Blood, sweat, tears, and now screams

Even if you are a professor of physics, I do not think you can explain why this man is screaming at his paint canvas. I mean, I understand, art makes me aggravated too, but what is the point of this? 

I've written about sound, and how it travels before, so I'll explain again! Sound is really just a series of vibrations made by a moving object. In this case, it's the man's vocal chords! These vibrations travel by coming in contact with air molecules and bouncing around. This is why if you see amplifiers they usually have a circular part behind a screen which moves to make a bigger vibration. This is also why you become deaf at concerts. Also this is why you can't hear in space because there aren't air molecules. 

So maybe this man's scream spreads out the paint molecules. Congratulations, you can make thicker lines on a canvas? Knowing art, this will probably sell for two million dollars! Enough nonsense now. 

Luxury... ice?

In a world where people are buying the stupidest products for obscene amounts of money, I have undoubtedly found the product that tops this list. Luxury ice. Yes, Gläce Luxury Ice, is selling luxury ice cubes and spheres for $8 a piece. Warning, if you ask your parents for $325 to buy this bag of ice, they may slap you! Rightfully so!

So basically fancy snowballs for $325.

When ice trays simply won't cut it... Anyway for the relevancy of this article, these ice spheres are made using chemistry! So each sphere is hand carved from an extremely large ice block therefore this is a waste of time and money. These ice blocks are frozen from the outside in. Woo phase changes! The center of the ice is constantly agitated so that gases will escape. Then when the block is almost completely frozen, the middle is cut out and inserted with frozen layers.  

And this gives you "tasteless" ice! Which we apparently didn't have before...?

So study chemistry in college and you can charge people $325 for ice. Watch out for their hot (buh dum tsss) new product, luxury water! Only $50 per bottle! Just in case your parents haven't slapped you yet. 

Almost scary teamwork

Well I have another video for everybody because I was too lazy to read an article and comment on it. Odds are you are sharing the same feelings right now. Or maybe not otherwise you wouldn't be reading this. Since you already put in the effort to start this post, watch this video!

See! The team work is scary. Hire a team of ants as construction workers. They'll build a house in the time you'd use to call a real construction company! Ants are able to communicate better than people by using chemical scents known as pheromones (the link to the article is on "pheromones"). Scientists believe ants could have anywhere between ten or twenty different types of pheromones that they keep mainly on their antennae. 

So take away an ant's antenna, and it'll probably be more pissed than a teenager who just got their phone taken away. It's really depressing to know ants could probably build amazing things but instead they decide to construct piles of dirt with holes.... And this is why humans are the dominant race holding the magnifying glass. Woo mankind! 

Flying By in a Racecar

Is how I get to school. No, I wish. Somehow I'd still manage to be late. Well anyway I found this video which tests your hearing by using different sound frequencies!

I was playing this video, and I thought, "Wow! This sounds like I'm in a racecar!" Anyway I wondered why the frequency of the wave mattered in correspondence to the pitch of the sound. Thanks for the information from here. So everyone knows (or at least I hope) that sound is made by a series of vibrations. This is really what your vocal chords do when you talk. 

As you saw in the video from the animation, a greater frequency corresponded to a higher pitch and vice versa. This is why if you play a string instrument, the string is shortest during a high pitch note since it vibrates faster whereas a long string is used to play a note with a low pitch taking long for the whole object to vibrate.

People who are trained in music have been capable of noticing a difference of 2 Hz in a sound wave. In case you didn't know, that's very small. And if you are a music nerd thinking "Wow I'm a special!" well distinguishing between sound waves doesn't really count for anything in life. So good for you? 

Grocery Store Hospital

So I found this cool article about scientists who looked at cross sections of vegetables and fruits under an MRI. Yes, Veggies Tales has finally become a hospital soap opera. Who would've known MRIs actually have a lot to do with chemistry on the quantum level. After writing about waves of light for a chemistry project,  I decided I'd never write about waves again. As you can see, this didn't last long. 

