I’d like to introduce you to Caudina arenicola, a sweet potato sea cucumber in the aquarium at my university. :)
I made this little video about nudibranchs, one of the coolest marine invertebrates in the ocean! ;-)
today my deep sea bio class got to rummage through old books from the scripps library…
this one was my fav, from the year 1900, a book on cephalopods! the pages were filled with drawings of species found during early scientific expeditions that laid the foundation for modern oceanography!
CERN scientists have supposedly found subatomic particles that can travel faster than the speed of light. They have released their data so others in the scientific community can confirm/refute their findings.
If true, this could totally rock the basis of our understanding of physics. Since Einstein, we have accepted the theory of special relativity, that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. That’s what protects cause and effect in the universe. =MC^2? Weird.
Nevermind that. There is a possibility this could actually happen!
Biodiversity at its finest.
http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/bio-diversity/?hp
Here’s another great example of animal mimicry. Is it a snake? Nope, it’s a caterpillar, and it wants hungry birds to mind their own business.
The science behind bubbles
Bubbles are just one of those things that we find fascinating, they float, they’re colorful and are incredibly satisfying when popped. The science behind them is both interesting and quite relevant to many other aspects of science.
Bubbles work best when water is mixed with soap, but why is this? What soap does is it actually reduces the surface tension of the water, despite what is commonly thought. Soap in this case is more scientifically known as a surfactant and not only reduces over all surface tension but also acts to equalize the forces around the bubble. Soap stabilizes the bubble because as the film of soapy water is stretched the localized concentration of soap actually decreases, increasing the surface tension and pulling the points back together. The spherical shape is due to the bubble wanting to have the lowest possible surface area to volume ratio.An interesting mathematical property of bubbles is that when merging you can only get 3 bubbles to meet along lines that are 120 degrees apart and will also work to adopt the smallest possible surface area. When getting four bubbles to meet they’ll only meet at a point and take on a shape where they’re 109.5 degrees apart, the same angle adopted by tetrahedral molecules. When a large bubble and smaller bubble share a wall, the smaller bubble will also bulge into the larger bubble due to higher internal pressure in the smaller bubble.
The other fascinating thing about soap bubbles is the spectrum of colours they display. This is caused by both the random varying thickness of parts of the bubble and also by the way light passes through the bubble. Most light bounces straight off the bubble, but some passes through the film and then either passes through the other side or bounces off refracting as it goes. Light waves may bounce around inside the bubble indefinitely and this along with interactions with other light waves gives the rainbow effect.
hi. i'm nicole. i like rainbows, books, and parmesan cheese. sea monsters are my spirit animals. my favorite color is sparkles.
these are my letters home to san francisco, during my time away at grad school studying marine biodiversity and conservation.
...nice to meet you.
:)
