It took more than 500 scientists and seven years of research, but the first global earthquake hazard map is now complete. How come it took seven whole years? Well, for starters, the scientists had to contend with forces much greater than earthquakes. Try politics.

The above image shows the pattern of major fault lines throughout the Americas.

Unveiled in San Francisco at the American Geophysical Union, the map shows that about 15 per cent of the Earth’s land is in zones of high or very high hazard – which the researchers define as a 10 per cent chance or greater of violent shaking over the next 50 years. Less than half of the planet’s land is considered a low hazard. But coming up with the numbers once the data were in was the easy part, explains the co-ordinator of the international effort, Domenico Giardini of the Swiss Seismological Service in Zurich.

“The standards by which hazard is done is completely different from country to country. It depends on when it was done, what philosophy they adopted, the quality of data that was available. It was this lack of standards that until now has stalled any effort to look at the global seismic risk in a homogenous way,” says Giardini.

Giardini recalls particular problems. “There were political boundary problems. For example in the Near East, the difficulty of having Syria, Israel and then Jordan and Egypt working together was very difficult,” says Giardini, who also remembers that India and China had never worked together, nor had Turkey, Iran and the former Soviet Union. He recalls the difficulty that grew from the international set of criteria that had to be used – which meant scientists from some countries, in order to comply with the new global standard, had to recalculate their seismological data. “It was very difficult originally, this is why the project lasted so long,” he says, adding that once a consensus was reached and once the scientists got used to working together, “things started to fly.”

Researchers were surprised to learn how high the hazard of earthquakes is throughout the African Rift.

Much as you would expect, the map – which specifically predicts the probability of peak ground acceleration, or an earthquake that most likely damages low-rise buildings – highlights some infamous ground-shaking hotspots, such as southern California, Hawaii and Turkey. But, since for some countries this was the first-ever seismological hazard assessment, the map highlights some new earthquake zones. In Africa, for example – for which there was little data – the hazard is much higher than researchers would have thought. And finding that data was a little harder than they might of thought as well.

In the eastern part of Africa, along the African Rift, much of the historic seismic activity had occurred in unpopulated and undeveloped places. Giardini explains that the hazards we are familiar with are a measure of our memory. Unlike in heavily populated cities, though, memory is short in these kinds of barren regions. In the end, researchers had to go as far away as England to find historic data on past earthquakes in the African Rift. Similarly, some researchers even looked in the Bible to find out the history of earthquakes in the Middle East.

With the new map, which was launched by the International Lithosphere Program with support from the United Nations’ International Decade for Natural Disasters, every country now has information on its own hazardous zones. According to Giardini, the map will be useful for engineers, urban planners and insurers to help regulate codes of design and construction. What the map does not measure, however, is risk from earthquakes.

Seismologists make a distinction between hazard, which is the probability of ground shaking, and risk, which is the probability of damage or of casualties – a multiplication of the hazard by the vulnerability of the building. So Giardini cautions that just because you may live in a high hazard region is no reason to start packing your bags – after all, he says, there are very few completely safe places to live. Instead, cities can limit the impact of an earthquake.

“Now a society can live with earthquakes as it can live with volcanoes, but it has to be prepared for that. So in itself, the hazard can be high, but not necessarily the risk. If you live in a well-built house and your infrastructure is up to standards, then you can live with earthquakes,” says Giardini, who adds, that the difficult part is getting the entire world to achieve this.

 

SCIENCE EDUCATION CONTENT STANDARDS (NRC)
(GRADES 5-8):
Identify appropriate questions for scientific investigations.
Use appropriate tools and techniques to gather, analyze, and interpret data.
Construct explanations and models using evidence.
Think critically and logically about the relationships between evidence
and explanations.
Recognize and analyze alternative explanations and procedures.
Communicate scientific procedure and explanations.
(GRADES 9-12):
Identify the questions and use concepts to guide scientific investigations.
Use technologies to improve investigations and communications.
Recognize and analyze alternative explanations and models.
STATE SCIENCE CURRICULUM FRAMEWORKS:
(GRADES 5-8)
1.1.11, 1.1.12, 1.1.13, 1.1.15, 2.1.6, 2.1.7, 2.1.8, 2.1.9, and 3.1.25 (GRADES 9-12):
1.1.20, 1.1.21, 1.1.24, 1.1.26, 2.1.11,2.1.14, 3.1.28, 3.1.33, 3.1.39, 3.1.44

