GriffinScience

It’s official… Observations: Two New Superheavy Chemical Elements Formally Recognized: “The elements with atomic numbers of 114 and 116 have been recognized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), which credited a Russia–U.S. collaboration with their discovery.” Now, what to name them?? Hmm… squirrelium and griffinium sound good to me.

Fascinating… Heaviest Particle of Antimatter Found | Big Bang & Antihelium | LiveScience: “At the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) – a particle accelerator at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory — the nuclei of gold atoms collide, head-on, at near the speed of light. This simulates the conditions just after the Big [...]

Yet another reason it’s fascinating to study atoms and radioactivity… it could have big implications for finding water/life in other parts of the galaxy… Starless planets may be habitable after all – space – 20 February 2011 – New Scientist: “Gravitational tussles with other planets or passing stars can eject planets from their solar systems. [...]

Remember back to our studies of acids/bases when we covered the bit about the importance of hydrogen ions? Hopefully so, because this is pretty cool… What does a proton taste like?: ” Drawing attention to the fact that the ability to detect ‘sour’ tastes is one of the least well-understood gustatory talents. But progress has [...]

Wow. I want this for my birthday… YouTube – World’s Smallest Periodic Table

If you, like me, have always been curious why gold has always been so valuable compared to other elements, head over and listen to this report from NPR… Gold and the Periodic Table of the Elements : Planet Money from NPR: “So we’re down from 118 elements to 30, and we’ve come up with a [...]

Amazing times! BBC News – Large Hadron Collider (LHC) generates a ‘mini-Big Bang’: “The Large Hadron Collider has successfully created a ‘mini-Big Bang’ by smashing together lead ions instead of protons. “ We NEED you all to become scientists to help us process this data. Help?

We all know that diamonds are one of the hardest substances on earth. We also know that pencil “lead” really isn’t lead at all, but a form of carbon called graphite. So, this is pretty amazing… Secret of ultra-hard graphite unlocked – tech – 06 November 2010 – New Scientist: “In 2003, an experiment suggested [...]

Fusion is a fascinating process that occurs all the time. The problem is that stars are very good at producing fusion reactions. Here on earth, however, we aren’t as good at making these reactions. Why would we want to create fusion reactions? Simple: limitless (and virtually free) energy. The Promise of Fusion: Energy Miracle or [...]

Here are the slides (with brief explanations by me) from today: Chemical bond – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “A chemical bond is an attraction between atoms or molecules that allows the formation of chemical compounds, which contain two or more atoms.” Study and enjoy the universe!