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Subject: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Mickey D. on 03/12/08 at 9:31 am
(Dinosaurs)
CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. Dinosaurs lived about 160 million years. And they all died out about 65 million years ago. All at once. Now why is that? Many scientists now believe that might have been a meteroite--or groups of meteorites. Big rocks from space! Let's say that this box of flour is like the surface of the earth. And this ball of pepper is like a meteorite. The meteorite that would've come hurtling toward our planet at over 100,000 kilometers a second. So imagine, 65 million years ago, and using the slingshot of science, we'll create a meteorite impact on the earth's surface. See? It forms a crater, and dust is injected into the atmosphere. Now if enough dust were thrown into the atmosphere and it could stay there long enough. It would block the light from the sun. And kill the plants that the dinosaurs depended on to live. Now, there's another reason we think the dinosaurs were killed by meteorites. All over the earth, at about the same level we find fossilized dinosaur bones, we find this weird metal called iridium. But we don't find it very much on the earth. But we find it all the time in meteorites. So maybe this layer of iridium all over the earth was deposited by the same meteor or meteorites that killed the dinosaurs. Now you know the earth is hit by meteorites all the time. (What?) It could happen again. Thank you for...CONSIDERING THE FOLLOWING.
(Skin)
CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. Every one in the world has brown skin. That's right. Some people have light brown skin, some people have dark brown skin. And some people have a brown somewhere in the middle. But everyone has brown skin. Now the only difference between this brown paint and this clear water are little particles of color called pigment. That's right. Pigment particles are suspended in the paint, and that's what makes it brown. Now, the pigment in our skin is called melanin. And melanin is made by special cells in our skin right below the outer layer--right below our epidermis. Now melanin is what makes freckles. Melanin is what makes suntans. And melanin is great fun to party. No, I'm kidding. Kidding 'bout the party thing melanin. There's two things. First of all, it allows our skin to absorb some sunlight which helps us make Vitamin D which our bodies need. Also melanin keeps us from getting too much sunlight which is bad for our skin. So, people whose ancestors live far from the Equator where the sun doesn't shine too brightly, usually have lighter colored skin, which allows your skin to absorb sum sunlight. People whose ancestors live near the Equator where the sun shines brightly, usually have darker colored skin so they don't get too much sunlight. So the rainbow of people that we have all over the world, well, it's all done with melanin. Isn't that cool? Thank you for...CONSIDERING THE FOLLOWING.
(Buoyancy)
Good evening. Tonight on CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING, we're gonna talk about floating and sinking. Things sink until they float. No kidding. Uh, let's say this is a boat. Uh, actually it's a tennis ball. It's our Tennis Ball Boat Hole of Science. And just as you'd expect, it floats. I mean, it's--it's hollow. So it easily displaces as much water as it weighs, and it ends up floating. Lemme ask you this--Here's a tennis ball cut in half, so they're gonna float or sink. Well, one test is worth a thousand experts in opinions. Take a look. It floats. And it floats a little higher. That might not be when you'd expected first. That's because it doesn't weigh as much. So it sinks until it displaces as much water as it weighs and then it floats. Now let's say we had a little weight to it, like when we put on a mast in a sail. Now it floats too, but not quite as high. Now here's a toyboat toyboat toyboat of science. Watch, same thing. It floats. And if I push down on it which makes it weigh more. It floats a little lower. It displaces more water. Now, the first guy to figure this out was a Greek god named Archimedes. Archimedes, uh, got in a bathtub and it overflowed, and he realized suddenly at that moment that he could figure out how much volume things happen. How much space things take up if he knew how much water they displaced when they sank. Anyway, he was so excited by this, he said "Eureka", which is Greek for "I found it!" And he jumped out of the tub and went running down the street with no clothes on. Now it's a big deal two thousand years ago. Well, still is a big deal. Thank you for...CONSIDERING THE FOLLOWING.
(Digestion)
Oh, hi, welcome to DIGESTION DIGEST. I was just lookin' over the menu. There are so many different kinds of things that we can eat. You know we eat about one kilogram of food every day and we drink about three liters of water every day. We can eat everything all the way from broccoli to chicken to eggplant to chocolate mousse. And we get nutrients from all these kinds of foods. Now it all starts right here. When we look at food when we smell it. That's right. We take the food in our mouth and our mouth starts to water, or salivate. We use our teeth and our tongue to grind it up. And then we swallow it, it goes down our food tube. Our esophagus into our stomach. From here it gets broken down some more by acid and squeezing of our stomach. Then it goes into our small intenstine, and that's where enzymes, special chemicals that we have, uh, absorb all the chemicals that we need from our food. And from the small intestine, it goes into the large intestine. And from there--well--it's on its way! Now, when we say small intestine. You know it's really not that small. Uh, for an adult--for a person like me, small intestine is about seven meters long. Now if you're a kid, it's about four meters long. So that's pretty doggone wild. And then the large intestine--well--it's somewhat big around than the small intestine and it's about two meters long. So the whole trip is like ten meters. It can take anywhere from twelve hours to two days for the food that we eat to work its way all the way through our bodies to the end. Now that's a lot of information. It's a lot of food. It's a lot to digest. Well, thanks for joining us on...DIGESTION DIGEST.
(Simple Machines)
Today on CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING we're gonna talk about wheels...and levers. So please...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. "Mira!" that means "look". If I push down on this side of the lever, this side goes up. You can lift the can we can do some work. See the lever and pivots about the fulcrum--about the place in the middle. This side down. This side up. Now suppose we took the lever and folded it. So it looked like this...same fulcrum...same lever. But now we get this end to go up. I push on this end sideways...this end sideways...this end up. Okay, suppose we hooked a few of these levers together. So it looked like this. See, it kinda looks like a wheel, doesn't it? See it's a bunch of levers all pivoting around one fulcrum like a wheel. Take a look. See?
(Earth's Seasons)
Hi, please CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. If you had to show that the earth was spinning. How would you do it? (Roger Zero-G, and I feel fine, chaps. We're turning around. Oh, that fuel is perfective.) No spaceships allowed. (Hey, I could show you the earth is spinning right here.) Huh? Uh, no weather people allowed either. How would you do it? Now take a look at this. Let's say that this marble is like a pendulum swinging over the North Pole of the earth. Now if the earth is not spinning, the marble keeps swinging right over that black line. But the earth is spinning. So watch. The marble keeps swinging in the same direction while the earth turns under it. Now same thing happens with the real pendulum. I set this bowling ball swinging. As the day goes on, the earth will turn under it and knock these nails over. Now the first guy to do it was the French scientist named Jean Bernard Leon Foucault. (Fuko fuko fuko fuko ow!) And we call it Foucault's Pendulum or "Fou-kalt's Pendulum". So what's so important about knowing that the earth is spinning? Uh, it's no big deal. It's just the reason that the sun rises and sets. It's the reason that the moon rises and sets, and it causes all kinds of weather, that's what's so important. Thank you for joining me on...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
(Electricity)
So where does electricity come from anyway? Well, in 1831, two scientists figured out how to make electricity, there's Michael Ferraday working in Great Britain, and Joseph Henry working in the United States. About the same time, they both did an experiment, something like this. Michael Ferraday took a coil of wire, and he moved it over a magnet. And when he did, electricity started to flow in this coil. The electricity went down over here to another coil and made the compass needle move. Michael Ferraday was doing this experiment for an audience. And the woman came up to him afterwards and said, "Uh, Mr. Ferraday, uh, what use is it?" Like he said, "Madam, oh you tell me the use of a newborn child." Now what he meant was, "Would you take a look? I mean, I'm moving a compass needle without touching it. Y'understand? I have a coil wire way over here and of making a compass needle move way over there with no apparrent force." You gotta mean "Some force is going right through the air and wiggling that needle! Something's happening! You're so spectacular! Effect is happening here! You not--may not completely understand it right now with no apparrent force! One day we will, and it's gonna be a big deal!" Thank you for joining me on...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
(Blood & Circulation)
Hear that? It's the sound of the heartbeat. People say it goes "lub dub", it's probably the same people to say a dog goes "pow wow", I mean, to me a dog is much more of a (Down! Down, Bill!) Anyway, this is a pump, just like your heart. It's the plastic water pump of science. Now we notice that as I pump, the small valve is opening and closing. Piston goes up, valve is closed. Piston comes down, valve is open. See? This is our rubber balloon heart modelled pump of science. Now just like your own heart, it has a left side and a right side. When the right side squeezes, it sends blood around to your lungs. That's where it gets oxygen and turns red. From there, it goes to the left side. Now when the left side squeezes, it sends blood to all the other parts to your body. It comes back from those, it's on the right side again. Now whenever one side squeezes, one valve has to open and the other valve has to stay closed. Otherwise, the pump won't work. Now the "lub dub", when the "lub" that's the strong push. And the "dub" that's the reloading push. So, "lub dub pow wow arf arf" (yipe!) Thank you for joining me on...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. (Bad science guy! No biscuit!)
