Cumberland-Times Sky Columns
March 2006

March 5 - Weight & Possibilities
March 12 - Atoms In & Out
March 19 - Fine Library Books
March 26 - Math & Big Numbers

March 5 - WEIGHT & POSSIBILITIES

Our bodily weight is the pull of gravity on our bodies. Gravity is an attractive force between any two bodies in the universe. Most gravity forces are incredibly small (for example, the gravity force between your body and the newspaper you are now reading). But our weight is not small as it is the attractive force between our bodies and the entire Earth beneath us. Our body weight depends not just on our bodies but also the Earth's mass (mass = total amount of matter) as well as the distance between the Earth's surface and the center of the Earth (where all of the Earth's mass can be considered to be concentrated). So if you don't like your weight, don't blame yourself. The Earth's mass and the Earth's radius are just as responsible. If you were to travel to our moon, you would weigh only 1/6th as much as on the Earth. (A 150 lb. Person would only weigh 25 lbs. on the moon!) While your body hasn't changed, the moon has far less matter than the Earth as well as being a bit smaller, so the gravity pull is much less than Earth's surface. So our weight depends on where we are.

Mantaining a constant body weight from year to year is a real balancing act. An excess of 3500 Calories results in a weight gain of 1 lb. of fat. So if one averages just 10 extra Calories a day, then in year, you would gain about 1 lb. of fat. [The math behind this statement is: 10 extra Calories per day x 365 days in a year = 3650 Extra Calories.] The 10 Excess Calories would be typically only 0.3 % of the Calories you take in per day.

We live in a country where food is relatively cheap; we are constantly beseiged with ads showing slim people eating really delicious food. What I find unfair is that as we age, our bodies need fewer Calories to maintain the same weight. So the number of daily Calories that kept you at a constant weight as a young adult may be dozens of Calories too much for your slower metabolism (your metabolism are all the necessary internal processes to keep us alive) that we have as a middle aged person. Another issue that's very unfair is that we get older, our joints don't work as well and getting around is painful. So what steps can we take to get control of our weight? Research on diets show that most people on diets regain the weight they lose. In fact, some diets further lower your metabolism, condeming you to further weight gain even while you cut back on eating. Here are some unusual approaches that may work for you.

It's been a standard rule that one should eat a great variety of foods to maintain good health. This had led many to visit Restaurants and try a great variety of tasty foods, often over indulging as they delight in all these yummy choices. If one takes a good multivitamin each day, there's no need to become a gourmet eater. Gourmet eating will cost you much more money plus be sure to add to your waistline. I eat 'preventively'. My family has a history of high blood pressure, heart disease and colon cancer. I eat in a way to minimize these risks to my health. So I avoid the salt shaker, concentrate on fruits and vegetables and avoid red meat, instead preferring small servings of low fat fish, chicken and veggie burgers. I don't eat a wide variety of food, often having the same things for breakfast and lunch most days. When you rely on a few familiar foods for health maintanence, you don't tend to overeat. But if you make a variety of foods a high priority, converse about food with your friends and watch food shows on television, you are likely to increase your weight.

As far as exercise, the best approach for mobile people is get a four legged exercise partner. Go to the Allegany Animal Shelter or a Rescue Shelter and adopt a friendly and energetic dog who needs daily walks. If your new dog hasn't been walked regularly, it will take some training; but after a while, she/he will look at you every morning with big brown eyes and tell you let's go! People in this area are very devoted to their pets; just as we often go out of our way for our pets, let your pet help you maintain your health! (Even young indoor cats can be trained for short walks on a leash.)

March 12 - ATOMS IN AND OUT

In a column last month, the amount of air in our atmosphere was found to weigh 5.2 million billion tons. (This is 5.2 followed by 14 zeroes.) Today we will consider how many atoms or molecules are in a breath. [A molecule is a bunch of atoms bonded electrically.] A typical sample of the air would be about 77% Nitrogen (N2) molecules, 21% Oxygen (O2) molecules, 1% Water Vapor (H2O) molecules and 1% Argon atoms. The average molecular weight is then 28.8 atomic mass units.

The mass of a typical cubic meter of air is 1.29 kilograms or 2.84 pounds. A typical breath involves breathing in 0.5 liters or 500 cubic centimeters of air. This is 1/2000th of a cubic meter, so in each breath, you take in 1.29/2000 = .000645 kilograms or .645 grams of air.