MATERIALS
Per class:
16 oz. dishwashing liquid (Dawn or Regular Joy)
2 one-gallon bottles or buckets
1 measuring cup
1 gallon vinegar
glycerin (available at Wal-Mart or pharmacies)
overhead calculator
Per Group of 4:
1 roll paper towels
16 plastic drinking straws
2 rulers
12 four oz. clear plastic cups
1 roll masking tape
1 graduated cylinder or measuring cup
1 meter stick
1 eyedropper
4 sheets of white paper
1 calculator
Activities from Bubbleology. Gems
Bubbleology, Insights Visual Production,(for previewing only)
Module 1- Bubbleology
KEY QUESTIONS
1. What is a controlled experiment?
2. What is a hypothesis?
3. What are data?
4. What is the difference between a data table and a graph?
5. What is the difference between results and conclusions?
6. When writing a conclusion statement, how does it relate to the hypothesis?
7. How are scientific process skills organized to solve a problem?
8. How can bubble experiments demonstrate the relationships that exist among the various scientific disciplines?
MANAGEMENT SUGGESTIONS
° Activities should be done on flat surfaces.
° Tape trash bags to table tops or desks for the experiments with bubbles.
° Mix bubble solution at least 24 hours in advance.
° Avoid using scented dishwashing liquids. They do not work as well.
° Students should wash out the plastic straws each time they change solution. They should reuse their own straws.
° Plastic plates such as SOLO can be used to regulate bubble size for reliable results.
° Vinegar is added to tables or desktops to remove the soap bubbles.
° Each activity requires more than one regular class period.
° Teachers may choose to give all measurements in SI units. -
° Alter experiments to allow students to design their own.
° Activity 3, page 9, variation: Assign each group a glycerin solution and compare results.
SAFETY CAUTIONS
° Preventive actions are the best safety measures.
° Close teacher supervision of student activities will usually prevent accidents or improper use of materials.
° For elementary students, certain precautions should be taken.
° Goggles should be worn in order to keep the bubble liquid from getting in their eyes. The goggles should be sterilized between use as some forms of contagion might happen.
° The students should be cautioned not to inhale while blowing bubbles through the straw.
° Any student with a cut should be cautioned about getting the solution or vinegar in the cut.

