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| Celestial Bodies: Astronomy | |
| It Came From Outer Space: asteroids, meteors, and comets | |
| How crowded is the asteroid belt? | p. 1 |
| What causes a meteor shower? | p. 4 |
| Is it possible that a meteorite could strike a commercial airliner and cause it to explode? | p. 5 |
| Why are impact craters always round? | p. 6 |
| Heavenly Bodies: planets and moons | |
| What defines a true planet, and why might Pluto not qualify? | p. 8 |
| Why do the moon and the sun look so much larger near the horizon? | p. 11 |
| What is a blue moon? | p. 13 |
| Why are planets round? | p. 14 |
| How do scientists measure the weight of a planet? | p. 15 |
| How fast is the earth moving? | p. 17 |
| Why and how do planets rotate? | p. 19 |
| Star Light, Star Bright: stars | |
| What exactly is the North Star? | p. 21 |
| How long do stars usually live? | p. 23 |
| Why do stars twinkle? | p. 25 |
| Far, Far Away ...: the universe | |
| How do we know our location within the Milky Way galaxy? | p. 26 |
| Why is the night sky dark? | p. 28 |
| Does the fact that the universe is continually expanding mean that it lacks a physical edge? | p. 31 |
| It's Alive! Biology | |
| The Grass Is Always Greener: plants | |
| What causes the leaves on trees to change color in the fall? | p. 35 |
| How does the Venus flytrap digest flies? | p. 37 |
| How do trees carry water from the soil around their roots to the leaves at the top? | p. 39 |
| Creepy Crawlers: insects | |
| How is bug blood different from our own? | p. 41 |
| What kind of illnesses do insects get? | p. 43 |
| How do flies and other insects walk up walls? | p. 44 |
| Why is spider silk so strong? | p. 45 |
| If a used needle can transmit HIV, why can't a mosquito? | p. 46 |
| Under the Sea: ocean life | |
| How do squid and octopuses change color? | p. 47 |
| Why do some fish normally live in freshwater and others in saltwater? How can some fish adapt to both? | p. 50 |
| How can sea mammals drink saltwater? | p. 53 |
| How do deep-diving sea creatures withstand huge pressure changes? | p. 56 |
| How do whales and dolphins sleep without drowning? | p. 57 |
| That's a Horse of a Different Color: animal kingdom | |
| Do hippopotamuses actually have pink sweat? | p. 61 |
| Why do cats purr? | p. 62 |
| Why do dogs get blue, not red, eyes in flash photos? | p. 64 |
| How do frogs survive winter? Why don't they freeze to death? | p. 66 |
| Do unbred animals lack the individual distinctiveness of humans? | p. 69 |
| Talkin' About Evolution: evolution | |
| Is there any evolutionary advantage to gigantism? | p. 71 |
| What is the point in preserving endangered species that have no practical use to humans? | p. 74 |
| What do we know about the evolution of sleep? | p. 76 |
| When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth: dinosaurs | |
| What are the odds of a dead dinosaur becoming fossilized? | p. 78 |
| What kind of evidence could be found in the fossil record (or anywhere else) that would prove whether some dinosaurs were warm-blooded? | p. 80 |
| How close are we to being able to clone a dinosaur? | p. 84 |
| Did any dinosaurs have poisonous saliva, as in Jurassic Park? | p. 85 |
| If T. rex fell, how did it get up, given its tiny arms and low center of gravity? | p. 86 |
| Being Human | |
| It's All in the Genes: human evolution | |
| Is the human race still evolving? Isn't culture a more powerful force? | p. 89 |
| Can the human race be devolving? | p. 92 |
| Why are we getting taller as a species? | p. 94 |
| Why do men have nipples? | p. 96 |
| Oh, Behave!: human behavior | |
| How did the smile become a friendly gesture in humans? | p. 99 |
| Why are more people right-handed? Do other primates show a similar tendency to favor one hand over the other? | p. 100 |