(Static Electricity)
Here's the static electricity generator, just pull to the brim with electrons. I'm gonna let somebody electrons jump off. We scientists like to say "I'm letting the electrons discharge." Now where did they go when we discharge? (Home, maybe, I dunno?) Hmm, when you're going to the ground...(Oh.) Now when you say the ground--you mean the "ground" like the earth, like part of our planet. (That's what I was thinking though.) Yeah, the ground. (mm-hmm) How do they get there? Ahh, with a ground wire. (What?) The ground wire runs from the machine right to the main cold water pipe in the lab. And the cold water pipe runs right through the floor. The pipes run underneath the floor to the lab all the way down here and then into the earth. That way electrons can find their way to or from the ground...just like that! You may have seen the third prong on some electrical plugs. Watch the ground wire. It lets extra electrons get to or from the ground...quickly...and quietly. Well thanks for joining us...on CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. Discharge, electrons. (Uh, Bill?) Discharge to the ground. (Bill!)
(Bones & Muscles)
Our bodies are like machines, or machines are a lot like our bodies. So when a mechanism moves, it has joints. Like this door has a hinge. We have hinge joints in our fingers. And our jaw...AAAAHH!!! Phew! Our bones and muscles let us move our joints. Please CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. Whew! So when our hand, we have hinge joints. Like the hinges on a gate. Also in our hands, we have a special type of joint called the saddle joint, it's in our thumb. Which our thumb goes this way...or...this way. Two directions, one joint. Cool. Also in our body, we'll find...wall socket joints. We kinda ball inside the joint, you see the television in to. Ball and socket joints in our body, are in our hips. When our hips move. Oh, give it away, they say! In our backs, we have smaller joints, whole bunch of them. Now dance! Slide! There's even joints in our bodies that don't move at all, called fixed joints. There's fixed joints in your skull. Their joints, but they don't move. All the different joints in our body let our bodies move all different ways. Well, thanks for joining me, I mean, "jointing" me...on CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. AAAAHH!
(Balance)
No matter how in object is shaped, it always has a balance point. Please, CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING! Hey! If an object is round, its balance point is always in the middle, no matter how you hold it. We also call a balance point, the center of mass, or the center of gravity. Anyway, it's always in the middle. Now when you set it down, it'll always be in balance. If you have an unusually shaped object like a bowling pin. Its center of gravity, center of mass is in the middle of it--if you're looking at this way. But it doesn't look like it's in the middle--if you're looking at...this way. It's somewhere in here. So, if you go to slide it along the table, and you push below its center of mass, it slides along fine. If you push above its center of mass, you get a twisting force. It falls right over. To go bowling, you need a bowling ball. Thanks. Now when you're holding something heavy like a bowling ball. It tries to throw you off balance. Especially when it's above your center of mass. So when you bowl, you gotta take that into account. There we go. That's sort of the old fashioned way of bowling. I prefer the Strike Master 300. Here we go! Right in the centers of mass, their balance points. Thank you for joining me on...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
(Brain)
No wonder your brain's in the headlines. Think of all the information that can store. Think of your brain as a newspaper. It's folded. Just think of all the words, pictures, and ideas in here. They take up a lot less room when the newspaper is folded. You know, a newspaper has a lot of information. Just look at it all! All those pages in just one Sunday newspaper. Just think of all the information that must be in your brain. It's enormous! But it doesn't take up too much room because it's folded.
(Momentum)
How can rockets zoom through space where there's nothing to push against. Well, CONSIDER...THE FOLLOWING. Rockets move because of the momentum of their fuel. Now here I have a rocket in my pocket. It's the plastic rocket of science. And for fuel, we'll use just air. Put it in with this small air pump. Twenty pumps. Three...two...one... Two...one... Not--not very impressive. So we'll do it again with a little heavier fuel. Here's the same type of rocket with a little water in it. See? Now the water is heavier than air. So when it goes out the back, we'll have more momentum. And that should make the rocket go higher. Twenty pumps. Three two one. Ha! See? Not bad. Now as long as the fuel's going this way, the rocket'll go this way. And the momentum of the fuel going back very fast equals the momentum of the rocket going off the other way not so fast. Now the rocket doesn't have to be going straight up. No, it works in any direction. 24, 25, 26. Three...two...one... Thanks--
(Atmosphere)
If mountaintops are closer to the sun, why is it always colder up there than it is down here in the city. Well please, CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. Our atmosphere is thin, but it's thick enough to keep us warm. Now when you're wearing a coat like this one, it keeps you warm because it holds air next to your body. The same thing with the atmosphere. There's more air above us, when we're down here in the city, and when we're way up here in the mountains. So it's like a world's low places or wearing more coats so they're wearing more air. Then these places up high in the mountains. Now as your travel up through the atmosphere, it gets colder and colder because the air gets thinner and thinner. Uh, until you're up around 10 kilometers, that's when you leave the troposhphere and enter the stratosphere. Anyway the rate at which it gets colder is called the lapse rate. And it's about five and half degrees celsius per kilometer. So mountains say, uh, 3,000 meters high. Let's say, that's about, uh...oh, 10,000 feet would be about, uh, seventeen degrees celsius colder and it would be down here in the city. And that's plenty cold enough than there to be a spring shower in the city while it's snowing up in the mountains. Thank you for joining me on CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
(Animal Locomotion)
Animals move around by pushing one things, and when they push, they pull. Please...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. Animals like us move around by pulling on things with our muscles. You see, our muscles can only get shorter, they can only squeeze together, we say, they contract. Take a look at this, you see this tarrider plastic skeleton. When we wind her up with some rubber muscles. If her arm goes like this, this muscles getting tighter, it's contracting. And this muscle is stretching, it's getting looser. And if her arm goes like this, these muscles get shorter, and this muscle hardly does anything at all. That's how she pushes or pulls by making muscles get shorter. THis has troubled lot of animals. Now take a look at this, here's a cat skeleton. So when the cat runs or jumps, it pushes down like this with its foot. When that happens, this muscle gets shorter. It's pulling, see? So the only reason the bone sticks back here this far is so that when this muscle pulls, the foot goes down. Now animals like fish move by squeezing muscles on this side of its body and letting muscles on the other side go loose, see? Like...squeeze loose, loose squeeze. See, like that, and then, it could swim. Tighter, looser. Looser, tighter. And this one also squeeze. (Mm-hmm) Now a lot of animals move by squeezing their whole bodies. Animals like, squid, and octopus. They're more kinda like this. Here's a water balloon and it's squeezing onto water inside her. Then if we let one end to open up into the sea. Ha! The balloon shoots right out, see? That's how real squid move through the ocean, they squeeze their bodies and they could jet a water. See, but this is a rubber squeeze toy, too. See if that works. See, these animals all move by squeezing. Well, thank you for joining me on...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. That's not bad, heh?