PROCEDURES
Activity 1
“The Chemistry of Bigger Bubbles” – Bubbleology
Activity 2
“Predict-A-Pop” – Bubbleology
TEACHER NOTES:
Americans rarely use soap! Sounds like a headline for a sleazy tabloid, but it is true. Today we often call the detergents we use soap, but they are not
soap. What is the difference between a soap and a detergent? To answer that question, first examine their similarities.
Soaps and detergents are both organic compounds. This means they are carbon compounds. Both of them function by acting as connectors between water and oils.
oil – soap – water
or oil – detergent -water
Dirt and grime are usually combined with oils such as grease, body oils, cooking fats etc.
Water does not combine readily with oils. Water does readily combine with one end of a soap or detergent molecule however. The cleaning molecule
then makes the water connect to the oil and dirt.
dirt – oil – soap – water
or dirt – oil – detergent -water
Why not just use soap? Soap has two major disadvantages. It becomes a greasy scum in acid and it combines with components of hard water to become “bathtub ring”. The more advanced detergent molecule is less susceptible to these problems. Modern organic ch emistry gave us detergents from crude oil. Alkylbenzenesulfonate (ABS) detergents quickly replaced soaps in the marketplace. Instead of soap made from animal fat and lye, America had an inexpensive “better” cleanser from petroleum products. America also h ad ABS foam floating on its rivers and even suds in drinking water from the tap. America had discovered that ABS detergents were not as biodegradable as soap.
A newer detergent soon replaced ABS detergents. Linear alkylsulfonates (LAS) present the advantages of a modern detergent produced from
petrochemicals while degrading in the environment like soap. Bacteria cannot easily digest an ABS detergent, but they do like soap and LAS.
EXTENSIONS
The following questions relate to technology, science, and society. They are suitable classroom projects for research and presentation.
1. America once exported wood ash to Europe for the soap industry. What positive and negative effects accompanied this? Consider the effect on the economy, the environment, politics, and westward expansion.
2. It can be argued that technology comes with a “price” that must be considered. That “price may be to the environment, natural resources, health, culture, or even other aspects of the economy. Consider the following technological improvements, discuss t heir contributions and their price
Soap
Alkylbenzenesulfonate (ABS) detergents
Linear alkylsulfonates (LAS)
3. Detergents are particularly toxic in an aquarium.
Propose some hypotheses for these phenomena.
RESOURCES:
Film “Bubbleology” INSIGHTS Visual Productions, Inc.
374A North Highway 101
Encinitas, CA 92024 (619) 942-0528
Activity 1: THE CHEM~ISTRY of Bigger BUBBLES
Introduction~~
Why do some dishwashing liquids make bigger bubbles than others? Why does (cream form bubbles’s when it is whipped, while milk does not? An enormous variety of natural substances form bubbles. Sea foam is formed by the agitation of phosphates (like those in soaps) released by decomposing kelp. Egg whites form hundreds of tiny bubbles when beaten. In each case, the formation of bubbles depends on the chemical composition of the substance.
This activity introduces your students to some of the properties of bubble-making substances. The students observe how soap affects the surface tension of water and investigate the role of evaporation in bubble formation, as they test the ef fect of different amounts of glycerin on the size of bubbles.
What You Need
For preparation and cleanup:
. 8 oz. (240 ml) dishwashing liquid
water
. measuring cup or graduated cylinder
.1 one-gallon container for mixing bubble solution
. 1 roil of masking tape
. paper towels
. 2 cups vinegar
. 1 squeegie (optional)
For the class:
. several ounces of glycerin
. several eyedroppers
. several measuring cups
. several calculators (optional)
. chalkboard
. chalk

For each pair of students:
. 1 meter or yard stick
. 2 plastic drinking straws
1 one-pint container (such as a cottage cheese container) for holding bubble solution
/ 1 “Experimenting with Glycerin data sheet (master included, page 26)
. 1 graphing sheet (master included, page 26)
. 1 pencil
1 table, counter, desk, or board about 30″ *(75 cm) in diameter
For the demonstration:
. 1 tall, clear, drinking glass
. water
. water pitcher
1 eyedropper
dishwashing soap (just 1 drop)
Getting Ready
1. Make one copy of the “Experimenting with Glycerin” data sheet and of the graphing sheet for each pair of students.
2. Prepare a gallon of bubble solution without glycerin:
1 cup (240 ml) dishwashing liquid
1 gallon water (3.8 liters)
3. Clear one flat surface, about 30″ (75 cm) in diameter, for each pair of students.
4. Place the demonstration materials on a table or desk.
5. Label eight pint containers “A” through “H.” Fill all eight containers with one cup of bubble solution made with no glycerin. Leave container “A” without glycerin. Add 10 drops of glycerin to container “13,” 20 drops to container “C,” and so on through container “H,” which will have 70 drops of glycerin. Hold the eyedropper vertically in order to help reduce variation in size of drops.
6. Place these containers of bubble solution and all other materials on a centrally located table.
Observing Surface Tension
1. Ask your students what substances they can think of that form bubbles. Point out that some substances, such as water, do form bubbles, but these bubbles disappear almost as quickly as they are formed.
2. Perform the following demonstration to explain why pure water bubbles don’t last:

€ Gather the group areound the demonstration table. Have them squat down so their eye level is closer to the level of the table.
€ Fill a glass to the top with water. Keep adding water , drop by drop, until you think the glass will over flow. Then add a few more drops. If you are careful, you’ll be able to add water until the surface of the water is actually higher than the gl ass.
€ Ask students if they can see that the water behaves as if it were covered with a skin. Explain that this effect is called surface tension. Water molecules at the surface of water are more attracted to each other than to the air; it is as if fthey s tick together. This “stickiness” causes surface tension. Surface tension keeps water from spilling and discourages the formation of bubbles. When bubbles do form, they are short-lived
If you have an extra twenty minutes and access to enough eye droppers for each student , consider replacing this teacher dmonstration with a hands-on activity. Give each student an eyedroopper and a penny. Ask them to predict how many drops of water wi ll fit on the penny without spilling. Distribute dishes of water and have them find out.
After the students have a chance to observe the surface tension of the water on a penny, ask them to put drops of water on a penny again. Then have them “break” the surface tension of the water on the penny by adding a drop of soap solution.