Each atomic mass unit has a mass of 1.66 x 10 to the -27th kilograms. So the average molecule in air has a mass of 28.8 atomic mass units or 4.78 x 10 to the -26th kilograms. Then in each breath you take there would be .000645 kilograms divided by 4.78 x 10 to the -26th kilograms per molecule = 1.35 x 10 to the 22th molecules. [This can be stated as 13.5 billion trillion molecules.] Now the Earth's entire atmosphere has 1.1 x 10 to the 44th molecules. So in each breath you take you sample about 10 to the -22th of the Earth's atmosphere. The Earth's atmosphere has a mixing time of 6 years. That means in 6 years, all the molecules around the world have been thoroughly mixed. The air you breath in today might have been in Pakistan or Iraq six years ago.

Just as you breath in 500 ml of air, you also breathe out the same volume of air. The amount of oxygen will drop while the amount of CO2 and H2O will increase. When you breathe out, the molecules of your breath mix with the rest of the atmosphere. As the atmosphere has 10 to the 44th molecules, and we take in 10 to the 22th molecules. So for each breath you exhale, your molecules mix with the atmosphere. Turning it around, for every breath you take, you take in molecules once inside of other humans, both living and dead. Since each breath has 10 to the 22nd molecules and there are 10 to the 22nd breaths in the atmopshere, it can be shown that for every breath you inhale, you take in a molecule from each human's breath who ever lived. If someone lives for 56.2 years and breathes 443 million times (that's 15 times a minute for their lifetime), then you will be inhaling 443 million air molecules that were once inside of that person each time you breathe. The person who lived for 56.2 years is our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln! So each time, you or anybody else takes a breath, you take in that many molecules that were once inside of our beloved President, who took this country through its greatest crisis.

Naturally since we all breath the same air, we are simultaneously breathing in many millions of molecules that once inside of Moses, Buddha, Socrates, Julius Caesar, Jesus, Mohammed, Adolf Hitler and Mother Theresa. Of course, many of these same molecules have been inside of many famous individuals not just one well known person. So all of us share the same atmosphere.

I once attended a talk at Franklin and Marshall College where a noted author demonstrated that millions of atoms once in a Tyrannosaurus Rex are now in your thumb! [Don't use this kind of assertion in a criminal trial, as the Judge will not accept this as a justification for predatory behavior.]

March 19 - FINE LIBRARY BOOKS

One of the finest presentations of science ever done was Carl Sagan's "Cosmos", presented on Public Television in the fall of 1980 with an accompanying excellent book. One of the best features of Cosmos was Sagan's interweaving of history in his presentation of early and contemporary science. Cosmos has now been updated and reissued in a DVD set.

In this same spirit are two fine books by Joy Hakim, available in our Allegany County Library System. The first is "The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way", a Smithsonian Book with ISBN 1-58834-160-7, published in 2004.

In this wide ranging book, Hakim covers the early explanations for the origin of the universe, the rise of mathematics, the first calendars, the rise of science in Greek Ionia (actually western Turkey), the early models of the universe by the Greeks, Aristotle's five elements (air, fire, water, earth and quintessence), the number worshiping followers of Pythagoras, the atom idea of Democritus, Aristotle's understanding of the moon's phases and his proof that the Earth was round, Socrates and Plato, the looping motion of the planets, Euclid's geometry, Eratosthenes' determination of the Earth's circumference in the 3rd century BC, the discovery of the Earth's wobbling axis by Hipparchus in the 2nd century BC, the model for the universe by Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD, the onset of the thousand year long Middle Ages and the development of printing in Europe in the fifteenth century.

"The Story of Science: Aristotle Leads the Way" has 30 chapters, each beautifully illustrated with paintings, photos and many interesting insets. If you think science is dull, I challenge you to open this book and read a little bit. Science is considered intimating by many because of equations and math that are the staple for advanced science texts. I found very few equations and formulae in this book. You'll instead become acquainted with key pioneers over a stretch of nearly 2000 years from Thales to Magellan, including some philosophers and theologians.
Hakim's second science-history book is "The Story of Science: Newton at the Center". This is another Smithsonian Book with ISBN 1-58834-161-5 and published in 2005.

