Density

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It’s not a misspell, it is indeed Density and not Destiny because you are on my Science blog eh.

Okay, Density is defined as the mass per unit volume.

There was a running question (or joke - but not really funny), which is heavier 1 Kg of cotton or 1Kg of nail?

The obvious answer is- it both has the same weight.

But the correct question should be which is more dense?

And the correct answer is the nail.

Why?

Because although they have the same weight or mass (which is 1 Kg), the volume occupied by the cotton is more than the volume of the nail.

So let’s assume, the volume of cotton is 2 cm3 and nail is 0.5 cm3, the density of cotton and nail can be computed using the formula:

Density = mass/ volume

Density of cotton = 1 Kg/ 2 cm3 = 0.5 Kg/cm3

Density of nail = 1 Kg/ 0.5 cm3 = 2.0 Kg/cm3

Therefore, nail is more dense than cotton.

But I’ll give you a shorter way to determine which is more or which is less without the computation perse.

If you will submerge it with water, which one will sink and which one will float?

Of course the nail will sink and the cotton will float.

There goes the same answer, the nail is more dense while the cotton is less dense.

Why?

Because density of water is always 1 and used as THE standard.

So things (liquid or solid) with density more than 1 will sink,

While things (liquid or solid) with density less than 1 will float.

I always encourage people even myself to ask, because that’s how you learn things.

Gets?

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And while we’re on the topic, some use the word ‘dense’ to describe persons who cannot grasp things (like if your crush doesn’t understand your pa-cute ways)…

So when people call you dense don’t be happy about it because it means you’re less than 1 (the standard).

Gets?

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It’s been a whole year since my last post…

my apologies to my blog and my readers (if any)…

pH Care

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Since I’m still high on my new job, I’ll let you peek on one of the test and machine I am using.

Tada! The one on the center is a pH Meter, and that goes to show it measures the pH of a solution.

What do you know about pH?

pH is the measure of acidity or alkalinity of a solution. Or the measure of hydrogen ions (H+). The pH scale is from 0 to 14 with 0 as most acidic and 14 as most basic. Of course 7 is the median with pure water as the best example.

pH scale from staff.jccc.net

I’m sure you don’t care about those things, but I am to cite a more common example. We are aware of the many genitalia products in the market all claiming to be the best because it is either pH 4 or 5 and so on. They are correct, pH balance is a fundamental component of vaginal health (to read more visit sweetspotlab.com). We have to maintain the natural pH of 4 to 5 (generally acidic), and using soap with pH of 8 to 10 (generally basic) would disrupt the balance.

But hey nowadays, lower pH soaps are available so just check out the labels.

Science is great huh? Everything has an explanation. That's why I love it!

Summer Heat

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Don’t forget your sunscreen!

How much can you handle? Summer here can skyrocket to 50 deg Celsius, no kidding!

Temperature is measured by a thermometer, these days there are different kinds but the mercury ones are already being eliminated because of the high risk of toxicity. Don’t use one!

Units used are Celcius, Fareinheit and Kelvin.

The Fahrenheit scale is usually used on reports about the weather.

The Celsius scale is commonly used for scientific work.

The Kevin scale is used in The International System of Measurements (SI) for measuring temperature.

How to convert one from another?

Conversion	Formula	Example
Celsius to Kelvin	K = C + 273	21oC = 294 K
Kelvin to Celsius	C = K - 273	313 K = 40 oC
Fahrenheit to Celsius	C = (F - 32) x 5/9	89 oF = 31.7 oC
Celsius to Fahrenheit	F = (C x 9/5) + 32	50 oC = 122 oF

But how is heat being transferred? Well I’ll discuss that on the next post.

A Wasteful Earth Day

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In commemoration of Earth Day let me discuss a little about waste management, it can give you a wider picture on how your waste is being managed. You’d be thankful you’re not the one taking care of that.

Basically there are 3 kinds of waste – Gaseous, Liquid and Solid Wastes. These wastes if not properly managed will then become pollutants.

Waste Management flows in a cycle: Monitoring, Collection, Transportation, Processing, Disposal / Recycle.

Gaseous Wastes – we really cannot quantify gaseous wastes from individuals or communities, but usually those factories and vehicles have some filtering equipments.

Liquid Wastes – depending on the nature of the liquid waste but the main step here is the processing. Usually, a chemical is added to the liquid waste and let those react. For example, an acidic waste is neutralized by adding some basic chemical.

Solid Wastes – here goes the majority of wastes, on a daily basis tons of solid wastes are produced by households alone. The key point here is to recycle, separate the non biodegradable (bottles, plastics, papers, tin cans) and biodegradable (food wastes). Then these biodegradable are processed in a landfill.

A landfill as the name suggests, where the biodegradable waste is covered with soil (but still some treatment or processing is done). It is similar to backyard composting but in a much larger scale.

I find it sad whenever setting up of sanitary landfill is being opposed to. There is really no other way to manage our solid waste.

Someone, somewhere, sometime, somehow it needs to be done.

What we can do is to be mindful of our wastes. To reduce waste production, because elimination is totally out of the picture.

Let's Celebrate Pi Day!

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I saw in Google’s page this cute logo in commemoration of Pi Day.

I didn’t know there was such but now that I did, I checked some details.

Pi Day is celebrated on March 14 or 3.14 being the first three digit of the pi value (3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197…infinite series).

It also coincides with the birthday of Albert Einstein, a famous scientist and mathematician.

Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. The distance around a circle is called the circumference. The distance across a circle through the center is called the diameter.

 

where c is circumference and d is diameter.

So when you order a 16 inches pizza it refers to the diameter. You might want to measure it's circumference by a tape measure but why bother? you can use the equation above and the answer is 50.24 inches (C = 3.14 x 16). Easy right?

Happy Pi Day everyone!