Pardon Our Construction

Due to some issues with changing links and image hosting, we'd decided to redesign Scientifica. All through this weekend, we will be changing templates and making adjustments, so we apologize if you come on while the site is a mess. These changed should be complete by Monday the 16th, at which time we hope you'll explore the new layout. If you find anything broken or that looks off, or have any other comments or suggestions, send us an email through our Contact form, or in the comments below.

Thanks!

New Comment Policy

We have had an increase in the comments we are getting. We are really excited by this and it made us realize we needed a clear comment policy. Hopefully it is mostly common sense, but you may want to take a look, here.

Happy Commenting.

Happy Banned Books Week!

Normally, I write about science and skepticism here, but I am a self-professed bibliophile as well. One cause that's near-and-dear to my heart, therefore, is Banned Books Week. Many of the most contested books are science fiction, fantasy, or historical fiction; however, texts like Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species often also appear on lists of banned books. Plus, part of a complete education is reading anything one can get their hands on. So, in honor of that and the joy of reading... have a wonderful banned books week!

Cross-posted from Teen Skepchick
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Here in the U.S.A, the last week of September is always Banned Books Week. This campaign, started 13 years ago by the American Library Association, is designed to raise awareness about censorship and encourage everyone, particularly kids, to expand their horizons and read books that others find questionable enough to try and ban. It's a celebration of the right to read.

Every year, hundreds of books are challenged by school boards, religious groups, teachers, and particularly parents, often with the best intentions. These adults want to "protect" children from sexually explicit scenes, profane language, depictions of violence, descriptions of drugs, homosexuality, and things generally "unsuited to age group".

Turns out, though, that the most challenged books aren't always the ones you'd expect. Take And Tango Makes Three, for instance, the first book I ever heard of being banned. It's a children's picture book, about two penguins that successfully hatch and raise an orphaned egg. It's a sweet, heart-warming story. Who could possibly have a problem with it? Well, here's the twist: the parents in And Tango Makes Three are both male. And because of that, it has been the most challenged book for four out of the past five years, topped only by the ttyl series by Lauren Myracle in 2009.

Many of my all-time favorite books have been in the top 10 lists of banned and contested books from the last decade as well. For instance: the entire Harry Potter series; His Dark Materials trilogy, by Phillip Pullman; The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky; Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson; My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain; and Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George.  There's several others that I've read as well. Nearly all of them are books I'd recommend, or that had a big impact on me growing up.

Banned Books Week 2011 runs until October 1st, so there's still time to start a new (or an old favorite) story from the banned books list. Go out and exercise your right to read, and feel free to tell us about your favorite banned book.

All images credit the American Library Association

Happy Birthday to Us!

Yesterday marked the two year anniversary of Scientifica Phenomena! A lot has happened since last year, in the world and on our blog.

In the World

• More severe earthquakes have occurred worldwide, particularly in Japan and New Zealand leading to such ideas as the Supermoon.
• Aliens were found... or not.
• Nuclear power is under debate once more, after the Fukushima power plant failure.
• We attended a TEDx conference.

On the Blog

• We've made 48 new posts, bringing us up to over 200. 
• We've had 10,881 unique visitors, totaling approximately 19,315 over the list of the blog.
• We've been linked to be Cracked.com, as well as several other blogs and websites.
• We've added several new features, including a better search, buttons to our Facebook, Twitter, and RSS feeds, our blogroll, a contact us form, and are in progress of adding new pages and updating our  existing ones.
• I began writing for another blog, Teen Skepchick, about science, skepticism, feminism, and teen issues. I'm part of an awesome team there as well, so go check them out too.

Our last year started to put us out into the blogosphere. We hope to continue to be a useful resource, and plan to continue on for a third year, and beyond. If you have any comments, suggestions, ideas for new thing we can do or things we could do better, or questions about science or skeptical topics, please share. We love hearing from you! Also, as we said last year, we encourage to you write your own blog if you feel you have something to say. Blogging's an awesome way to learn new things, hone your language skills, and get feedback about your ideas. Both myself and my co-writer, Carver, are continually learning new things from this project, both about ourselves and the world around us. We'll continue to share those things with you.

Happy Towel Day!

Today, May 25th, is celebrated on our “mostly harmless” planet as Towel Day, in memory of Douglas Adams. He’s most famously known as the author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (of 5 books), as well as the Dirk Gently series. He was also well known as an environmental activities, a radical atheist, and a technology enthusiast, as is exemplified by his essay “How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet” and by the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game. And, he happens to be one of the funniest authors myself or my co-writer have ever read, so we recommend you give it a try. If you've ever heard someone joke about 42 as the answer to life, the universe, and everything, then you have to read these books to get the joke.

