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9th Mar 2008

Naked Science Q&A Show


Dave Ansell

Chris Smith

On this week's Naked Scientists, we tackle your questions.  We find out what creates a 'Moonbow', how much water there was on Earth over one million years ago and what happens to milk in the freezer.  Also, how butterflies could remember what caterpillars learn, why electric cars may stress stretched water supplies and how the 'smell' of a coral reef attracts fish from miles around.  Plus, we speak to Marc Abrahams, creator of the Ig Nobel awards for science that makes you laugh, then makes you think!  And in Kitchen Science we try to strike a balance between two balloons!

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Science News

Memories Survive Metamorphosis

Despite dramatic changes in every aspect of their biology, it seems that moths and butterflies can remember things they learned as caterpillars.Caterpillars can be thought of as eating machines - as t...

Mysterious Forces

For the last 10 years physicists have been puzzled by a mysterious force acting on space probes. There have been various slight anomalies detected in how spacecraft move which don't seem to be moving ...

Water-Guzzlers

Running vehicles on alternatives to fossil fuels could stress scarce water resources, US scientists have warned. Michael Webber and Carey King, from the University of Texas at Austin, suggest that pow...

The Smell of the Reef

Phytoplankton and algae living on coral reefs release a chemical which attracts fish from miles around, and could play a key role in reef ecology.Ecosystems are all about balance, and the phytoplankto...

Kitchen Science

Balloons on a Tube


Find out why it is so hard to start blowing up a balloon and what it has to do with bubble bath.

Question of the Week

Clean Cut Hair Grows Quicker?

Can you slow the growth of your hair by refusing to wash or cut it? Does clean cut hair grow quicker?


I was catching up with Pod Casts and I just heard the 11/3/08 with the story about electric cars using up scarce water supplies.  This is not a v...
- Mikeblanco - 1st Apr 08
Whole Thread | Post Reply

Interviews

Artificial Enzymes, Sea Cucumber Skins and Safer Chips

Mark Peplow, Chemistry World

The Ig Nobel Prizes

Marc Abrahams

Skygazing

Rick Fienberg, Sky and Telescope Magazine

Questions

I was driving home one night, six weeks ago. There was a full moon and it was a beautiful clear night. There was just a bit of rain coming in from the west. I had to put my windscreen wipers on and it was making a horrible smear across my screen. What I saw at first I thought was muck from the road smearing across my screen, there was this light crescent in the sky. I put my windscreen washers on and it cleared away yet this thing was still there. What I was looking at was basically a very precise, very thin crescent of what looked like light in the sky. I thought it might be clouds or something and then it came to me: it's a moonlight rainbow. Is this actually possible, and if it is, how does it happen?


My son Robert has been wondering about this question: when we freeze milk it changes colour – from white to yellow. Why is this?


I was wondering, is there more or less water on the Earth than there used to be a million years ago?


I'd like to talk about the difference between salt water and fresh water. Are they two different substances or is one an artificially altered version of the other? If the latter, which is the natural version? It occurs to me they have the same chemical formula, H2O, so I presume they're the same and one is an evaporated version of the original?


I got wet and rained on today in Cambridge. Is it better to walk through the rain or to run through it? When do you get most wet?


If you've got a dripping tap, which I did have a while ago, and it's dripping once every five seconds or ten seconds how much water does that actually waste over time?


I was sitting in the car with the engine off and no heater or cooling fan on and the weather's dry or overcast but not raining. It takes ages when breathing normally inside the car for the windows to mist up. When it rains the windscreen mists up faster even though there's no obvious change in temperature. Why should that be?


When you thaw milk again why does it completely reconstitute back into the milk?


I want to talk about dust. At this time of year the sun starts coming through the window and you can see the surfaces you've dusted carefully are covered with dust . You can actually see dust in the sun beams. I wanted to know where all this dust comes from. My dictionary defines dust as finely powdered earth, dirt etcetera, lying on surfaces and blown about by the wind. That strikes me as being all very well for agricultural dust but household dust is very different. I can't believe it's all my epidermal cells.


I am curious to know if our fizzy drinks are adding significant CO2 to our atmosphere. Think about all the soda that is served each day is sure to be a significant quantity of escaped gas. Additionally what happens to the CO2 once inside the body, that CO2 must go somewhere or be released eventually. Could we slow down the CO2 global warming problem by just drinking water instead of carbonated drinks?


In theory, might it be possible to engineer an airborne microbe or virus which could be released into the atmosphere where greenhouse gases are highly concentrated? These microbes would be designed to feed off the gas, but expel harmless gas as a by-product.




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