Harnessing the power of stars has, quite predictably, not been easy. Ever since Arthur Eddington first described nuclear fusion in the 1920's, we have been looking to harness its potential. Thirty years after this discovery, on a small island in a lake in Argentina, the world would be sold fusion in a bottle.
The Japanese may have believed they were at the end of nuclear weapons incidents at the hands of the Americans, but less than a decade since the Japanese surrender, there was another first in Japan. The world's first death from a hydrogen bomb.
The International Nuclear Event Scale lists around six nuclear disasters at the top end of its Level 1 to Level 7 categorising system. At the top of this scale, Level 7, of course, sits the now infamous Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disasters occurring in present-day Ukraine and Japan, respectively. Some recognise others… Continue reading Britain’s Chernobyl: What Was The Windscale Fire?
Thomas Midgley Jr. Climate change can sometimes be filled with doom and gloom, but whilst progress may be slow it is still happening. There is a change in the air towards the environmental friendliness of battery-powered cars and renewable electricity to move away from our dependence on fossil fuels. This takes time and a lot… Continue reading From Leaded Petrol to CFCs: Who Was Thomas Midgley Jr?
In science, you often hear the phrase 'correlation does not equal causation'. It is a ubiquitous line in science that often requires a lot of explaining. One of the best ways to demonstrate correlation vs causation is a website by Tyler Vigen called Spurious Correlations. For example (see below), as the US government spends on… Continue reading The British Doctor’s Study: The Link Between Smoking and Lung Cancer
Life on Earth is always an interesting topic. It often does centre around Biology and how evolution forms a prehistoric prokaryote mutating and evolving into the wide array of life that we see on Earth, but Physics plays its part. Specifically, with density. The phenomenon of the density of water is responsible for life on… Continue reading Why the Density of Ice and Water is so Important to Life on Earth?
Today we look at science as the bastion of doing the right thing. Yes, there are certain recent developments that have questionable ethics, but after the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki human experimentation has since centred around 'informed consent'. The history of science has a dark past but if it wasn't for these past atrocities, significantly… Continue reading From Neglect to Outbreak: What is the History of Hepatitis at Willowbrook School?
As a science teacher, one of the most common phrases I always say is "UNITS". Every science teacher has that one line that they always use that usually goes something like: "50 what? 50 bananas? 50 apples? 50 joules? Yes, 50 joules!" In an aim to reduce how much I have to say this line,… Continue reading The $150 Million Lesson in Getting Units Right: How did the Mars Climate Orbiter Crash?
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