But, you may ask, why towel day? Remember, “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels. A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value… More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value… What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with."

So grab your towel and remember, Don’t Panic!

More on Towel Day

We are Coming Back

Wow. It feels like I have not written a post in forever, and it has been much too long. Ali Marie and I are going to work to update more often again. My goal is to have at least 1-2 posts a week going up over the next month. Hopefully, we will soon get back into a rhythm, and post more frequently.

In the past, when there has been a gap, I have tried to give a brief cover as to what has happened in that time. Instead, here I want to talk about the future. Going forward, I want to write more of what I have done in the past, the news updates and the scientific unknowns, but maybe also talk more about how to communicate science. I have not talked about this much in the past, which is odd since really that is what I do. For the last 5 years, I have volunteered and worked paid positions teaching science. I have done this in lots of different venues from camps to museums to urban schools. The story of science is too important to be left out of any corner of our society.

So with that, look for more posts to come soon.

Happy Darwin Day!

There have been a few ideas, through history, that completely revolutionize how we think about the world and jump start a long path of scientific inquiry: Copernicus' heliocentric model of the solar system and Newton's laws of motion and gravitation are two striking examples. These provide a fundamental base for modern astronomy and physics. 152 years ago, a book was published that presented a similar fundamental base for all of biology. This book was titled On the Origin of Species, and it was the first to present the idea of evolution by natural selection.  Every field remotely related to biology - ecology, genetics, paleontology, medicine, and more - provides evidence for and is influenced by this the fact of evolution. Today would be the 202nd birthday of its author, Charles Darwin. So, to honor the man and celebrate his idea, have a slice of Darwin cake and look around you at the incredible diversity of life on this planet.

There's a lot of opposition to evolution in the general public, which is an issue I deal with frequently and will likely discuss in more detail in the future. For now, though, I want to leave you with a sense of how beautiful and incredible our planet is, and how much more so considering every living thing we see came from a simple prokaryote 3.8 billion years ago.



If you're interested in reading Darwin's works, they are available as open source documents at Darwin Online.

Credit to Ben of the UChicago Secular Student Alliance for making the awesome Darwin cake.

Write a Blog for Yourself!

This is the one year anniversary of this blog. We made it a full year! Over the course of this year we published 181 posts, changed the site design at least three times, and learned a ton. This has been a really fun project that has become more than I would have ever hoped for it. So, my advice to everyone considering starting a blog is just do it, and do it for yourself.

One of my mottos in life is, "If you want to learn something, try to teach it." I have found few things truer then this simple statement. Teaching pushes you to really understand concepts. In order to explain a concept coherently, you often need to have a deeper understanding of the subject. Trying to teach something can reveal to yourself where there are gaps in your knowledge. By filling those gaps, you gain a more complete understanding of issues and subjects your interested in. That understanding is hugely rewarding and fulfilling.

The other reason I would recommend starting your own blog is to learn more about yourself. I have had a passion for astronomy for years now, but in writing I found something else.  I always found science exciting. I was interested in pseudoscience, fringe science, and the limits of science. One of my favorite types of articles to write quickly became about answering the question, What is Science? I loved the broadness and the intricacy of the topic. I wanted to share the methods of science with more people and in doing so found a interest in the philosophy of science. This was a field I was really unaware of before I started the blog and now I find myself studying it in my free time.

In this last year we have attracted 14,375 people to this blog. Our post on Glymetrol was a huge success and maybe, just maybe, deterred someone from taking it. To me, this is astounding. What started as a late night idea is now something I am really proud of. If you are thinking of starting a your own blog though, do it for yourself. You are probably never going to get a huge following of readers or a super high placement in search engines. By starting your own blog, however, you do two things. First is you put more good material out there on the web for someone to stumble upon. Maybe there will be a specific topic that you can become the top search result for. The more good, informative material is on the web, the better. Second, you can learn about yourself. Explore your interests and maybe find new ones. Write about what's exciting to you. If nothing else, do it for fun.

Renovations

As you can see, we've been doing some renovations to the Scientifica webpage lately. We've got a whole new template, and several new pages, such as our "What is Science?" page and our "Participate in Science" page. We may be making a few more tweaks and changes over the next few days. Please let us know if you find any bugs or glitches, if you want the old layout back, etc. You can contact us via email, using the links to the left, or using the comments section below.

Also, we plan to begin posting on a more regular schedule here shortly.

Thanks!

New "What is Science?" Page

We just created a new page for the "What is Science?" link at the top of the page. This is still a bit of a test, but hopefully we will be coming out with more permanent pages soon. Let us know what you think, all feedback is greatly appreciated.

