The New Addicts.

So apparently, this new study shows that teenagers suffer from withdraw symptoms without any type of media device for 24 hours. Wow. Guess I have now proved I am not addicted to social media. (I don’t use electronics one day a week.)

Now I’m here; now I’m not.

As someone who cannot drive (and before you jump to conclusions, it has nothing to do with how I’ve driven in the past), and as someone who is currently highly annoyed with TSA, I find transporters to be the perfect solution.  Say I want to visit my grandma in New Jersey while I’m in South Dakota. I jump on the transporter, beam over there, and have a nice cup of tea with her. Then I beam home in time for dinner. It’d be perfect.

Now, obviously, if we have transporters we need to have a few other jobs involved. First, we’ll need some kind of transporter beam blocker, because if we have this transporter where I can transport whatever I want wherever I want,  then what is keeping me from transporting a bomb into the white house? Or my exboyfriend’s bedroom?

Secondly, we’d need to have doctors and scientists thee to prove to everyone time and time again that transporters are safe. It’s just like the cell phones cause brain cancer idea.

Third, we’d start to have groups study and perfect the transporter, very much like cars. We’ll always want a faster, cooler, smaller, or whatever else transporter to make it easier to carry around.

Fourth, we’d need more fitness clubs, because if no one has to walk to get from point A to point B, people are going to need to go to the gym more to stay in shape.

Lastly, we need retailers of the transporters, very much like they sell cell phone plans now.

So all this results in a stimulus to the economy, which is always really good.

That all being said, transporters might not be that far off. Apparently, they have found a way to theoretically transport someone, which raises a whole new bunch of questions, but besides  that, is very cool.

However, that may not be totally strange. Here’s an article from Newsy that explains what scientists did and why they think it is a big step. I’m not sure I follow a lot of it, but it gives some ideas to think about transporters in the future.

So, what are your opinions on transporters? Do you even want to see them?

A little bit more about metal.

My chemistry teacher has some awesome stories.

Potassium is highly reactive with water and air, as I discussed last week, a scientist must conduct experiments in a highly controlled environment. Well, he knows someone who took a can of potassium, tossed into the lake, and then shot it with a gun.

This caused a bunch of repeat explosions, for lack of better words, because the little bit of potassium would react with the air, explode, and show more potassium and that would explode, and so on and so forth.

Another experiment that they would show is  take a cube of potassium and I’m not sure how they did this exactly, but the cube is probably covered with potassium oxide of sorts. They would take this cube of potassium, cut all six sides of it very quickly, and then wait a few minutes. After a few minutes, they would snip off the corner of the cube and pour out liquid potassium. This would happen because the reaction of the air with the fresh potassium would cause it to heat up so much, it melted the potassium on the inside.

Yeah. Wow.

Now, we can discuss magnesium. Magnesium isn’t reactive, and it’s light, so it makes perfect sense to make ships out of in. In fact, that is exactly what Britain did during a war with Argentina. This didn’t go too well however, since fires on the ships could not be put out once started.

Strontium is another fun metal. A certain isotope of strontium, Sr-90, is used in atomic bombs. Well, Strontium can also be used to replace calcium in our bones. Our body needs calcium though, not strontium so this leads to anemia,  and leukemia. If it can replace the calcium in our muscles as well, then we are in serious trouble, because our muscles need calcium to contract.

Every spaceship is made out of metal.

I’m going to discuss some characteristics of metals and gases, based on the periodic table. One thing you must understand about the periodic table is that as you go down each row, the elements share common characteristics. This discussion will actually be a two part series, as next week I will share with you some interesting stories related to specific metals.

Yes, this actually makes sense.

We’ll start with Row 1A

1A metals are called the Alkaline metals.

This is the gray row on my table. These metals are generally shiny when fresh, but quickly tarnish when exposed to air. All of these metals react violently with water to produce hydrogen gas. These metals are so reactive that they are never found in pure forms in nature.

2A Elements: Alkaline Earth:

This is the green row. They are less reactive than Alkali metals (1A). The metallic character increases from top to bottom. Their reactivity in water varies a lot. Berylium (Be) does not react in water. Magnesium (Mg) reacts slowly with steam. Calcium (Ca), Strontium (Sr), and Barium (Ba) are reactive enough to attack cold water.

Group 3A:

Here we are jumping across to the column with one blue and the rest as pink. We’ll skip the yellow transition metals because they are funky. Boron (B) is actually a metalloid, meaning that it has characteristics of a metal and a nonmetal.  Boron is unreactive  towards oxygen and water. Aluminum is a fun metal however because when it reacts with air (namely oxygen), it forms aluminum oxide, which covers the rest of the aluminum metal with a sticky layer and prevents further breakdown. That is why aluminum doesn’t rust.

4A:

The only thing worth mentioning here is that lead and tin do not react with water, but they do react with acids.