° To demonstrate the effect of soap on surface tension, carefully add one drop of soap to the very full glass of water. This should “break” the surface tension of the water, causing it to overflow. Explain that soap decreases the surface tension of w ater to about one-third of what it usually is: just right for making bubbles.
Discussing the Problem of Evaporation
1. Point out that another problem with using water to blow bubbles is that water evaporates very rapidly. When the water evaporates, the bubble wall is broken. This problem is not limited to the use of pure water since most soap bubble solutions contain w ater.
2. Explain that scientists have devised a way to deal with the problem of evaporation: adding a substance to the bubble solution to keep water from evaporating. Substances that have water-holding properties are referred to as hygroscopic. Glycerin is a hygroscopic liquid that is typically added to bubble solutions. Glycerin forms a weak chemical bond with water that delays evaporation.
Planning the Experiment
1. Tell your students that their challenge is to determine what effect the amount of glycerin in a bubble solution has on the size of the bubbles formed.
2. Ask the students for their ideas on ways of designing the experiment so it is a fair comparison. Use the following questions to guide the group in determining the test procedure they’d like to use.
° What is the test variable? [Amount of glycerin.]
° What variables must be kept the same or “controlled”?
3. Present a plan for varying the amount of glycerin while keeping the amount of water anddishwashing liquid the same. Draw eight cups on the chalkboard. Tell the class that each test formul will start with one cup of bubble solution made without glycerin . Formula A will have 0 drops of glycerin added to it. Formula B will have 10 drop of glycerin added to it, and so on up to Formula H,
which will have 70 drops of glycerin added. On the chalkboard, record the letter of the formula and the number of glycerin drops in each “cup.”
4. Ask the students if they have any expectations about the experiment. How much glycerin do they think will make the biggest bubbles?
Experimenting
1. Assign pairs of students to test the formulas. Have them apply the same method for measuring bubble size used in Activity 2: Comparing Bubble Solutions, as explained on pages 12 and 13.
2. As students finish testing one formula, have them swap work stations and test other formulas. For best results, each formula should be tested by at least four different groups.
Graphing the Results
1. Ask your students to gather around the chalkboard. Record the students’ averages under the formula names written across the top of the board. Calculate the grand average for each formula.
2. Ask your students to graph the results of all experiments on a graphing sheet (master included). Does the graph show an optimum amount of glycerin for making the biggest bubbles?
Note: Sometimes student data has so much variation that it is difficult to identify an optimum amount of glycerin. If so, have your group identify a broader range for the desirable amount of glycerin. Ask them how they would improve the expe riment in order to pinpoint more exactly the optimum amount of glycerin.
3. You may want to ask your students if they were surprised by the results. Many students assume at fIrst that the more glycerin used, the bigger the bubbles will be. As this experiment demonstrates, that is not the case.
Going Further
1. Sugar is another hygroscopic substance. Challenge your students to repeat their experiments using sugar instead of glycerin. Compare the results of the two experiments. Which is better for making big bubbles, sugar or glycerin?
2. Give your students the open-ended challenge of developing their own ideal bubble solutions. Remind them to vary only one ingredient at a time as they experiment, and to keep a careful record of what they do.