Subject: Consider The Following with Bill Nye (II)
Written By: Mickey D. on 03/12/08 at 9:31 am
(Pseudoscience)
I weigh a ton. Please CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. I'll prove it to you with this scale of science. See? A ton. A thousand kilograms. I'd tell you the story of how I came to a way at a time. I'm afraid you might not believe it. You see? I've made an extraordinary claim. Oh, ask yourself, if I provided you with extraordinary proof. See, one of the big ideas in science is that an experiment can be repeated--can be repeated. Someone else can do the same thing and get the same result--the same result. So if I weighed a ton on that scale in the lab. I should weigh a ton on another scale, or--or my next door neighbor's scale, or even your scale! Oh! So let's try it. On this scale, I weigh, uh, 50 plus 20 is 70 kilograms. And that's not even close to a compass, even the tenth of a ton. And this one says, uh, that says 70 kilograms. And this scale which is your scale says 155--oh, pounds! Well that's the same as 70 kilograms. See, if they all say the same, then they're not even close. Though we saw it on that big dial in the lab with the breaking furniture. See, that wasn't extraordinary proof, because the experiment couldn't be repeated, we couldn't repeat it. Thank you for joining me on CONSI--
(Archeology)
When we say something like this old pot is 5,000 years old. How do we know? Well please...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. Scientist can figure out the age of something like this with radio carbon dating. See, every living thing, you, me, plants and trees, and the wood that became this charcoal have a lot of carbon in it. Now carbons like anything else. It's made of atoms. Atoms are tiny pieces of stuff. And atoms are made of even tinier pieces of stuff called protons and neutrons. Now most carbon has six protons and six neutrons. We add them up then we call it Carbon 12. Here's a thing. There's another kind of carbon with six protons and eight neutrons and we call it Carbon 14. Carbon 14 or radio carbon is slightly radioactive, and it's natural, and it's just a little bit radioactive. That makes it unstable. So...Carbon 14 breaks down into Carbon 12. So let's say that this, uh, pitcher of jellybeans is like carbon. Most of it is Carbon 12. I like these black licorice flavored ones. But some of it is Carbon 14, it's like these yellow tangy lemon ones. I'll separate it. So as long as the living thing is alive. The ratio between the amount of Carbon 14 and the amount of Carbon 12 stays about the same. About 180 Carbon 12 atoms for every Carbon 14 atom. But soon as the living thing stops living, the Carbon 14 slowly goes away. Now archeologist can take advantage of this. By figuring out how much Carbon 14 is left inside of something they can figure out when it stopped living. Like, when the berries that were inside this pot were picked. Thanks Radio Carbon Dating! I mean, thank you for joining me on...
(Amphibians)
Breathing air? What a gas! Amphibians were first. Please, CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. Take a look at this, it's our fabulous floating fish model of science! Now fish have a swim bladder, a sack that they can fill with oxygen. When their swim bladders are full, fish float up. When their swim bladders are not so cold, they sink down. Well, sort of. Now amphibians like tadpoles use their gills to breathe. They grow lungs with what was in their agent ancestors, a swim bladder. Then their gills shrinking way completely and they grow legs. Use your legs. There, legs. Then they end up breathing air. Now, see, breathing air, lungs in the animal get about ten times as much oxygen as breathing from water. Laugh. So, frogs can get a lot of air and jump around, way more than a fish can. By living on land, amphibians can find things to eat that other animals back in the water can't get to. Amphibians found emich, a special place in their ecosystem. Walking or hopping all over the place. And they're still doing it four hundred million years later. We live on land, too, but amphibians did it first. Not bad. Well, thank you for sitting high and dry with me as we...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
(Inventing)
Inventions usually don't work the first time. Please CONSDIER THE FOLLOWING. I don't know about you but when I think of an invention, I think of a light bulb. Now light bulbs are all over the place these days, but they weren't until they were invented. See, people realize that they can get light from an electricity when they say a lightning, or when they made sparks with a machine like this one. Their sparks' all right, but they're a little bit hard to control, and they're a little bit dangerous. Edison had the idea...(What?)...Seems obvious now of containing the sparks in a glass bowl. You also had the idea of running the electricity through a fiber, or a filamine. The filamine would glow and that would give off light. But the filamine would burn up until Edison realized he...(What?)...he could put it in a vacuum where there's no air. And he tried all kinds of different materials for his film. And then they say he tried over three hundred things, and someone said to him, "Well, Mr. Edison, you've gotten nowhere." Edison said, "Whadda ya mean? I found three hundred things that won't work!" Anyway Edison working with a guy named Louis Laderman...(Hello? Hello?)...came up with a film and that would work. There was a baked cotton fiber. So they put their fiber in a glass bulb and to keep it from burning up, they pumped all the air out, they made a vacuum. Then they ran electricity through the wire. See, it's giving off light. But you can see here in the lab are vacuum-pumped isn't quite good enough. Now the filamine is starting to burn up. Now Edison's invention wasn't perfect, there was still lot of improvements to be made. But that's the way it is with inventions! One invention leads to another! Well, thank you for joining me on CONS--
(Time)
Can people in spaceships really travel through time? Well please...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. You can't talk about speed without talking about time. (All right, get ready. Hear this?) If someone throws you a ball from a moving, the speed of the truck adds to the speed of the ball. Fifty-nine miles an hour. The truck was going about twenty miles an hour, she must have gone at thirty-nine. The speeds add up. If the truck is going away from you, the speed of the truck (gaping on the road) subtracts from the speed of the ball. Twenty-two miles an hour, now the truck is going toward him, she must have thrown it forty-two miles an hour, and they subtract twenty-two. Light is pure energy, it's not like a ball. And scientist have measured the speed of light, very accurate. And even though we're living on the planet that's spinning like crazy and circling the sun way faster than the truck. When we measure the speed of light wherever we're going this way or this way, we always get the same answer, no matter what direction we're going or how fast. Speed of light is the same, it's a rear, it doesn't speed up or slow down like a ball. The speed of light remains at constant 300,000 kilometers a second. (All right, get ready again. Go! Go!) It's like somebody threw your ball from a moving truck, and it didn't speed up or slow down. No matter how fast the truck is going or in which direction, the light from that spotlight always goes the same speed. Now you would just not expect that. A very famous scientist named Albert Einstein, got that thinking about this. And he thought that if the distance of beam of light travels stays the same. The only way for the speed of light to remain a constant. Is if time can change. He reasoned that the speed of time can change. Then he did a very famous when he called thought experiment. (experiment) There are two twin brothers. One twin is sitting on the earth. The other brother gets on a rocket ship, and zooms off on a big space journey. Now the brother in the rocket ship is travelling fast, nearly at the speed of light. PSSSSSHHHHHOWWWWW!!!! When this brother gets back, time will pass more slowly for him than time for the brother on Earth. (You're lookin' good!) It's not just a time we've seem to have slowed down, it's that time for one brother, well, actually it's sped up or slowed down relative to the other brother. This is what Einstein called is theory of relativity. (comes a specialty with the other relativity.) Now we've never built a rocket, they can go nearly as fast as the rocket than Einstein's thought experiment. But time for astronauts does pass ever so slightly more slower than time for us here on Earth. Now here is we can tell...the theory of relativity is true. Thank you for joining me on...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
(Genes)
Human genes can combine in about 70 trillion combinations. (Okay) And we do it with just four chemicals. Please CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. Every living thing. You, me, earthworms and trees are made of DNA. And the DNA in all of us has made of a same four chemicals. (Is that right?) The way it works is that the four chemicals are arranged in a different order or sequence and all the different strands of DNA. (Gotcha.) And the four chemicals are adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine. Now each chemical is pretty complicated--don't get me wrong! But there are only four of them...adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine. (Bill!) We usually just write A T C G . Well you might think that with just four chemicals we'd only be able to get a few combinations like we have an A next to a T or a C next to a G with an A over here. (Mm-hmm) Here's the thing, they're allowed to use each chemicals many times as you want. So we end up with thousands and thousands of different combinations. For example, if we can print out all the chemicals in just one gene. And let's say the gene from my hair color which is, uh, not quite red, and not quite brown, and somewhere in between. (Auburn) If we printed it out on pages like this, the gene from my hair color would take five pages. Yeah, that's just for my hair color. To print out all the pages we need for our every human gene. We need a lot of paper, we need...this much paper. Almost half a million sheets. All printed out like this. So you might think that genes are complicated. But in a way, they're kinda simple, 'cause they're made of just four chemicals...adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine. That's it! And that's it for CONSIDER THE--
(Architectures)
Power architects use flat sheets of paper and flat computer screens to make pictures of great big buildings that aren't flat. Well please CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. Take a look at this, it's an apple. And if we looking at straight on, and draw only the lines that we can see, we get a picture. And it looks like this, now you know there's a lot more to an apple than what we see here. We wanna see what's inside. So...we take the apple, and we cut it. Excellent. Now we're looking at straight on, but we're looking at the inside. And the picture...looks like this, this is the inside of the apple. Now that's not the only way we could see the inside of the apple. We could cut it this way. Now we look at the apple straight on again, not like this, but like this, and the picture...is right here. Now architects use all three of these pictures. This one is called the elevation group, it's called the elevation, you guess it shows you how much the apple is elevating above the surface is resting. This one is called the section group, you probably heard of a cross section. Oh, here it is, architects just call it a section. Oh, here it is, architects just call it a section. And this one is called the Plan B, you probably heard of the four plan. Well, here it is. Architects use the words, elevation, section, and plan. Now take a look at this...the dollhouse of science. When you're looking at this way, it's the elevation group, elevation group. When we're looking at this way...it's some section group, section group. Now this is the plan view, plan view. So, elevation, section, plan, snap! Well, thank you for joining me on...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
(Atoms & Molecules)
How do we know that atoms combine to make molecules? Well, please...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. This is H2O. Water. Two parts Hydrogen, and one part Oxygen. When the atoms come together, they stick. Okay, but--but how do we know? Now take a look at this. In here we have some water. Now we're passing electricity through. When we do, we get two gases. If we let it go long enough, there'll be no wa--uh, liquid left at all, just the gases. And they're pure, they're each made of just one kind of element. On top of that, there's twice as much of this gas as this gas by doing a lot of experiments like this, scientists have figured out that w--w--H2O is two parts Hydrogen and one part Oxygen. With the Hydrogen's on one side, and the Oxygen on the other...kinda like, uh, mouse ears. (Uh-huh) See? H2O is great! The ocean is made of H2O. You and I are full of H2O. It's wild! It's wonderful! It's water! You know, a feller could've seen that coming. Well...thank you for joining me on CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. See ya real soon...ha!
