The Ice Bucket Challenge

Everyone is doing the Ice Bucket Challenge, and ALS has reaped benefits because of it. Someday the disease will be wiped out like polio and smallpox.

I personally did not dump water and ice cubes on my head. Instead, I used my head to think about it.

How often do water and ice appear together in nature?

Really? You ask.

This question may sound ridiculous, until one thinks about how big nature is. Actually the answer is: very rarely.

Here on earth water exists in three different states: liquid water, ice and vapor. Our solar system is in the Goldielocks Zone, which is where water can take on all three states of matter. A planet closer to the sun has no ice. Any planet on the other side of the Goldielocks Zone will have ice, maybe even with liquid water under the ice, but clouds of water vapor cannot exist in these areas.

Water is everywhere in the universe.

There is a moon called Titan, in the orbit of Saturn, where ice is as solid as rock is here on earth. Neither liquid water nor vapor,exist on Titan. But liquid methane prevails, creating lakes, rivers and clouds, just like good old H20 does here on earth.

Try dumping a bucket of liquid methane on your head, forget the methane cubes.

Why I Love Science

When I was seven, we lived in a remodeled chicken coup. My parents paid twenty dollars a week for rent. One year after attending a book fair at my grade school, I begged them to let me join a book club where I would receive a book a month and a model of the lunar module. My uncle and I both loved to put models together. Not realizing that the cost of the books was nearly half of the rent, I continued to beg my parents to let me join the book club. I wanted that model!

My parents consented, the books and model arrived, and I put the model together.  The books just sat on the top of my dresser.

My Dad saw I wasn’t reading them and insisted I read them, after all, he had spent good money on them. There were stickers to go along with the information so I put the stickers where they went, but didn’t really read the books. When my father saw I wasn’t reading the books, he insisted I only put stickers on the pages I had read. I was seven.  I listened to him and read all those books just so I could put the stickers on the pages.

 My dad insisting that I read those science books is what got me interested in science. I started picking up fossils to examine them. Soon after that, I got a telescope. And then a microscope.  I still pick up rocks to look at them.

Just a regular, working guy

As you know I bounce weekly blogging ideas off my associates at work. I ask, “What do you want to know about?” I know nothing about the Ebola crisis; I don’t take political stands in public. So what do I know enough to write about? I love the natural sciences and like to educate people who might not be familiar with the natural sciences. “Sci-fi for the Working Guy” is what I know and write about. The best advice given to aspiring authors is: Write what you know.

I am not a college-educated scientist, but since I was seven, my interest in the natural sciences never faded. With the burst of knowledge available on the Internet, my thirst for science news was quenched.

One recent midnight shift, I told everyone at work I had just witnessed a meteor falling. “You mean a falling star?” they asked. I didn’t explain that it wasn’t actually a star falling, but rather a small piece of space debris, similar to the same stuff the Earth is made of. No bigger than a pea; more likely smaller. I told them larger meteors do fall, but are rare and announce their approach with loud explosions that rock areas up to three or four states in diameter. Most of the space stuff that falls on Earth is in the form of dust. I told them that if they held a magnet to the debris in a rain gutter, some of what sticks to the magnet would likely be from outer space.

One guy was particularly interested. I told him the meteor that hit Earth signaling the end of non-avian dinosaurs is estimated to have been six-ten miles in diameter. I affirmed to him that we know about most of the asteroids this big, but when I told him I couldn’t be so sure about comets, the flush ran out of his face.

I am no expert, and sometimes I may be wrong. I will admit it if it happens. The only reason I feel I should write about the natural sciences is because I watch it more than some, and feel I need to teach anyone who is willing to listen.

Thank you for reading; I am trying to post weekly. Click follow to…follow my blog. I will be changing it in a month or so. Hope you like the new site when it’s rolled out!