Activity 2: PREDICT – A – POP
Introduction
Blow a soap bubble. Can you tell when it will
Pop? You and your students may have already discovered that color is one important clue. It’s interesting that color should be a key to predicting bubble survival, since we usually think of color asa mere surface decoration. but actually the color of a soap bubble are produced by a complex interaction between light and matter calledinterference.
This activity is a playful introduction to interference, an important phenomenon in the history of physics and in modern industry Your students will enjoy discovering how to count down the last few seconds of a bubble’s existence..
3…2…1…POP!!!
What You Need
For preparation and cleanup:
þ 8 oz. (240ML) dishwashing liquid
. water
þ 1 measuring cup or graduated cylinder
. 1 eyedropper
þ 1 one-gallon container for mizing bubble solution
2 several rolls of masking tape
/ glycerin (optional)
For each pair of students:
, 1 pint-sized container for holding bubble solution
þ 2 plastic drinking straws
2 6 8″ X 11″ sheets of white paper
2 1 flat, dark surface about 18″(45cm) in diameter
or
2 1 cafeteria tray and black construction paper to cover the tray

14
If your students have difficluty seeing the colors on top of the bubble, suggest that they position a piece of white paper so that it will reflect more light onto the top of the bubble
Getting Ready
1.Prepare one gallon of bubble solution:
1 cup (240 mL) dishwashing liquid
50-60 drops glycerin (optional)
1 gallon water (3.8liters)
2. Pour the bubble solution into the small containers. Place the containers in a central location along with straws, white paper, and masking tape.
3.Clear off a flat, dark surface (about 18″ [45 cm In diameter) for each pair of students.
4.Prepare one “white collar” by taping fOur sheets of white paper together so they form a cylinder 81/2″ high. The white collar reduces air currents and reflects light onto the bubble so its colors can be seen clearly.
Observing Colors
1. Gather the students around you. Blow a bubble dome as follows:
a.Pour about 1/3 cup of soap solution on the surface of the table or tray, and use your hand to wet an area about 18″ (45 cm) in diameter.
b.Place the white collar around the soapy
area.
c. Dip a straw into the soap solution.
d. With the straw just touching the surface of the table, gently blow through the straw to form a bubble dome.
e. Remove the straw.
2. Expain that the challenge for the day is to use color to recognize tha tmoment just before a bubble pops. Instruct each pair of students to start by makin a collar, blowing a bubble dome, and observing the changing colors on top of the bubble . Tell them tgo record the sequence of colors they see for four or five bubbles.
1.9
Reporting Results
Have the students leave their materials and form a circle in view of the chalkboard. As several of the teams report, record their findings on the board. The students will probably discover a repeating sequence something like this: green to blue to magenta to yellow to green… (sequence repeats more than once)… and finally white to white with black spots to black- POP!! (The spots are actually transparent but because the background is black, they appear black.) Explain that the colors on the surface of a bubble change as the bubble becomes thinner and thinner.
Not all students will see this pattern because air currents may interfere with the gradual thinning of the top of the bubble, interrupting the usual color sequence. Write the typical color sequence on the board and draw the decreasing bubble wall underneath it. (See diagram.) Explain that in cases where there are absolutely no air disturbances, such as a bell jar, this is the pattern scientists have reported seeing. Ask the students if they notice any aspects of the typical pattern in their data.
GREEN – BLUE-MAGENTA-YELLOW-GREEN…(SEQUENCE REPEATS)-WHITE-WHITE W/BLACK SPOTS-BLACK-POP
ð ð BUBBLE WALL 1/1,000,000 OF AN INCH
Predicting the Pop
Now challenge the students to apply what they
learned to invent a method for counting down, to the second, when their bubbles will pop. Here are strategies some students have used:
° timing how long a period elapses between the appearance of the first white color on the bubble and when it pops;
° noticing how far down the side of the bubble the transparent or “black” area extends before the bubble pops;
° noticing how long before the “pop” a bubble loses its reflective properties.
let your students discover their own approaches before mentioning strategies used by other students.
Explaining the Phenomenon
The following explanations are written for the teacher. After your students have some success in predicting when a bubble will pop, you may want to discuss these explanations with them. Use your judgment about how much to present to your students. Typical ly, the concept of interference is first presented in high school physics courses.
1. Where do the colors in a bubble come from?
The colors in a bubble come from the reflection of white light shining on the bubble. White light contains waves of all different colors. The length of a wave, from crest to crest, determines its color. When light bounces off a bubble, some of each wave i s reflected from the outer surface of the bubble wall, and some passes through to be reflected by the inner surface.
Interference refers to what happens when two waves pass through the same region of space at the same time. For example, when two rocks are thrown into a lake near each other, the two sets of circular waves interference with one another. In some places, wh ere the crest of one wave meets the crest of another, the motion of the water is increased. In other places the crest of one wave meets the trough of another and there is little or no movement. The same basic process holds true for other wave motion, incl uding sound waves and light waves.
When the thickness of the bubble wall is such that the two reflected parts of the wave of light leave the bubble in step, crest top crest (as illustrated by red light in the diagram), that color appears brighter (constructive interference). Some co lors of light will emerge crest to trough (as Illustratedby blue light in the diagram) and will cancel each other (desrtructive interference) : those colors will not be seen. As the wall gets thinner, the colors that interfere constructively and de structively will also change.
Cleanup
1. If dark table surfaces were used:
a. First use a squeegie or paper towels to remove excess bubble solution from thetable surface. Do not add water.

