth societies Started in the middle of the 20th century,  the Modern flat Earth societies is a group of individuals  who promote the idea that earth is flat rather than a sphere.  The idea of a flat earth originated from   the English writer  Samuel Rowbotham  (1816–1884), he b ased on the conclusions that come from the  Bedford Level experiment .  The  Bedford Level experiment  is  a series of  observations  carried out along 9.7 km in a river. The purpose was to measure the  curvature  of the  Earth .   Rowbotham found that there was no curve, so he claimed that the Earth is flat.  He then published a book ' Earth Not a Globe',  proposing the Earth is  flat disc centered.   Today, with the increasing use of social media, this idea has been increasingly spread.  More and more individuals believe that earth is flat and that all those satellite pictures are fake.  In 1956 a satellite image showed Earth as a sphere was shown to members of

Environmental Impact of Industrialization

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Environmental Impact of Industrialization                                                                                                                                                               The onset of the Industrial Revolution in the mid 1700’s and early 1800’s brought upon new methods of manufacturing products in Western society. These new technological advancements included factories and machinery, which ran mostly on the energy produced from burning coal and natural gases. These factories were used to mass produce products that proved useful for people during these times, but what people couldn’t see, was how detrimental the emissions were to the environment. While it was nice to have access to new technology and more job opportunities in factories, the effects of burning these fossil fuels had far greater consequences, that we are just starting to experience now.  According to ourworldindata.org, in 1900, approximately 2 billion tons of CO₂ had been emi

Mendeleev’s periodic table contributions

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Dmitri Mendeleev, born 8 February 1834, was a russian chemist and inventor often credited with the formulation of the periodic table, one that is continuously used in science to this date. Mendeleev, however, did not create the periodic table from scratch, rather he improved on pre-existing notions to create one that would not be in error as new elements were discovered. Through deduction, Mendeleev realised that the relative atomic mass and properties of an element occur periodically, and many of these properties, when the elements are arranged by their atomic mass, repeat themselves, such as chemical properties of Lithium recurring in Sodium such as their reactivity with water, and once again in Potassium later on. This lead to the creation of the Periodic Law. This law, initially, was only an empirical concept and could not be proven, it was merely suggested in research done by scientists at the time. Technological advancements today and the development of the electronic

Henry Moseley Contribution to chemistry and the periodic table

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Henry Moseley Background information Henry Moseley (23 of November 1883 - 10 August 1915) is an english physicist who contributed to many subject in the scientific world such as the periodic table, understanding of atoms, x-ray spectrometer, atomic number and many more. Moseley justified  his science works with the additions of laws and famously known for the empirical and chemical laws. Contribution to the periodic table The periodic table of Dmitri Mendeleev has been around for 44 years at the time Moseley started to study it. In 1913, after studying the periodic table of Mendeleev he then found something interesting about the arrangement of  the periodic table. He realized that the elements were arranged based on their atomic weight and chemical properties which was true and already known but what he found interesting was that the placement of an element predicted by the atomic weight did not always matched the one predicted by its chemical properties. So the elem

Antoine Lavoisier and his contribution to Chemistry

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The French Bourgeoisie helping out with science: “In performing experiments, it is necessary… that they be simplified as much as possible, and that every circumstance that could complicate the results should be completely removed.” -Antoine Lavoisier Early life and Work: On the 26 of  August 1743, Antoine Lavoisier was born to a wealthy family of nobility and was the son of an attorney at the Parliament of Paris. He  went to school at the College des Quatres Nations, University of Paris at the age of 11 were he studied chemistry, botany, astronomy and mathematics and received a law degree which admitted him the bar. (1). This French nobleman, chemist and biologist is credited for being the first one to put an extensive lists of the elements, helping construct the metric system and reform chemical nomenclature. Lavoisier is also known as the “ father of modern chemistry” (1). Lavoisier who was originally part of the Ferme generale ( most hated components of the F