What is Science? A Musical Take

Recently, there's being a series of autotuned videos going around. While autotuning isn't all that new, these are unique because they are made up of clips of various scientists and skeptics speaking about what they know best: science. A new one was just released, titled "The Poetry of Reality." It addresses the same question we often tackle here at Scientifica Phenomena. It's beautifully done, so... enjoy.

The other videos, if you're interested, can be found at Symphony of Science.

Darwin Day

Today, February 12, marks the 201th birthday of Charles Darwin. His landmark work, On the Origin of Species, revolutionized biology, and the scientific view of how the diversity of life that exists today came into being. Whether dealing with biology, genetics, paleontology, psychology, or even philosophy, the idea of evolution via natural selection comes into play.
Natural selection is an elegantly simple idea: All populations have some amount of variation in it. Most of these differences are neutral; some are harmful; other provide an advantage. Neutral variation comes and goes. Harmful variations die out. Beneficial variations become more common. Over time, these variations add up, causing significant changes and eventually fundamentally changing a species. It makes a lot of logical sense. It is a common legend that when Thomas Henry Huxley, a contemporary of Darwin and self-proclaimed "Darwin's bulldog," first read it, he asked how he didn't see it first, it seemed so clear and obvious. It is this clarity and the thoughtfulness Darwin put into The Origin of Species that has allowed the theory to remain with relatively minor revision through the past 150 years.

Because of Origin and the theory of evolution by natural selection, Charles Darwin is now a name found throughout science. Another interesting note on him is that he wasn't the top of his class. In fact, at university, he was a little below the average. But he had a dogged persistence that shows through his drafts of Origin. Once he hit on that idea, which seemed so simple, he spend nearly 30 years perfecting it and finding examples, so as to make it as clear to anyone else as it was to him. He's a great example of how really anyone can make a big contribution to science, without being the valedictorian or the nerd at school. Science is great because, in its simplest form, it only requires a question, an open mind, and a determination to learn how the world works.

More on Darwin Day.
Read Darwin's publications.

3 Ways You Can Support Science and Reason (for Free)

I have been passionate about science for many years now. Stemming from this passion is my desire to be involved in active science, and spread the amazing world science reveals. While donations can always be used help to spread good critical thinking, there are many things you can do even if you are strapped for cash.

1. Talk about it

It may not seem like much, but one of the best things you can do is just to share your passion with friends and family. If you see a science story that catches your eye, tell people about it. People are generally interested in science to varying degrees, so share what you know. The more people are talking about science, the more it will be a part of the public conciseness.

2. Join a Citizen Science Project

There are lots of projects out there where all the scientists need is a little of your time and help. A perfect example of this is the Galaxy Zoo project which I have mentioned several times before. Because of their success they have now expanded into Zooniverse. This includes 4 research projects you can help with watching everything form supernova to our own sun. You could also help with the mystery of the star Epsilon Aurigae with Citizen Sky. These are just a few examples from my own field of interest, but you can find projects across many other disciplines with just a little looking.

3. Volunteer at a Local Science Museum

This is a really fun way to spread excitement about science. There is nothing better than showing a child a simple demonstration and having their eyes light up. This is also a great way to meet other people who share your interest. As you teach people about science, you will probably find your own knowledge of science growing. Teaching any subject is a great way to solidify, and expand, on your own understanding.

These are by no means the true end to the list, but I want to keep it short for now. Maybe I will expand on this list in the future. In the meantime, feel welcome to put anything you have done to support science in the comments below.

Dynamic Earth: Haiti

I'm sure most of you have heard about the massive earthquake in Haiti by this point. It was a devastating quake. The first shock was a magnitude 7.0, out of a scale of 10. It has been followed by numerous aftershocks, ranging from 4.0 to nearly 6.0. In the face of such a distaster, it's easy to ask why the earthquake occurred. I've seen three such explanations. The first two of these are completely ridiculous.

The first is a rather bizarre idea this was not a natural earthquake, but rather a weather weapon aimed at Cuba that missed. It claims that the fact that there was a little earthquake in California (presumably a test of the weapon?) followed by a huge earthquake in Haiti is too suspicious, and not coincidence. (source: NowPublic News)

The second is given by Reverend Pat Robertson. He believe that this earthquake was punishment, for Haiti's pact with the devil.