b. Then sprinkle vinegar on the area to cut the soap film. Wipe dry with paper towels.

c.Repeat once more if surface still retains soap film.
2. If trays with black construction paper were used:
a. Discard soggy black paper.
b. Pour the bubble solution remaining on the tray down the sink or into a spare container. (Note: black dye from the construction paper will have leached into the soap solution, causing it to appear dark in color.)
c. Rinse off the tray.
Going Further
I. Assign students to look up the name Thomas Young and the concept of interference. They will find out about: (1) the controversy surrounding wave and particle theories of light; and (2) modern applications of interference phenomena, such as anti~ reflection coatings on bi binoculars l~0 rs.
2. Have your students begin a collection of materials others~at exl~ibit the phenomenon of interference: abalone shells, peacock feathers, some sunglasses, etc.

Hypothesis / Questions: Black objects absorb more ( and  radiate less) -heat than a white objects.

Here is an example:

“A black car will heat up faster in the sun than a white car will. It will also lose its heat faster in the winter.”

Read on if you’d like some details on why this is so.

For this discussion, we don’t really care about the subatomic causes of heat or why black bodies are the best absorbers and emitters of Electro-Magnetic Radiation (EMR). We only care about three things:

1. Which parts of each car are sunlit.The majority of the direct sunlight will build up on the exposed surfaces of each car– the roof, the hood, the trunk. As a rough estimate, let’s say that 20% of the light hits the interior directly. So 80% of the light is hitting the painted outer surfaces of each car.

   Now, about half of the EMR given off by the Sun is in the Infrared (IR) range. This is light with a wavelength longer than red light and which can’t be seen by humans, but which still causes heating effects. Sunlight also includes a small portion of invisible Ultraviolet (UV) light, which has wavelengths shorter than visible light. Keep this in mind as we move on to…

2. What materials are in the sunlit portions of each car, and which of those materials are better at absorbing and emitting heat.Basically, there are only two types of material here: metals and non-metals. In any case, we’ve decided that most of the sunlight is falling on the body of the car, which is metal and paint.

   We know that sunlight includes IR and UV as well as visible light. Certain types of paint may reflect more or less IR and UV light than others. You may have heard of Light Reflectance Value (LRV), which is used to measure how much visible light a certain color reflects, but there’s also a Solar Reflectance Index (SRI) which measures how much solar heat (i.e., infrared light) a given material reflects.

   For this discussion, we’re only concerned with visible color, so we’ll assume that all materials in the two cars reflect UV and IR equally well. Note that this may not be the case in real life.

   So what’s reflecting the visible portion of sunlight? Metals are much better conductors, but being naturally shiny, they don’t absorb a lot of light. But– and this is important– it’s the paint on the car which is absorbing the heat, and the metal underneath which is conducting and emitting heat through the entire car. The sheen (shininess) of the paint will affect its LRV, but we’ll ignore that for the time being. Only the color matters.

3. Which of those materials has the most impact on the temperature inside the car.No contest. A car is mostly metal, and that metal surrounds all the interior areas. If the metal gets hot, the car gets hot.

If we look up the LRVs for the colors white and black, we find that white reflects 80% of visible sunlight, and black reflects only 5%. So we can conclude that, regardless of the color of the interior, the car with the darker paint job will have the higher temperature.

Of course, leaving any car out in the sun for many hours will make driving it later an unpleasant experience. My advice? Install air conditioning.

Objective
To learn about static electricity.

Materials
Two balloons, Tape, Two four-foot strings, and a Piece of dry wool cloth.

