Getting to Mars is only half the battle. Once the astronauts get there, they won’t have enough fuel to make a round trip back to Earth. This means that scientists must find ways for the astronauts to live on Mars for upwards of a year while they wait for more supplies. What are our plans […]
Becoming Martians
By: Yang Lu On July 20th, 1969, Neil Armstrong uttered the famous words, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind,” as he stepped foot on the moon. From then on, mankind has looked beyond the moon to our neighbouring planet, Mars. The red planet shares many of the Earth’s characteristics. […]
Ed Lorenz, and Discovery of Butterfly Effect
It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time. Eckels’ mind whirled. It couldn’t change things. Killing one butterfly couldn’t be that important! Could it? –Ray Bradbury, […]
Mission Impossible: Absolute Zero
By: Sophie Gabreldar Most people won’t be able to find absolute zero on an everyday thermometer. It’s actually minus 273.15 degrees on the Celsius scale, or 0 on the Kelvin scale (an absolute thermodynamic scale). Absolute zero is the coldest temperature possible, but why can’t scientists reach it? How Can There Be A Lowest Temperature? […]
America’s Gateway to Space: Cape Canaveral, Florida
By Chris Hwang Since the launch of the Bumper V-2 on July 24th, 1950, the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida has been the launch site for NASA‘s cardinal missions including Project Mercury, the Apollo missions, and the Space Shuttle program. But why there? The International Space Station (ISS), orbits around the Earth at […]
Molecular Lefties and Righties: A Handy Peek into Chirality
by Flora Guo Have you ever tried wearing a right-handed shoe on your left foot? Or vice versa? From personal experience, I know that this is definitely a frustrating experience. However, this everyday occurrence demonstrates an interesting property of the molecules around you. As a right-handed person, I often take everyday things for granted. Left-handed […]
The magic of the Aurora Borealis
By Jenny Tindall For centuries the source of the ethereal display of the aurora borealis, known to many as the northern lights, was up to speculation. In many places, it was proof that the gods were there watching over. In ancient China, it was a great battle taking place between good and evil. For the […]
It’s Not Magic but Acoustic Levitation
by Athena Cai The idea of levitation has always fascinated science fiction. From Back to the Future to Harry Potter, defying gravity seems to be an imaginative desire common to all of us. The idea of floating objects in real life seems so surreal when in fact, engineers have already made it possible with acoustic […]
How to Tell If a Coin Is Made of Silver (Without Destroying It in the Process)
When I returned from my trip to Vietnam a couple of summers ago, I brought back a very intriguing souvenir. It was an old coin that dated back to 1908 and was purportedly about 27 grams of 90% pure silver. Now, I assumed that the coin was a fake. I got the coin from a […]
Chaos Theory: Can the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings Really Cause a Tornado?
What do a double pendulum, weather patterns, and a population of rabbits have in common? According to American mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz, these peculiar topics might actually be pretty similar. Linked by the field of chaos theory, Lorenz proposed that the world isn’t as deterministic as we might think. What is Chaos Theory? Recently, […]