(Fluids)
How can big heavy planes fly in thin air? Please CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING! This is a hovercraft, it floats on a cushion of fluid. When air flows into this precisely shaped flow containment annuits. Uh, we made it from a trashbag. (Nice.) The flow of air becomes from the fan in this leaf blower. It's a pump. And it forces fluid under this wooden disk. (Oh boy) There's enough fluid, and it's flowing fast enough. Old air end me up. (Careful!) That's wild. (Bill) I'm on a cushion of fluid. There are fans in here, too. Big ones! When those blades start spinning, they run into molecules of fluid, molecules of air. When the air gets pushed at--backwards. See? It's a giant pump! When the engine forces the weight of all of that air back, the plane gets shoved forward! When the wing gets pushed through a different part of the same fluid. The good old air. Well, some of the air gets pushed down. The weight of the air being pushed down makes the weight of the plane get pushed up. The Earth's about forty tons. If you happen to be on board, well, use a lot of fun then! Whoo! Feel that wind? That's the fluid being pushed by a plane! Whoo-hoo! Air is thick and heavy! The plane has to fly! Because it's moving all that fluid around! Well, thank you for joining me on...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING!
(Comets & Meteors)
Why isn't the earth covered with craters the way the moon is? Please CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. When the meteoroid heads for the moon, there's nothing to slow it down. So-wahhh! It makes a crater. When the meteoroid heads for the earth, it has to pass for at least 80 kilometers of thin air. Rub your hands together, that'll get warm, that's friction. Well, meteoroids are going so fast that the friction of the air makes them heat up. They may not notice, but metal burns. This is a piece of steel wool, it's mostly iron just like meteorite. If there were to hit the earth's atmosphere, it would start to heat up. Now the faster it's going, the more oxygen it passes through. So it really heats up like this. Heh! Now most of the meteoroids that hit the earth's atmosphere burn up completely, but not all of them. See, you can still find meteroid craters on the earth's surface if you know where to look. This is meteor crater in Arizona. This is, uh, Manicouagan in Quebec, Canada. This is, uh, Kara-Kul in, uh, Afghanistan and Asia. And this is, uh, Bosumtwi in, uh, Ghana, Africa. Now these meteorite craters are huge. And there's still hundreds of them on the earth's surface. But wind, water, ice, and volcanoes help smooth them over. See, every planet and moon in the Solar System has been hit with meteorites. But not all of them have a nice atmosphere to protect them. Well, thank you for joining me on CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Philip Eno on 03/12/08 at 9:35 am
Who is Bill Nye?
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Red Ant on 03/12/08 at 9:37 am
We're all for people starting new threads here, Mickey D. Instead of posting two seperate and virtually identical topics within thirty seconds of each other, please post one and reply to it with the second. Thank you.
Ant
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Mickey D. on 03/12/08 at 11:24 am
Who is Bill Nye?
CLICK HERE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nye
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: karen on 03/12/08 at 7:20 pm
Who is Bill Nye?
Bill Nye, science guy
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: whistledog on 03/12/08 at 7:39 pm
Bill Nay, the Science Gay
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Philip Eno on 03/13/08 at 3:08 am
This chap is being made clear to me...
Subject: Consider The Following with Bill Nye (III)
Written By: Mickey D. on 03/14/08 at 12:31 pm
(Flight)
CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. You, me, air, everything is made of molecules. Little pieces of stuff. And when things like air molecules get moving. They can exert pressure. Here, take a look at the molecule machine of science. See the little balls? They're moving like moving air molecules. And they exert a pressure on this paper disc, see? Now what would happen if I move the paper disc up real fast. Well, take a look. See, the molecules spread apart, they expand. They want to exert a pressure in the direction they're going. Along the tube, they don't exert as much pressure this way or this way, and that's Bernoulli's Principle. It's the same pressure you feel when you're riding your bike. Excuse me, I'm gonna generate a little wind here in the lab. See, you feel winds on your face! You feel pressure! You don't feel as much pressure on the back of your head! Now this pressure is called "Dynamic Pressure", the pressure of moving air! So the same thing happens on an airplane wing. Suppose we had an airplane wing like the plastic airplane wing of science. See? As air goes over, the air going under the bottom exerts a little pressure on the bottom. But the air going over the top doesn't exert as much pressure this way, this way, this way, or this way. So we get LIFT. Y'see? Lift! It's all done with molecules. See ya!
(Insects)
How do they do that? (I dunno.) Well please...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. ('Kay.) The bigger something is, the stronger it is. But also the more it weighs. So let's say we have something like this piece of rope. Its strength depends on how big it is this way, what we call it cross section, its area. It's what you get when you make an ink compression of it like this. That's the rope's cross section. Now a bigger rope is stronger because it has...a bigger cross section. Duh! (Okay, okay!) But here's the thing, as things get bigger, they weigh more. So take a look at this. It's our clay modelled ant of science. And right now, it's able to hold itself up. But if I make it a little bigger, it can just barely hold itself. And if I make it this big, well...it collapses under its own way just like that. That's why big animals like elephants...and dinosaurs...and everything else. Thank you for...CONSIDERING THE FOLLOWING.
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Philip Eno on 03/14/08 at 6:21 pm
(Insects)
How do they do that? (I dunno.) Well please...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. ('Kay.) The bigger something is, the stronger it is. But also the more it weighs. So let's say we have something like this piece of rope. Its strength depends on how big it is this way, what we call it cross section, its area. It's what you get when you make an ink compression of it like this. That's the rope's cross section. Now a bigger rope is stronger because it has...a bigger cross section. Duh! (Okay, okay!) But here's the thing, as things get bigger, they weigh more. So take a look at this. It's our clay modelled ant of science. And right now, it's able to hold itself up. But if I make it a little bigger, it can just barely hold itself. And if I make it this big, well...it collapses under its own way just like that. That's why big animals like elephants...and dinosaurs...and everything else. Thank you for...CONSIDERING THE FOLLOWING.
Is the universe that strong, for that is very big?
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: whistledog on 03/14/08 at 9:24 pm
(Flight)
CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. You, me, air, everything is made of molecules. Little pieces of stuff. And when things like air molecules get moving. They can exert pressure. Here, take a look at the molecule machine of science. See the little balls? They're moving like moving air molecules. And they exert a pressure on this paper disc, see? Now what would happen if I move the paper disc up real fast. Well, take a look. See, the molecules spread apart, they expand. They want to exert a pressure in the direction they're going. Along the tube, they don't exert as much pressure this way or this way, and that's Bernoulli's Principle. It's the same pressure you feel when you're riding your bike. Excuse me, I'm gonna generate a little wind here in the lab. See, you feel winds on your face! You feel pressure! You don't feel as much pressure on the back of your head! Now this pressure is called "Dynamic Pressure", the pressure of moving air! So the same thing happens on an airplane wing. Suppose we had an airplane wing like the plastic airplane wing of science. See? As air goes over, the air going under the bottom exerts a little pressure on the bottom. But the air going over the top doesn't exert as much pressure this way, this way, this way, or this way. So we get LIFT. Y'see? Lift! It's all done with molecules. See ya!