To celebrate the new Shoprite, why not blog about fruits and vegetables!

Here's the boring part. Don't worry, the rest is a lot better. So an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) is when a person (or food) lies in a strong magnetic field which lines up all of the protons in the atoms that make up your body. Next radio waves are sent to specific areas of the body to knock these protons out of place. After messing everything up, the radio waves are turned off and the protons come back in line and send out their own radio waves use to make images. These stupid waves never stop. If you want more of this stuff (I don't know why you would) read here. 

So now here comes the cool part! Can you guess the fruit or vegetable from the MRI? 

It's broccoli! Looks like a fourth of July fireworks show. Or the diagrams they show you when you go to the psychologist. 

The banana flower. Yeah, I didn't know they existed either. 

This is a kiwano. Looks like an alien blob. 

Corn! If you didn't know this one, but you guessed the kiwano, reevaluate your life. 

The Devil. Aka Tomatoes. Nasty. So this is what evil looks like. 

Celery, which requires more energy to digest than it gives. So it pretty much defeats the purpose of eating... 

Strawberries! A kaleidoscope is really just a cylinder with a bunch of strawberries inside of it. 

Check out the original article here. 

Well these MRIs have revealed fruits and vegetables don't have tumors! Aren't you relieved? Imagine going into an MRI room looking for a family member, but instead finding a fruit or vegetable. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" That'll help Obama care. 

My Shiny Teeth and Me

Woo Chip Skylark reference!

So Sarah and Dhara talked about teeth whiteners on both of their blogs, and I guess I'll join the conversation. Most teeth whiteners use bleaching agents such as hydrogen peroxide and carbamide peroxide. These agents treat two layers of the teeth.

Then Sarah added to this post by describing how drinks such as tea and coffee actually get stuck in these pits of your enamel. And if you don't brush your teeth, they won't go away! Wow even less motivation to drink coffee and tea. Coffee tastes nasty and only makes mornings more miserable. Tea requires a decent amount of effort for nothing more than flavored water. So I have no idea how nations have made millions of dollars in the tea trade in the past. I'm on the side of the Sons of Liberty from the Boston Tea Party. Throw that stuff in the water and leave it there. Then row out and beat it with oars the next morning. And after reading this, I am even less motivated to drink these two!

Many people wonder how they can whiten their teeth, and a common remedy is baking soda! Substances such as baking soda contain molecules called surfactants which attach to plaque molecules on one end and water molecules on the other! So when the water molecules take away the surfactants, they also take away the plaque molecules. "If I''m going down, I'm taking you with me!" Baking soda also gets rid of bacteria that forms plaque, but since it is a salt it does loose its effectiveness when water is added. Read more here.

Well that's teeth whitening. Now go focus on relevant topics in the world.

"My printer is out of skin cells"

3-D printer: My first encounter with 3-D printers was from the hilarious TV show, The Big Bang Theory 

And the first place I got the idea for blogging about this was from Sarah's blog! As Howard decided to make an action figure of himself (who can really blame him though), and kids at my school can only make things like phone cases, it's hard to believe scientists are really finding incredible ways to use this machine. Scientists mainly see a use for this in the medical field of tissue engineering. Much better than a bunch of nerds making plastic guns. Those people might as well make plastic brains for themselves while they're at it. 

3-D printing mainly relies on the layering of hydrogel to make structures, and this positioning really becomes important in determining the purpose of this object. This precision is especially important when making implants or other medical tools. 

Scientists believe this ability to maneuver and place individual cells holds much promise for the future of tissue engineering. 

Sarah brings up the point wondering how this technology will continue to advance, but I mainly wonder how will scientists commercialize it. Like there are flying cars in the world, but odds are most people will never see them because of this thing called money. It's very strange how green paper can stand between you and happiness. Anyway, the point is unless scientists will make this technology more common, it will likely be grossly expensive and never impact society on a large scale. And if that's not their goal, then these scientists might as well just make action figures instead like Howard.