Category Science

One of the many beautiful things about our planet is the changing seasons. At a period of time in the year, the Sun shines bright upon us making us rush to the nearest ice cream cart, at some other time we just want to stay at home tucked under layers of blankets.

As you experience the different seasons each year, have you wondered what causes them?

 A little tilt

Many believe that Earth’s seasons are caused due to Earth’s orbit around the Sun. because of its lopsided orbit (not a perfect circle), there are times when the Earth is closer to the Sun than other times. However, this is not the main reason. Earth has different seasons because of its tilted axis. Earth’s axis is an imaginary pole going right through the centre of Earth from top to bottom. Earth spins around this pole each day making different parts of the planet experience day and night. It is because of this tilted axis that Earth experiences different seasons.

Throughout the year, Earth’s tilted axis always points in the same direction. That’s why, as it orbits the Sun, different parts of the planet get the Sun’s direct rays. Sometimes the North Pole is tilted towards the Sun, giving us summer in the northern hemisphere, and sometimes the South pole tilts towards the Sun, giving us winter in the northern hemisphere.

But what caused the tilt?

Millions of years ago, when Earth was younger, it was hit hard by a big thing. That big thing is today known as the planet Theia. Theia carshed onto Earth and blasted a big hole on the surface of the planet. This sent huge amounts of dust and rubble out into space, which many scientists believe eventually turned into our moon. This major blow by Theia caused Earth’s axis to tilt, thereby giving us our seasons, and may be even our moon.

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Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish, including bony fish (Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish (Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish (Agnatha). According to FishBase, 33,400 species of fish had been described as of October 2016, with approximately 250 new species described each year.

The study of fish dates from the Upper Paleolithic Revolution (with the advent of “high culture”). The science of ichthyology was developed in several interconnecting epochs, each with various significant advancements.

The study of fish receives its origins from humans’ desire to feed, clothe, and equip themselves with useful implements. According to Michael Barton, a prominent ichthyologist and professor at Centre College, “the earliest ichthyologists were hunters and gatherers who had learned how to obtain the most useful fish, where to obtain them in abundance and at what times they might be the most available”. Early cultures manifested these insights in abstract and identifiable artistic expressions.

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Horology is the study of the measurement of time. Clocks, watches, clockwork, sundials, hourglasses, clepsydras, timers, time recorders, marine chronometers, and atomic clocks are all examples of instruments used to measure time. In current usage, horology refers mainly to the study of mechanical time-keeping devices, while chronometry more broadly includes electronic devices that have largely supplanted mechanical clocks for the best accuracy and precision in time-keeping.

People interested in horology are called horologists. That term is used both by people who deal professionally with timekeeping apparatus (watchmakers, clockmakers), as well as aficionados and scholars of horology. Horology and horologists have numerous organizations, both professional associations and more scholarly societies. The largest horological membership organisation globally is the NAWCC, the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, which is USA based, but also has local chapters elsewhere.

There are many horology museums and several specialized libraries devoted to the subject. One example is the Royal Greenwich Observatory, which is also the source of the Prime Meridian (longitude 0° 0′ 0″), and the home of the first marine timekeepers accurate enough to determine longitude (made by John Harrison). Other horological museums in the London area include the Clockmakers’ Museum, which re-opened at the Science Museum in October 2015, the horological collections at the British Museum, the Science Museum (London), and the Wallace Collection.

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Cartography or mapmaking is the study and practice of making maps. Map making involves the application of both scientific and artistic elements, combining graphic talents and specialised knowledge of compilation and design principles with available techniques for product generation. Maps function as visualization tools for spatial data. Spatial data is stored in a database and extracted for a variety of purposes. The traditional analog methods of map making have been replaced by digital systems capable of producing dynamic interactive maps that can be manipulated digitally.