(Insects)
How do they do that? (I dunno.) Well please...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. ('Kay.) The bigger something is, the stronger it is. But also the more it weighs. So let's say we have something like this piece of rope. Its strength depends on how big it is this way, what we call it cross section, its area. It's what you get when you make an ink compression of it like this. That's the rope's cross section. Now a bigger rope is stronger because it has...a bigger cross section. Duh! (Okay, okay!) But here's the thing, as things get bigger, they weigh more. So take a look at this. It's our clay modelled ant of science. And right now, it's able to hold itself up. But if I make it a little bigger, it can just barely hold itself. And if I make it this big, well...it collapses under its own way just like that. That's why big animals like elephants...and dinosaurs...and everything else. Thank you for...CONSIDERING THE FOLLOWING.
Are you Bill Nye?
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Tia on 03/14/08 at 10:05 pm
"skin" is very thought-provoking. it's really kinda changed the way i think about race.
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Foo Bar on 03/15/08 at 12:04 am
"skin" is very thought-provoking. it's really kinda changed the way i think about race.
Bill Nye was a little after my time, but he's been a consistently great popularizer of science. The show simplifies scientific to the point that they can be understood without the math, but he really doesn't dumb things down. If I had kids, it's precisely the kind of show I'd want to enjoy with them.
That segment on "time" is an entire 60-minute episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos distilled into 30 seconds. Any eighth-grade teacher who wants to introduce special relativity could use that in a lesson and be successful, even if the math behind it won't be introduced for a couple of years.
Given the equations for the Lorentz transformations, you can calculate time dilation as soon as you know what a square root is -- and by the time you get out of high school, you'll be able to derive it all from first principles with nothing more than a few conceptual hints, basically in the same form that Einstein did.
But that's beyond the scope of Nye's audience. Back to that magical age in a promising student's life when he or she is not yet burned out on the school system's "teach to the test" drudgery, and can still be provided with something to keep them motivated during the dark years ahead. It's a powerful thing to hand a larval stage geek the 10-20 pages that made up Einstein's special relativity derivation (it's a surpringly short paper, I can still remember that even though I didn't understand any of it on first reading, how short it was, especially in comparison to the 100-500 page textbooks I'd been lugging around for all of my life, and here's Albert freakin' Einstein getting a Nobel Prize for something I could stuff in my backpack) and tell him...
J.K. Rowling was also after my time -- Dungeons and Dragons was my "magical" phase, and I continued to play, even as I studied physics... but the speech went (or would go) something like this:
"Stories about magic are fun. They fuel the imagination. They make you laugh. They make you think. They make you wonder. But they're still just stories. But if you've ever imagined what a real spellbook looks like, well, it looks like this. (He pulls out an old photocopied pile of paper) See this musty dog-eared 10th-generation photocopy of a 100-year-old paper written in a mix of German (with convenient English translation on facing pages) and Mathematics? Notice how the mathematical symbols are the same in both German and English? (Obviously Mathematics is a language of such great power that it transcends human tongues...) This was written by Einstein, and it's how he figured out that E=mc^2. Anyway, inside this still-warm 11th-generation photocopy that I'm handing you, lie the secrets of the atomic bomb, time dilation, why the sun shines, what it's like to be a photon, and how we know that every atom on earth - including your body - that's heavier than iron was once part of a supernova."
While the kid's still reeling, you then pop the big one: "There's plenty of stuff we don't understand -- but by the time you're out of high school, you'll understand every word in this paper."
Then you hand him the paper. And you get ready for a lot of questions over the next few weeks. You never get to see the result of your experiment, but you have the distinct impression that you did something right.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Something Arthur C. Clarke told me.
Any properly presented technology is cooler than magic.
- Something a grade-school science teacher taught me.
Subject: Consider The Following with Bill Nye (Evolution)
Written By: Mickey D. on 03/17/08 at 9:33 am
If you have four legs and you like to gallop around. Maybe you're a zebra, or a springboch, or a giraffe. Now if you're a giraffe, why do you have such a long neck? Well please CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. Now when you watch giraffes eat, you'll see that they eat leaves up high in trees. That's what giraffes do all day, they eat leaf tree salad. Leaves that other animals can't reach. Now you might think that if you're another animal and you wanted to reach those high leaves, you just stretch your neck. Stretch your neck. Stretch. Sort of--Stretch! And eventually you'll be able to eat leaves up higher in trees. Well, it doesn't work that way. In order to have a slightly longer neck, you'd have to be born with one, just slightly longer. Just slightly longer. You see, you're having a slightly longer neck. Just slightly longer. Well I want you to reach leaves that are slightly higher. Slightly higher. And that gives you a slightly better chance. Slightly better chance of having enough to eat which gives you a slightly better chance. Slightly better chance of having giraffe kids...or gids. See it? Because it begins with a "g". Anyway, the kids with slightly longer necks. Just slightly longer. Have a better chance of having kids with even longer necks and eventually after millions of years and many many generations, giraffes ended up with pretty long necks. This is the process of evolution by selection. Small changes of each generation. So big changes take thousands of generations. Millions of years. And that's how giraffes get to have such long necks. Maybe these guys are onto something. Looks good. Thank you for joining me...on CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Philip Eno on 03/17/08 at 9:50 am
If you have four legs and you like to gallop around. Maybe you're a zebra, or a springboch, or a giraffe. Now if you're a giraffe, why do you have such a long neck? Well please CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. Now when you watch giraffes eat, you'll see that they eat leaves up high in trees. That's what giraffes do all day, they eat leaf tree salad. Leaves that other animals can't reach. Now you might think that if you're another animal and you wanted to reach those high leaves, you just stretch your neck. Stretch your neck. Stretch. Sort of--Stretch! And eventually you'll be able to eat leaves up higher in trees. Well, it doesn't work that way. In order to have a slightly longer neck, you'd have to be born with one, just slightly longer. Just slightly longer. You see, you're having a slightly longer neck. Just slightly longer. Well I want you to reach leaves that are slightly higher. Slightly higher. And that gives you a slightly better chance. Slightly better chance of having enough to eat which gives you a slightly better chance. Slightly better chance of having giraffe kids...or gids. See it? Because it begins with a "g". Anyway, the kids with slightly longer necks. Just slightly longer. Have a better chance of having kids with even longer necks and eventually after millions of years and many many generations, giraffes ended up with pretty long necks. This is the process of evolution by selection. Small changes of each generation. So big changes take thousands of generations. Millions of years. And that's how giraffes get to have such long necks. Maybe these guys are onto something. Looks good. Thank you for joining me...on CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
Giraffes do other things than eat.
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: mach!ne_he@d on 03/17/08 at 7:57 pm
I remember Bill Nye's show. Pretty sure I used to watch it on Saturday mornings back in the '90s.
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Philip Eno on 03/18/08 at 5:46 am
Is Bill Nye on YouTube?