“They were under the heel of the French, uh, you know Napoleon the 3rd and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the Devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. And so the Devil said, 'Okay, it's a deal.’ And, uh, they kicked the French out, you know, with Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by, by one thing after another, desperately poor. That island of Hispaniola is one island. It’s cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti on the other side is the Dominican Republican. Dominican Republic is, is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etcetera. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island." (Source: ABC News)

Both of these explanations are uninformed, poorly articulated, and make the Haitian earthquake someone's fault. In fact, the Haitian earthquake was caused by a slip-strike fault, between the North American and Caribbean plates. These two plates slide along each other at a rate of 7 mm per year. Tension has been building up in the fault, and it finally snapped on Tuesday. Along with being a strong quake at magnitude 7, it's source was only about 6 miles down. This means that the crust could not absorb and diffuse the shock. The ground shook at Port-au-Prince for as much as a minute, which is very long for an earthquake. The fact that there is so much devastation, therefore, isn't a surprise. (source: USGS)

Right now, the people of Haiti don't need condemnation or conspiracy theories. There is no evidence whatsoever for a working weather missile even existing. Plus, earthquakes aren't weather; they're a geologic force. And, earthquakes happen frequently in California: the whole state is caught on the boundary between two of the largest pieces of the puzzle. Any supposed pact with Satan occurred in 1803. The people there today are not being punished for something 200 years ago. Condemning them, saying this is their own fault, is not going to help their condition at all.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere; at least 80% of their population is below the poverty line. Disease is a major problem, and will only get worse with the destruction. Children there were literally living off of mud pies; now, food will be even harder to come by. (source: CIA World Factbook) And, while the earthquake itself killed over 100,000 people, many more will die if they don't get help. We live on an indifferent planet. It is neither benevolent or malicious. These natural events will occur whether people are  there or not. But when it does hit a populated area like Haiti, we, as a species capable of supporting one another, can help. Please donate to one of the organizations below, if you haven't done so already.

The Red Cross

Partners in Health

More on earthquakes and plate tectonics.

Obama's New Science Initiative

On November 23rd President Obama made a really exciting speech. He has started a new program called "Educate to Innovate." The aim of this program is to improve science education across the country. This initiative was announced in front of a large audience including Sally Ride, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, and the Mythbusters Adam and Jamie.

This initiative is going to use private companies, more support of the STEM* Education Coalition, and additional programs to try and get students interested in science. This is a great move because it shows some motivation to try and improve our scientific standing in the world. Obama announced that there is going to be an annual science fair at the White house. What a great way to motivate kids to really try and exceed when they are coming up with their science fair projects.

I was really excited when the President said "It goes beyond the facts in a biology textbook or the questions on an algebra quiz. It's about the ability to understand our world: to harness and train that human capacity to solve problems and think critically, a set of skills that informs the decisions we make throughout our lives." YES


I hope we see a growing commitment to science and science education from both parties over the next decade. This is a great first step. Lets teach the our students not how to beat a test, but how to think critically about the world. In the words of the President "We're going to show young people how cool science can be."

*Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

Sagan Day

Carl Sagan was one of the greatest science educators of the last few decades. He inspired many people, including myself, to explore through the world though the tools of science. November 9th would have been his 75th birthday. In honor of this, Broward College is hosting the first-ever "Sagan Day." I think this is a great idea. They have some excellent speakers lined up, including Phil Plait (The Bad Astronomer) and James Randi.

A similar event has been growing over the last few years as well, called "Darwin Day."  I think that events like these are great ways to spread enthusiasm about science. While this event is on November 7th, I will try to do something on the 9th (maybe some star gazing). Spread the word and maybe do a small gathering of your own.

Happy Mole Day!

Happy Mole Day 2009!!!

So, unless you're familiar with a lot of chemistry, you're probably wondering what on earth I'm talking about. It's a "holiday," of sorts. October 23rd is recognized as mole day. This does not refer to the little furry animals, or to birthmarks. A mole is a unit of counting, like a dozen. In fact, you might say a mole is a chemist's dozen.

One mole of something is an Avogadro's number of individual parts. Avogadro's number is equal to 6.0221x10²³. This is a huge number on a macroscopic scale. However, we don't typically use Avogadro's number to count things like cars or people. We use it to count the number of molecules in a sample. So, say you have... a tank of helium, to fill your Mole Day balloons. There's 5 pounds (approximately 2268 grams) of helium in the tank. So, how many moles of helium do we have? And how many molecules is that?

Well, the molar mass (number of grams in a mole) for helium is 4.00 g/mole. So, we have:

2268 g x 1 mole/4.00 g = 567 moles
567 moles x N_a (this is the abbreviation for Avogadro's number) = 3.41x10²⁶ molecules of helium

That's a very large number of molecules. Yet, we only have 5 pounds of the gas. Avogadro's number, and the mole, help scientists to work with molecules on a scale we can comprehend. We can fill balloons with 5 pounds of helium. If we had to collect each of 3.41x10²⁶ molecules, we'd never finish filling even one. That's what makes the mole such an important concept.

And why today? Well... 10²³, 10/23. There's no better day to celebrate the mole.

For more on Mole Day, you can look at the National Mole Day Foundation site.