Modern Cartography like many other fields of “information technology” has undergone rapid changes in the last decade. Rather than merely drawing maps the cartographic process is concerned with data manipulation, data capture, image processing and visual display. Cartographic representations may appear in printed form or as dynamic images generated on a computer display screen. Computer assisted mapping systems have added a new and exciting dimension to cartographic techniques and traditional methodologies have to be augmented with new skills. The fundamental nature of cartography has changed with the evolving technologies, providing cartographers with new methods for visualization and communication of spatial information.

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Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi, including their genetic and biochemical properties, their taxonomy and their use to humans as a source for tinder, traditional medicine, food, and entheogens, as well as their dangers, such as toxicity or infection.

Fungi are fundamental for life on earth in their roles as symbionts, e.g. in the form of mycorrhizae, insect symbionts, and lichens. Many fungi are able to break down complex organic biomolecules such as lignin, the more durable component of wood, and pollutants such as xenobiotics, petroleum, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. By decomposing these molecules, fungi play a critical role in the global carbon cycle.

Fungi and other organisms traditionally recognized as fungi, such as oomycetes and myxomycetes (slime molds), often are economically and socially important, as some cause diseases of animals (such as histoplasmosis) as well as plants (such as Dutch elm disease and rice blast).[citation needed]

Apart from pathogenic fungi, many fungal species are very important in controlling the plant diseases caused by different pathogens. For example, species of the filamentous fungal genus Trichoderma considered as one of the most important biological control agents as an alternative to chemical based products for effective crop diseases management.

Field meetings to find interesting species of fungi are known as ‘forays’, after the first such meeting organized by the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club in 1868 and entitled “A foray among the funguses”.

Some fungi can cause disease in humans and other animals – The study of pathogenic fungi that infect animals is referred to as medical mycology.

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One of water’s important properties is that it is composed of polar molecules. The two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom within water molecules (H2O) form polar covalent bonds. While there is no net charge to a water molecule, the polarity of water creates a slightly positive charge on hydrogen and a slightly negative charge on oxygen, contributing to water’s properties of attraction. Water’s charges are generated because oxygen is more electronegative, or electron loving, than hydrogen. Thus, it is more likely that a shared electron would be found near the oxygen nucleus than the hydrogen nucleus. Since water is a nonlinear, or bent, molecule, the difference in electronegativities between the oxygen and hydrogen atoms generates the partial negative charge near the oxygen and partial positive charges near both hydrogens.

Water is not attracted to everything. Because water molecules are polar, they are more attracted to molecules that are also polar or that have a charge (like an ion). Some kinds of molecules, like oils and fats, are nonpolar. These nonpolar molecules have no charge, and so water is not very attracted to them. 

Molecules of nonpolar compounds, such as oil and gasoline, even when mixed well into water, tend to separate from the water when the mixing stops. Water molecules tend to hold on to each other and squeeze out nonpolar oil and gasoline. Because of density differences between water and oil, this means that they form two separate liquid layers. For example, in oil-based salad dressings, the oil and water components separate into two layers and require mixing before being used. 

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Palynology, scientific discipline concerned with the study of plant pollen, spores, and certain microscopic planktonic organisms, in both living and fossil form. 

The term is commonly used to refer to a subset of the discipline, which is defined as “the study of microscopic objects of macromolecular organic composition (i.e., compounds of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen), not capable of dissolution in hydrochloric or hydrofluoric acids”. It is the science that studies contemporary and fossil palynomorphs, including pollen, spores, orbicules, dinocysts, acritarchs, chitinozoans and scolecodonts, together with particulate organic matter (POM) and kerogen found in sedimentary rocks and sediments. Palynology does not include diatoms, foraminiferans or other organisms with siliceous or calcareous exoskeletons.

Palynology as an interdisciplinary science stands at the intersection of earth science (geology or geological science) and biological science (biology), particularly plant science (botany). Stratigraphical palynology, a branch of micropalaeontology and paleobotany, studies fossil palynomorphs from the Precambrian to the Holocene.

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