5A

There is nothing of particular interest in this group.

6A

The only thing of interesting is we are now getting to the point where it is difficult to study Po, At and Rn, because they are so rare that it is difficult to find enough of it to study.

7A: Halogens.

All of these are generally found in a diatomic form, meaning that the two elements are joined together to get X2 naturally . They are also highly reactive and as such, never found in elementally form.

These also look pretty. Fluorine (F) is a green gas. Chlorine (Cl) is a yellow gas and it is also yellow as a liquid. Bromine (Br) is a red gas with a dark red liquid. Lastly Iodine (I) will condense without passing through the liquid phase and looks brownish. You can easily buy iodine actually. (At least, we have almost always had it on hand.)

8A: Noble Gases

All of these are gases. Most of them almost hardly react at all. Helium (He), Neon (Ne) and Argon (Ar) have not been induced to react with anything. The rest of them have reacted, but the product is oftentimes unstable. The number of compounds formed thus far can also be counted, whereas many other compounds formed from other elements cannot be.

The other fun things with these gases is that if you send energy through them, they produce light in many pretty colors, which should probably be a separate post completely.

 

As a side note: You guys are awesome! We broke 4000 views last night. Thanks everyone for that.

What is science fiction?

Besides questioning the “what if” of our world today, science fiction apparently has a lot of other things to offer.

Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.

— Susan Sontag

But it’s not all hopeless.

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.

— Isaac Asimov

Concerning living in space

The best one for me to know was about the space sickness, since I was having a character turn off the gravity in his ship. Wonder if he can still do that….?

10 facts about living in space

A future of genetic testing.

I’ve said many times before, I’m a science fiction writer. My biggest question in life is “What happens if…?”

I read an article earlier this week that gave the suggestion of a mommy gene, and the physical possibility of it. She had an interesting line in it.

“More Mommy genes!” the headlines raved. Mice and humans share many of the same genes, so these genes may influence women’s nurturing instincts, too. Perhaps we can test every wannabe mom to see if she has working copies of FosB, Peg1/ Mest, and Peg3. [The mommy genes identified in mice.] Then we’ll know who can soothe babies into submission and who thinks it’s a good idea to leave them to cry under the stars.

So, this started me thinking, What if a place did test women to see if they were able to be nurturing or not? What if they started tying this into the adoption process? What if they didn’t let anyone have a baby who didn’t have this gene?

So there’s a thought for you. You can find out more about mommy genes here.

Paddles!

During many movies and TV shows, we see a patient goes flatline, he’s basically dead, and the doctor and rescue team swoops in, grabs the paddles, shock him a few times and he walks out of the hospital in two hours.

In movies and TV shows. Generally speaking, in ONLY movies and TV shows.

Why is that?

Because if the person is in a true flatline, meaning there is no electrical activity in the heart, paddles, or defibrillation as it is known in the medical world, will do nothing.

So, a few comments on this, so your stories are a bit more accurate.

1) If a patient is flatline (asystole), the patient needs two drugs. A) Epinephrine. B) Vasopressin. With epinephrine, you can give that as many times as you want, spaced about every three minutes I think it is. With Vasopressin, you can only give that once and that is all. Keep in mind that this i when the heart has completely stopped.

2) If you really want to shock a patient, they need to be in ventricular fibrillation (V-Fib) or Ventricular tachycardia without a pulse, otherwise known as V-tach without a pulse. In common language, the ventriculers are going really, really fast, which will manifest as a fast heart rate.

3) There are these things called automatic defibrillators in many public locations. With these things, anyone can shock a patient, because it’s all automatic. You attach the pads, run the read cycle, and then the machine will tell you whether or not you can shock the patient. I’m sure there’s a video out there if you are very curious.

The fancy becomes unfancy.

A nice marble lobby that is just waiting for terrorists or vandals. :D

Now, I’m not fully sure what you can do with this information, but I learned that if you pour an acid on marble, you will start to breakdown the marble. That’s how people test to see if a rock is marble or not; they put some HCl on it and if the rock fizzes, it’s marble.

One thought I had, not that I’d endorse this in real life, is that would be one way to get a message across. If you spray enough strong acids against a marble wall, that message is never coming out.

How to Kill the Prisoner.

So, perhaps this is a bit controversial, but I found out today how they put someone to death.

1. First, they put them to sleep. I actually didn’t catch which drug they use, but it’s because by the time they start to die, it actually hurts a bit
2. They give pancuronium bromide as a muscle relaxant. This actually paralyzes the diaphragm and is used for hunting monkeys in Africa.
3. They give plain, boring potassium via an IV push. That means that they take the potassium and just shove it into the person as quickly as they possibly can.

The person will actually die from the heart not being able to handle the excessive potassium and throwing itself into a dysrhythmia. Then, the person dies and all is done.