Procedure
Inflate the two large balloons and tie them to the ends of the strings. Hang these two balloons from the ceiling with a piece of tape. Adjust the length of the strings so that the balloons are barely touching each other. With the piece of wool cloth, rub each balloon for several seconds. What will happen when you let the balloons hang together freely? Will they pull together or farther apart?

Conclusion
The balloons are pushed away from each other as if there is a force there that can not be seen. This happens because each balloon has an electrical charge of static electricity. Because the charge of the electricity is the same on the surface of both the balloons, the balloons are repelled, or forced apart. Because the balloons are not very heavy, little charge is needed to separate them.

Objective
To learn about the characteristics of water.

Materials
Clear glass, and paper clips.

Procedure
Fill the glass with water until it is completely full. At this point you can predict, or guess, how many paper clips you will be able to put into the glass until the water over flows. Start placing the paper clips into the glass, but make sure you count them as you put them in. How many were you able to place in the glass before the water overflowed? How close was your guess?

Conclusion
If you guess a number from ten to twenty, you were far from the correct number. Once you tried it however, you realized that the cup of water could in fact hold hundreds of paper clips before it over flowed! This is because the water forms a thin skin around the water. Look at the glass of water from the side. You can see that the water is actually over the top of the glass. The layer of skin keeps the water from over flowing.

Hypothesis/Questions: Is it possible to create magnetism using man-made materials? If iron-bearing metal is subject to an electric current, then magnetism will be produced.

Materials: a 6-volt battery, 10 feet of wire, a metal rod, a switch, and paper clips

Procedure: I went to Home Depot and I bought the materials. When I got home I got I got the materials out. I made the project in less than a day.

Results/Conclusion: The experiment shows that the hypothesis is true: When iron-bearing metal is subject to an electric current, then magnetism will be produced. It seems logical that the stronger the electric current, the stronger the magnetic force.

In both cases, the technology used is based on alloys of niobium and titanium, which allows the magnets of the accelerator at Fermilab to reach the 4 Tesla and those of the 8 Tesla LHC. We would do better and one of the promising ways is to use alloys of bismuth and tin. One example is recently arrived at intensities of 13 Tesla with such materials and magnetic media specialists do not exclude the idea that we may one day reach 50 Tesla.

Therefore the Fermilab as part of the High Field Superconducting Magnet Collaboration involving private laboratories and U.S. national, recently endowed with $ 4 million, is being launched in tests on cables manufactured BSCCO2212. The problem to overcome is that its manufacture requires heating the material to 800 ° C. In doing so, he becomes a kind of ceramic and it breaks easily.

The research on magnets fitted to the Tevatron has now been launched 30 years ago and have had significant impacts in the field of the MRI increasing the resolution of images obtained and to bring powerful devices in several hospitals while they were quite active in research laboratories in neuroscience.The bismuth superconducting magnets are certainly more than magnets for future accelerators.

All these issues are fundamental and respond, it would require a quantum theory of gravitation. The majority of the scientific community places its hopes in the superstring theory but a significant portion of the latter is also exploring another path, that of loop quantum gravity from the work of Abhay Ashtekar, Carlo Rovelli and Lee Smolin.



The latter, although he also explored the string theory, has been critical in recent years with her. He was particularly critical not lead to predictions falsifiable, and therefore it was not possible to know if the theory were true or false. There followed several years of a mini war between some of the proponents of both theories. One of the fathers of string theory, Leonard Susskind, for example, has responded sharply to Lee Smolin but especially the fiery theorist Lubos Motl has been very outspoken against it and the loop quantum gravity.



Experimental tests are difficult


On the very practical field experience, it is true that in these two theories, the energies at which effects of quantum gravity become measurable are gigantic priori. Under the most conservative theories, an accelerator as large as the galaxy would be needed to reach the mythic power of Planck worth about 10 19 GeV. It is an enormous level of energy when it is remembered that the LHC itself, with the 27 km in circumference, is expected to reach 14 TeV is 1,4.10 4 GeV. There remained the hope of indirect effects visible at lower energies or through natural accelerators like the Big Bang itself.