Subject: Consider The Following with Bill Nye (Earth's Crust)
Written By: Mickey D. on 03/23/08 at 9:12 am
(Earth's Crust)
Hello. Today on CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING, I'd like you to, uh, CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. You and I are sitting on the Earth's crust. And it seems pretty solid, doesn't it? But now scientist believed that the Earth's crust is actually made of plates. Uh, not cheap plastic picnic plates like this......but tectonic plates. And tectonic is from the Latin word for "build". So the Earth's crust is built of plates. PLATE TECTONICS. And the plates are floating on the earth's mantle, which you know is molten metal. And kinda--It's kinda like corn syrup. In fact, scientist actually use corn syrup like this to do study, so what's underneath the Earth's crust. Scientists first caught onto the idea of tectonic plates when they realized how well South America seems to fit in next to Africa. Hmm? Not that bad. So take a look here. Here we have the camp stove of science. A minute we have models of tectonic plates. You see, right now they're all together. And scientist believed that at one time, all the plates of the Earth's crust were one piece called "pangaea". And pangaea, well, that means...whole earth. See? Not that bad. Let's say this is the Earth's crust. You see, where the plates, the tectonic plates are spreading apart. That's where we get volcanoes. And where the plates are coming together. That's where we get...mountains. Now, you know the plates are still moving even today. In fact, North America is moving away from Europe about this much every year, about two centimeters, about an inch every year. Well, thanks for joining us on...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
Subject: Consider The Following with Bill Nye (Chemical Reactions)
Written By: Mickey D. on 03/23/08 at 5:03 pm
(Chemical Reactions)
Hi, please CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. I’d like to talk about two poisons…that we can’t live without. Talkin’ about sodium…and chlorine. If you breathe just a little chlorine gas, it will do you in, you’ll be outta here, you get a flatliner, just like that! You know what I’m sayin’? And watch what happens when we put, just a small piece of sodium in water. And water like you might have, uh, at the roof of your mouth. Ha ha ha ha! That’s pretty cool! These two chemicals when they’re separate are dangerous. But when they’re chemically bonded together, the pull of their electrons is so strong that they form a whole new substance, a whole new chemical called sodium chloride. Sodium chloride. Sodium chloride. Now another name for sodium chloride…salt, salt, salt! Heh! Now our blood is saltwater, our tears and sweat are salty, and so are potato chips? Thanks for joining me on…CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Red Ant
Written By: Red Ant on 03/23/08 at 9:44 pm
(Messageboard Etiquette)
Hello. On today's CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING, we discuss the finer points of messageboard etiquette... okay, just one really. If you want to post large chunks of same-subject copy/pasted text over and over as new threads, note that all of these threads will be merged. Merging is a highly scientific process that involves me taking two (or more) threads and combining them into one. You might also note this has already been done at least five times now on this thread. Right click this thread and save it as a favorite, then you can find it when you come here again. If you do not CONSIDER THE PRECEEDING words, you will find your threads simply deleted as you are basically spaming the boards. Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
Ant
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: whistledog on 03/23/08 at 9:52 pm
This guy is just cutting and pasting stuff, stuff that no one really cares about or wants to read. It's almost like a bot or something, just randomly posting jargon
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Philip Eno on 03/24/08 at 5:14 am
This guy is just cutting and pasting stuff, stuff that no one really cares about or wants to read. It's almost like a bot or something, just randomly posting jargon
As I have never heard of Bill Nye, it does not mean much to me.
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Mickey D. on 03/24/08 at 11:38 am
Is Bill Nye on YouTube?
Yes, Bill Nye is on YouTube. You can look/search "Bill Nye The Science Guy p1" on Youtube.
Search: Bill Nye The Science Guy p1
Search: Bill Nye The Science Guy p2
Search: Bill Nye The Science Guy p3
Subject: Consider The Following with Bill Nye (Pressure)
Written By: Mickey D. on 03/24/08 at 11:39 am
(Pressure)
Pressure acts in all directions at once. But what if there were no pressure? No pressure at all? Well please...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. Pressure comes from molecules. Tiny pieces of stuff like air or water. So this air-filled balloon has some pressure in it. But this balloon with almost no air in it has almost no pressure. NO PRESSURE. Now when there's no pressure--NO PRESSURE--we say, it's a vacuum--A VACUUM--We can make a vacuum--VACUUM--like this. It's our suction cup bow and arrow of science! See? The air lift so hard that the suction cup forced all the air out from underneath it. So the air pressure in the room is pushing down in all directions. And holding the suction cup against the plastic. Underneath the suciton cup, there's a vacuum--A VACUUM--a vacuum. Now this is a vacuum pump, now when it's running, it pulls air through this hole, then through this hose, through the pump, and out here. So watch, as we put the plastic plate underneath this big plastic tube. The vacuum pump starts to pull the air out of the tube. So that pretty soon I can let go--I can let go. See, that's because atmospheric pressure is just pushing in all directions is also pushing up on the bottom of the plate. So pretty soon there's another vacuum, it'll hold me up. Oh yeah, see? Not bad. See? I don't even need this box. Ha! See? I'm just dangling here! (I'll say.) Vacuum's holding me though. (Mmm-hmm) Now I've got to, uh, turn the pump off. That's it. There. Minute, valve. Yeah. Now as the air comes back in the tube, the vacuum goes away. Pretty soon it should let go. And all the--WHOA!
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: whistledog on 03/24/08 at 3:58 pm
Yes, Bill Nye is on YouTube. You can look/search "Bill Nye The Science Guy p1" on Youtube.
Search: Bill Nye The Science Guy p1
Search: Bill Nye The Science Guy p2
Search: Bill Nye The Science Guy p3
Why would anyone want to do that though? Why does anyone care? Why are you here? Why are we here? Why is anyone here?
I have to go pee
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Red Ant
Written By: quirky_cat_girl on 03/24/08 at 11:22 pm
(Messageboard Etiquette)
Hello. On today's CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING, we discuss the finer points of messageboard etiquette... okay, just one really. If you want to post large chunks of same-subject copy/pasted text over and over as new threads, note that all of these threads will be merged. Merging is a highly scientific process that involves me taking two (or more) threads and combining them into one. You might also note this has already been done at least five times now on this thread. Right click this thread and save it as a favorite, then you can find it when you come here again. If you do not CONSIDER THE PRECEEDING words, you will find your threads simply deleted as you are basically spaming the boards. Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
Ant
yes..as per Red Ant's above post...I have merged newly started topics ONCE AGAIN. They will continue to be merged into ONE thread. Please, from now on, if you have something to post about Bill Nye...please keep it within the walls of this particular thread, as we don't need 800 new threads all pertaining to the same subject. Thanks.
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Philip Eno on 03/25/08 at 3:11 am
(Postwhoring Etiquette)
Keep your written communications to the point. Few people like reading text on a computer screen. Many people now receive e-mail on cell phones and other portable devices. The tiny screens make reading lengthy messages particularly challenging. This is true whether you send e-mail or post messages online. Remember that anything you post to a blog, newsgroup, forum or website and write during a public chat session is a public comment. You never know who's reading it or who may copy it and spread it around. It could come back to haunt you. Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
Subject: Consider The Following with Bill Nye (IV)
Written By: Mickey D. on 03/29/08 at 11:32 am
(Phases of Matter)
Welcome to the ABSOLUTE ZERO HOUR. Now we're not gonna reach absolute zero, and it's not gonna take an hour. So it's kind of a cool name, isn't it? ('Kay) Now "cool" is just what I wanna talk about today. See, this is a box of ice water, it's as cold as when you put ice in a soda. And here is a ball filled with air, and it's connected to a pressure gauge, an absolute pressure gague. So the higher the pressure in the ball, the harder the gauge'll lead. You know it's pressure. Well, it's like moving molecules. The faster the molecules are going, the higher the gague'll lead. The slower the molecules are going, the lower the gague will lead. Okay I'm gonna move the ball from here to here. Now in here we have dry ice that's, uh, solid carbon monoxide mixed with a little alcohol so it's still liquid. Now this is colder than that is anywhere on earth. This is colder than that is in Antarctica. It's colder than the South Pole. You see the molecules slow down, and the gauge leads a lower number. Think of it this way. Here's the old molecule machine. Think of these plastic balls as molecules. Now when the machine is going this fast, that's like, uh, ice water. So this is like a pressure gague. And it leads this high once in the ice water. And then when I lower it here, that's the pressure of the dry ice bag. So you see, the slower the molecules are going, the lower the pressure leads. Now lemme ask you this...s'pose there was no motion at all. Molecules completely stop. Absolutely stopped! Well that would be what scientist call "absolute zero". It'll be colder than almost anything you can imagine. Then the reason is there'd be no molecular motion whatsoever! So try this. We're gonna put...a ball of air of science...into this special...freezer. We're going to imagine that it's gonna get very, very cold. Now could we get to absolute zero? Actually, no. Absolutely, no. (What?) You called the travel agencies and said "hey, same we have absolute zero"! You have to know we can't. You can't get there. Absolutely not. Isn't that weird? N-N-N-Now why is that? Think of it this way. Here's the ball of air, right? Pretty cold. It's connected by this tube through this clamp. And this clamp is connected to the base of this refrigerator. And the refrigerator is on the table, and the table's on the floor, and the floor's in the building, and the building is on the earth, so there's always a path for a heat to get funnier into the building, all over the floor, under the table, into the freezer, down the slot, into the ball of air, there's no way for the ball of air to be completely separated from some force of heat, it's always the way for heat to get to the air, you can never just get to absolute zero, you can't ever ever get to absolute zero, zero, precises have gotten all the way to one thousand and seven degrees celsius because you are gettin' there, and they never were, absolute zero, zero, zero is an importatnt idea than a real thing you can get! We've been going down to one thousand seven degrees, but we can't quite get there. There's no way. Absolutely no way. But the idea's kinda cool, isn't it? That's very cool. Thank you for watching...the ABSOLUTE ZERO HOUR.