"Newton at the Center" includes (in order) such topics as the deforestation of 15th century Europe, Copernicus' radical proposal that the Earth orbited the sun, the great sky observer Tycho Brahe, the turbulent life of Galileo (his experiments and discoveries), Kepler's uncovering of how planets move, young Isaac Newton's unpromising youth, Newton's 18 months of isolated discoveries while the Black Plague struck London, the invention of the Calculus, Newton's Laws of Motion, Edmund Halley's comet, the rise of Chemistry from Alchemy, Robert Boyle and gas laws, Bernoulli and his principle, the brilliant woman mathematician Emilie du Chatelet, Joseph Priestley (oxygen and soda pop), Henry Cavendish who weighed the Earth, Lavoisier and the concept of element, Dalton's revisiting atoms to explain laws of Chemistry, Russia's Mendeleyev and his periodic table of elements, Ben Franklin and lightning rods, Foucault's pendulum, Faraday's fields, J.C. Maxwell's electromagnetic waves, the Brewer James Joule and his careful experiments, Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity and American Albert Michelson's determination of the speed of light.

This intriguing book acquiants you with the pioneers of science from the 16th through the 19th centuries in 40 well illustrated chapters. The same comments for Hakim's Aristotle book apply to this one as well.

March 26 - MATH & BIG NUMBERS

Common comments that I hear from students and adults is "I'm not good at Math", "I would have majored in _______ if it wasn't for Math". Many feel that if Mathematics doesn't come easily, they can't do it. Most of us are NOT born with key skills. Most of us have to work many hours to be good at most things, such as public speaking, shooting a basketball, training a dog, working on cars, etc. But one hears the Mathematics lament so often that it spreads quickly among students in America. Students in China, South Korea and Japan don't seem to have a negative outlook on Mathematics. In fact, among these countries about 60% of the college students are majoring in science, engineering or mathematics; this is about twice the percentage of these majors in American colleges. Today it is much easier to learn Mathematics than back at the start of the Space Age when students used slide rules and had rather bland Mathematics texts. It was then the time of the Space Race to catch up with the Soviets. There was a National Education Defense Act to improve science, engineering and mathematics classes.
Mathematics was looked as challenging, but a necessary skill to master for entry into any technical field.

In the National Survey of America's College Students (NSACS) released by the American Institutes of Research (website is www.air.org) the quantitative literacy of over 1800 students in their final year at 80 randomly selected 2 and 4 year public and private universities across the United States was guaged. About 1/4 of the students in this survey lack basic quantitative skills.

What is even more worrisome are those who have numeric fog - inability to remember or grasp numbers. Particularly difficult are the large numbers: millions and billions. It seems that once you go to numbers that would be tedious to count, our memories for these numbers are like a sieve. Numbers in the billions (thousand millions) are often converted into millions, a more common number in everyday life.

I feel that this ignoring of big numbers is now widespread across the adult population in America. Twelve years ago, one political party pushed strongly for a balanced federal budget, achieved in the last years of the Clinton administration. For the past few years, our federal government each day is spending a BILLION more dollars each day than it takes in! In this year's budget, the government is spending 7.6 billion dollars each day, while only collecting 6.6 billion dollars each day. As a consequence, the U.S. national debt has increased from 5.6 TRILLION $ to 8.2 TRILLION $ since 2000. (A trillion is a million times a million and has 12 zeroes.) Also worrisome is our trade deficit (our imports - our exports) of $700 billion dollars each year.

Conservatives with economic training have been mostly quiet about the growing debt that will be passed onto future generations of Americans. Interest on the national debt is about 1/7th of the total federal outlays, about $400 BILLION a year! While a few economic experts may be afraid to speak out, I suspect most of the economic leaders may be just as uncomprehending of the big numbers as most Americans. Individuals who live on a limited budget know that they can't keep spending considerably more than their income year after year. This leads inevitably to personal bankruptcy.

Revered economic leaders such as the recently departed Head of the Federal Reserve Board have by their silence have let the U.S. become highly dependent on other countries for a continual inflow of investment funds to keep our economy going. When Alan Greenspan started in 1988, the U.S. National debt was 2.6 trillion dollars; it is now over three times that amount. This huge debt will make it difficult for the U.S. to gather the capital needed to develop alternative energy sources when petroleum prices rise even more in coming years.