Whether in the context of superstring theory or that of loop quantum gravity, we suspect that the structure of space-time is not fundamental, but emergent. For example, its smooth and continuous nature of our scale could well be an approximation of a fundamentally discrete structure as is water or a crystal when it comes down to scales small enough distances.

Attempts to introduce such discrete space-time have not failed for decades but the problem is, at least in a naive form, such models are not compatible with Lorentz invariance, c that is to say, the foundation of the theory of relativity, even at low energy. We can try to build more sophisticated models coincide with Einstein’s theory at low energy as the theory of Newton coincides with the latter to lower energy yet.



Several theorists have tried this game and obviously those which are part of the community Rope access and those of loop quantum gravity, Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) in English, but they are not alone.

The space-time behaves as it does a crystal or gas to the Planck scale?

We know that when we consider a crystal lattice, the waves associated with movements of atoms around their position of equilibrium can move but because of the properties of the crystal and the distance between the component atoms, the rate at which a wave can propagate depends on its frequency and therefore, in quantum energy quanta that are associated with this wave. We obtain what is called a dispersion relation. This kind of phenomenon also occurs when one considers the propagation of light in a plasma.

The work of Carlo Rovelli led him to discover that LQG predicts a discrete structure for spacetime near the Planck scale. Credit: John Baez



The LQG predicts a kind of granular structure of space-time with a discrete character for surfaces and volumes. There is therefore a priori under conditions where a dispersion relation for the spread not only photons but also particulate matter such as electrons can emerge. At very high energies near the Planck energy, the effects of violation of Lorentz invariance could therefore emerge.

Some calculations suggest the LQG but the admission of Abhay Ashetkar or Carlo Rovelli, it is not clear that this is a necessary consequence of the LGQ. At very low energies in all cases, the constraints of the experiment are very strong and special relativity holds good.

String theorists, seeking also to obtain testable predictions, are obviously not been idle in this field. The most interesting attempt to that side of the theory is undoubtedly that of John Ellis, NE Mavromatos and DV Nanopoulos.



These have used a nonstandard form of string theory, the so-called Liouville. While the standard theory strictly respects Lorentz invariance, the theory known as non-critical strings, opens the door to the effects of violation of Lorentz invariance with a propagation speed of light in vacuum is different from that of Einstein’s theory.

In both cases, and more generally in several models of quantum gravity more or less linked to or inspired by LQG and string theory, change the speed of propagation of high energy photons eventually becomes measurable if one considers GRBs located at cosmological distances.

The active galactic nuclei emit gamma photons sometimes very energetic. If the vacuum behaves as a material medium with a refractive index and dispersion relation, a delay or an advance function of photon energy gamma becomes visible when they travel great distances, the fact that effects of quantum gravity are much greater than one approaches the Planck energy.

Unfortunately, the phenomena occurring in these nuclei are complex and it is not clear a priori to say whether any discrepancy between the arrival times of gamma photons by their energies is an effect of quantum gravity or is induced by the mechanisms of emissions themselves.

However, comments such as Markarian 501 have been made in recent years, arguing in favor of the first hypothesis.

In any event, probing the physics at least equivalent to what can be done with the LHC is handy if you could put a large detector in orbit, especially since the absence of ‘atmosphere (almost) does not lead to the formation of jets that we know on Earth. The analysis of reactions between particles would therefore be facilitated and would be more accurate than what we can do with an instrument such as Auger.



Such a detector exists and it was under construction for years, it is AMS, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. One of its proponents is the Nobel laureate Samuel Ting.

Less than a dozen space shuttle flights are still planned to complete the ISS, the ISS and the shuttle itself will soon retire. But in 2010, an additional flight added by decision of Congress in 2008 finally prevail AMS to the ISS.

AMS is a complex instrument equipped with a powerful magnet superconducting, the detection systems of particles similar to those of the LHC and a supercomputer. Indeed, the flow of particles entering the AMS is still quite large and the data recorded are too numerous to be sent for processing on Earth. Therefore, a computer and fast powerful filter and process the information already obtained.



AMS is a complex and costly as it required $ 1.5 billion, which is close to half the price of the LHC! As it needs 2.5 kilowatts to operate, the choice of place on board the ISS with solar power panels are capable of delivering 110 kilowatts was logical.