(Biodiversity)
CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. We have animals, we have plants, but do you have an ecosystem? Those are turkey ones, because the plants and animals on a farm don't depend on each other, now here they depend on a farmer. Now we replace the--all the different kinds of plants and animals that we're here. And pick just one species in the field or one type of animal. In a pasture, we have corn, cows, chickens, and cottons, and other things that don't really want to see like, uh, yams. (What?) So does that mean that farms are terrible thing than we should shut them all down? No, no, no because lot of species that we need to live too. Uh, we need farms, the same way we need cars, and trucks, and buses. There are things that humans choose to build. Hey would you guys knock it off? There's plenty of bugs, rats and grain around here for everybody. * Pretty soon, people will be working in this office part. Then what happened to all the badgers, moss, mushroom and sunflowers that used to be here? Well, there not as many of these that used to be. Does that mean we should all not go to work? Move out of our houses? And camp out in the woods with badgers and sunflowers? Y'know that some people you ask. It seems how you're sitting here watching TV your father's not one of them. And that's okay, it's just that we gotta be careful. * Now too much fertilizer on our lawns could end up running down streams and river. Finds its way in the ponds and lakes. Fertilizing too many weeds and that's a mess. You see, nature's problems are our problems! We're part of nature for cryin' out loud! * So when we look for places to farm, do business, live, or build schools. We should ask ourselves, "do we really need to spread 'em out so much"? Because whenever we do, we end up making the ecosystem rest at hearse. It happens every time. Well, thank you for...CONSIDERING THE FOLLOWING.
(Wind)
High pressure's really starting to build in, and that means the winds are picking. So barometer is on the rise-- I'm sorry, excuse me, sir, can I use your weather map for, uh, CONSIDERING THE FOLLOWING. Oh, hi, Bill. Sure. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead. Sure. Thanks. Thanks. So a barometer is what scientists use to measure pressure in the atmosphere. "Baro" is sort of old word that means "weight". So a barometer weighs the atmosphere. We call it "barometric pressure". I'll tell you what, take a look at this. Oh-uh-well-uh * Take a look at this map in a dish. When I tip it this way, it makes the oil slosh to this end. And it gets thicker here, and thinner here. The same thing happens with the air in our atmosphere, some places are thick, and some places are thin. Now when the air is thick, it gets heavier. It can push the water level in this weather glass down. We say it's got high barometric pressure. Or it can make the needle on this type of barometer go this way like a clock. Now when the air is thin, it doesn't weigh as much unless the water lever in the weather glass come up. We say it's got low barometric pressure. Or it lets the needle on its barometer come back in this direction. Now normally when we have high barometric pressure, it's sunny. If we only have low barometric, it's stormy. * The winds are taking out of the north--Whadda ya mean? Whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm almost done. Yeah, yeah, thanks. Thanks. So, sloshing air makes wind. And that's what makes hurricanes and thunderstorms, tornadoes and typhoons. Thank you for joining us on CONSIDER THE FO-- * Who let this clown in there? Somebody call security, would ya?
(Food Web)
Plants give the energy they need to live from the sun. Plants make their food using sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water. The process is called "photosynthesis", it means making from light. See, basically plants make sugar. Like this grape. Mmm, very sweet. Sugar is made from carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen--tha-that's what's in sugar. You see, animals breathe out carbon dioxide. The animals like you and me. It's the same gas that's in, uh, soda water. Anyway, here's the deal. All animals including you and me need oxygen to breathe. See, animals breathe in oxygen, breathe out carbon dioxide. Plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. So even if you li--you're never gonna eat my broccoli again! All animals that includes you, pal. (Me? Me? Me?) Need plants. Because we need oxygen to breathe. If plants weren't out there making their own food from sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water, we animals just couldn't be here. Thank you for joining me on...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
(Heat)
Mmm. The soup is good. Ooh--aahh--Least I think it's good. Right now, it's a little too hot to eat or drink or whatever you're supposed to do with soup. (Slurp.) Please consider the following. We can cool the soup off like this. But here in the lab, we like to do it or do this. See, the air is moving over the spoon and carrying some heat away with it. It's the same way we keep car engines cool and houses warm. We're using moving air or water or something else that flows to carry heat away from something hot. This is called "convection". "Convection" is from an old word that means "carry with". The air molecules are carrying some heat away with them. Now look at this coil. It's hot! Whoo! It's really hot! Ooh, man! Now watch what happens when I turn this fan on. The coils cool off. That's because the moving air is carrying heat away with it. And back here--hmm--it's pretty warm. It's conduction! Now because we're forcing the air over the coils or over the soup, it's called force convection. But force convection isn't the only kind of conduction. There's also natural conduction...naturally. Now as the heat through this burner heats the water up in this side of the tube. The water molecules start moving faster and faster. It can move faster. It gets farther and farther apart. So there's fewer molecules in the hot part of the tube. So then the cold molecules on this side can move into replacement. And it starts making the water go around this loop like this. That's natural convection. Here, I have some dye so that we can see it. See the flow? It's natural convection. That's pretty cool. Man, it's pretty cool. (Bill!) Anyway, this is natural convection. This is force convection. And this is soup. Mmm--aw--it's not quite ready. Thanks for joining me on CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
(Ocean Life)
When you go down into the ocean, you may notice that you can't see very deep. And if you're down there, you can hardly see anything at all. Please CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. Take a look at this. It's our water plate absorbtion tube of science. This water is like the ocean. And this white light is like the sun. Now up here in the surface there's a lot of light. But as we go down, there's less and less light. Just because the water absorbs it. Now, if you're a living thing that needs light. Let's say you're a tiny plant piece of plankton. Are you gonna live where there's light. Now if you're something that eats plankton, or eat something that he's plankton, you're gonna live there too. Now this area where there's a lot of light is called the "photic zone". The real ones is a couple hundred meters thick. "Photic zone" means zone of light. See, the zone of light is easy to see, because down here it's dark. Boy, it's really getting dark here. It's spooky. Ooh. Well, thank you for joining me on...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
(Earthquakes)
If an earthquake happens on the other side of the world, how do scientist measure it? Uh, please...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. See, everyone feels earthquakes, that includes you and me. But scientist not only feel them when you measure it. So take a look at this. Let's say that there's a seismograph, an earthquake detecting station in Jakarta, Indonesia. And they measure a pretty strong earthquake. And they noticed that the earth is moving in this direction. Then a few moments later, a measuring station in New Dehli, India, detects an earthquake moving in this direction. Then a few moments after that, scientist just say Capetown, South Africa, detecting earthquake going--uh--in this direction. Let's see if I can carry the direction of all three measurements. And the time between, scientist can play the game of, uh, connect the dots. Connect the dots, see? This one would go up this way. And extend this line, uh, this way. And they extend this one this way. Now even if the lines don't come together exactly, we know the earthquake was somewhere around here. The epicenter. Epicenter. The epicenter, the center of the earthquake. So scientist can measure earthquakes all around the world just by sitting it still, just like that. Well, thank you for joining me on...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. Go ahead, you know, shake the camera. Earthquake show. See? Man, it's the earthquake show.
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Philip Eno on 03/29/08 at 12:47 pm
(Earthquakes)
If an earthquake happens on the other side of the world, how do scientist measure it? Uh, please...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. See, everyone feels earthquakes, that includes you and me. But scientist not only feel them when you measure it. So take a look at this. Let's say that there's a seismograph, an earthquake detecting station in Jakarta, Indonesia. And they measure a pretty strong earthquake. And they noticed that the earth is moving in this direction. Then a few moments later, a measuring station in New Dehli, India, detects an earthquake moving in this direction. Then a few moments after that, scientist just say Capetown, South Africa, detecting earthquake going--uh--in this direction. Let's see if I can carry the direction of all three measurements. And the time between, scientist can play the game of, uh, connect the dots. Connect the dots, see? This one would go up this way. And extend this line, uh, this way. And they extend this one this way. Now even if the lines don't come together exactly, we know the earthquake was somewhere around here. The epicenter. Epicenter. The epicenter, the center of the earthquake. So scientist can measure earthquakes all around the world just by sitting it still, just like that. Well, thank you for joining me on...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. Go ahead, you know, shake the camera. Earthquake show. See? Man, it's the earthquake show.
The world is a whole object, and if on earthquake occur, it can be a threat to the whole wide world. Like the way you cut your finger in an accident and you feel the pain all over. CONSIDER THAT?
Subject: Consider The Following with Bill Nye (V)
Written By: Mickey D. on 04/05/08 at 10:53 am
(Light & Color)
CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. There's an old thing in science, we don't see things. We see light bouncing off of things. So when you see my tie, you're seeing a light from the lab that hits the tie and goes into the camera that work this way to your eye. Now here in the lab, we have almost perfectly white light. We have almost all the colors of the spectrum. When you look at my tie, it looks black with just a few brightly colored spots. What's happening to all the other colors? Where're they going? (I dunno.) Well they're getting absorbed and turning into heat. You may have noticed this in a bright light or in the sun. The bright cloth feels slightly warmer, yeah, slightly warmer than a white cloth. That's because the black cloth is absorbing almost all the colors of light that hit it and changed it into heat. Or is the white cloth is reflecting almost all the colors. This is how paint works. Paint absorbs light. Paint has a little particles in it called "pigment". So red paint is absorbing most of the light that hits it in reflecting red. Yellow's absorbing most of the light and reflecting yellow. And blue paint absorbs most of the colors and reflects blue. Now when we mix the colors of light. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet...we get white light. But when we mix different colors of paint--doesn't work that way. Red. Yellow. And blue. And blue. The bottle's giving up. (Uh-huh!) And blue. ('Kay.) And blue. When they're mixed, they don't turn white. They turn--kind of a messy brown. That's 'cause it's absorbing light. Now there's a lot of things in nature that absorbed almost all the colors of light that hit him...like charcoal...or this dog. Well thank you for CONSIDERING THE FOLLOWING.
(Birds)
How can birds fly if they don't have a motor? Well please CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. Birds fly just like airplanes. Well, actually, airplanes fly just like birds. The key is you wanna get the air moving over your wings fast enough to hold up your weight. First of all, this is shaped just like this! Their wings! (Cross section of a bird's wing looked like this. We call this shape an air foil.) And here's how they work, as air molecules go around the wings, the molecules going over the top gets spread out. And they don't push down as hard on top of the wing as the molecules going under the wing are pushing up. That holds birds and planes...up! The second thing is that birds are very light weight. They have feathers that are light as...feathers! (This is important. If you have to fly to school everyday, you wouldn't wanna be way down.) And their bones are light weight, too. This is an eagle bone, and it's hollow. Now when something's hollow, it's very strong for how much it weighs. Now don't get me wrong. Land animals like us have strong bones, too. But they're much heavier than bird bones. And, uh, our bones are hollow. Apparently are. Thirdly, birds and airplanes both have powerful engines. See, birds have very strong hearts, huge lungs, and powerful wing muscles that let them flap their wings. Birds burn energy about 20 times faster than land animals like you and me. Their whole body is a big propulsion system that lets them fly! Heh! Well, thank you for joining me on...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING!!
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Red Ant on 04/05/08 at 12:08 pm
And once again I've merged topics...
Mickey D, I'm not sure what your particular malfunction is, but the next time you post some large copy/paste article about Bill Nye outside of this thread you will find yourself banned from this forum. You've been asked by the moderators of this forum three times now to keep your Bill Nye posts to this thread, and have ignored all three posts. Consider yourself officially warned.
"In The 00s System Rules
1) No Spaming
Spam is defined as flooding, advertisements, chain letters, and pyramid schemes. These are forbidden on this forum. This includes posting the same thing repeatedly."
Inthe00s.com is mainly for pop culture discussions, not to serve as a repository for uncredited verbatim repostings of what other people have written. If you'd like to discuss Bill Nye and why you like him (or anything else related to the boards), then by all means you're more than welcome to do so. If not, find the exit door or I will escort you to it.
Inthe00s.com Lead Moderator
Ant
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Tia on 04/05/08 at 12:14 pm
consider the following by mickey d on threadwhoring. :P
i liked the one thing about skin color and race and sunlight but beyond that i just can't be bothered. you guys better get ready for when i finally crack and start posting endless new threads about who was really behind the kennedy assassination.
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: La Roche on 04/05/08 at 12:45 pm
consider the following by mickey d on threadwhoring. :P
i liked the one thing about skin color and race and sunlight but beyond that i just can't be bothered. you guys better get ready for when i finally crack and start posting endless new threads about who was really behind the kennedy assassination.
Optimus Prime.
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Mickey D. on 04/05/08 at 5:31 pm
And once again I've merged topics...
Mickey D, I'm not sure what your particular malfunction is, but the next time you post some large copy/paste article about Bill Nye outside of this thread you will find yourself banned from this forum. You've been asked by the moderators of this forum three times now to keep your Bill Nye posts to this thread, and have ignored all three posts. Consider yourself officially warned.
"In The 00s System Rules
1) No Spaming
Spam is defined as flooding, advertisements, chain letters, and pyramid schemes. These are forbidden on this forum. This includes posting the same thing repeatedly."
Inthe00s.com is mainly for pop culture discussions, not to serve as a repository for uncredited verbatim repostings of what other people have written. If you'd like to discuss Bill Nye and why you like him (or anything else related to the boards), then by all means you're more than welcome to do so. If not, find the exit door or I will escort you to it.
Inthe00s.com Lead Moderator
Ant
I didn't mean to spam the "consider the following" thing. Besides, "consider the following" has been used exactly (as a script) in each Bill Nye episodes.
Subject: Consider The Following with Bill Nye (Waves)
Written By: Mickey D. on 04/05/08 at 6:04 pm
(Waves)
If waves all look alike, how can we tear them apart? Now please...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. If waves are nice and even like these, we can't really tear them apart, unless we stand in one place. This is our observer kid on a stick. (Hi, Bill.) And where she is, she can see the top of one wave. Then as the waves go by, she can see the top of the next wave. Now the distance from here to here, the length is called a "wave length". Th-That's what we call it, the "wave length". Now there's another thing about waves that you can observe and it's called the "frequency". If you go to the library often, we say you frequent the library. That's how often you go there. So waves like this are coming by often and we say they have a high frequency. If I slow it down, the waves coming by have a low frequency. Now you know about high and low frequency waves because you know about high and low frequency sounds. Take a look at this, this is an oscilloscope, it lets us see waves. So watch, if I make a high frequency sound. (One thousand verbs have reference for an activity of 250 nano-weathers per meter.) You can see that the waves are close together, and the wave length is short. (Equalization for NAB standard.) If I make a low frequency sound--(Full track recording with no compensation for multi-tracker reproduction.)--The waves are farther apart. They have a longer wave length. And we say that we have a lower frequency. So high frequency waves have the waves close together. (Haaaaa!) And low frequency waves have the waves far apart. (Mmmmmmmmm) Ha, see? Thank you for joining me on...CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING.
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Red Ant on 04/05/08 at 6:43 pm
..the next time you post some large copy/paste article about Bill Nye outside of this thread you will find yourself banned from this forum.
Ant
Mickey D, I'm sorry that either you misread or skipped this part of my post. I've merged the last topic from you that I'm going to.
I didn't mean to spam the "consider the following" thing. Besides, "consider the following" has been used exactly (as a script) in each Bill Nye episodes.
Yet you did it again. I fail to see where my post above was ambiguous or unclear in any way, shape or form.
Ant
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: KKay on 04/05/08 at 6:44 pm
this is rediculous
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Philip Eno on 04/09/08 at 7:14 am
this is rediculous
I have had enough too!
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Tia on 04/09/08 at 8:33 am
it's fun kicking him around though.
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Philip Eno on 04/09/08 at 8:36 am
...CONSIDER WHAT IS NOT FOLLOWING.
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: saluteyourshorts on 05/29/08 at 1:51 am
BILLY NYE THE SCIENCE GUY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YESSSSS
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Philip Eno on 06/03/08 at 6:42 am
I have given up considering this topic now.
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Shacks Train on 06/05/08 at 10:41 am
The Professor
http://www.zshare.net/audio/13161413990b3cbe/
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Philip Eno on 06/05/08 at 10:44 am
The Professor
http://www.zshare.net/audio/13161413990b3cbe/
Are we still considering?
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: Philip Eno on 10/10/08 at 2:13 am
No one has replied here since June.
Consider this!
Subject: Re: Consider The Following with Bill Nye
Written By: whistledog on 10/10/08 at 4:56 pm
Does Bill Nye eat toast on rye? Is Bill Nye a shy guy? Does he sigh? Why, oh why does shy Bill Nye sigh?