| How long can humans stay awake? | p. 103 |
| Do humans have some kind of homing instinct like certain birds do? | p. 105 |
| Why do we yawn when we are tired? And why does it seem to be contagious? | p. 107 |
| You Haven't Aged a Bit: growing older | |
| Why does hair turn gray? | p. 109 |
| Do people lose their senses of smell and taste as they age? | p. 111 |
| Anatomy 101: the human body | |
| What is the function of the human appendix? | p. 113 |
| What makes the sound when we crack our knuckles? | p. 115 |
| Why does your stomach growl when you are hungry? | p. 118 |
| How can you live without one of your kidneys? | p. 120 |
| Why do fingers wrinkle in the bath? | p. 122 |
| If the cells of our skin are replaced regularly, why do scars and tattoos persist indefinitely? | p. 124 |
| Why does fat deposit on the hips and things of women and around the stomachs of men? | p. 125 |
| The Dr. Is In: health and medicine | |
| Why do hangovers occur? | p. 128 |
| Why does reading in a moving car cause motion sickness? | p. 130 |
| Why do we get the flu more often in the winter than in other seasons? | p. 132 |
| What happens when you get a sunburn? | p. 134 |
| There are many kinds of cancer, so why is there no heart cancer? | p. 136 |
| Is there any proof that Alzheimer's disease is related to exposure to aluminum--for instance, by using aluminum frying pans? | p. 138 |
| How long can the average person survive without water? | p. 139 |
| As a Matter of Fact: Chemistry | |
| Elementary, My Dear Watson ...: the elements | |
| Why doesn't stainless steel rust? | p. 141 |
| If nothing sticks to Teflon, how does it stick to pans? | p. 143 |
| What determines whether a substance is transparent? | p. 144 |
| If You Can't Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Kitchen! everyday chemistry | |
| Why do my eyes tear when I peel an onion? | p. 145 |
| Why do spicy (or "hot") foods cause the same physical reactions as heat? | p. 148 |
| Why does bruised fruit turn brown? | p. 150 |
| How is caffeine removed to produce decaffeinated coffee? | p. 151 |
| What is the difference between artificial and natural flavors? | p. 153 |
| How can an artificial sweetener contain no calories? | p. 155 |
| Do vitamins in pills differ from those in food? | p. 157 |
| Where There's Smoke, There's a Fire: more chemistry | |
| How does a flame behave in zero gravity? | p. 159 |
| How does fingerprint powder work? | p. 161 |
| There's No Place Like Home: Earth Science | |
| Everybody Talks About It ...: weather | |
| Why do clouds float when they have so much water in them? | p. 163 |
| What causes thunder? | p. 165 |
| Why are snowflakes symmetrical? | p. 167 |
| Why are some rainbows bigger than others? | p. 168 |
| What is the meaning of the phrase, "It is too cold to snow"? Doesn't it have to be cold for it to snow? | p. 170 |
| Why do hurricanes hit the East Coast of the United States but never the West Coast? | p. 171 |
| Up Above: the atmosphere | |
| If chlorofluorocarbons are heavier than air, how do they reach the ozone layer? | p. 173 |
| What determines the shape of a mushroom cloud after a nuclear explosion? | p. 174 |
| The Upper Crust: earth's surface and below | |
| How do volcanoes affect world climate? | p. 175 |
| Where do geysers get their water from? | p. 179 |
| How do scientists measure the temperature of the earth's core? | p. 182 |
| What causes the regular, wavelike shapes that form in the sand on beaches? | p. 184 |
| What is quicksand? | p. 186 |
| Let's Get Wet: oceans | |
| How did the oceans form? | p. 188 |
| Why does the ocean appear blue? Is it because it reflects the sky? | p. 190 |
| Count on Me: Mathematics and Computers | |
| Much Ado About Nothing: zero | |
| What is the origin of zero? | p. 191 |
| Give 'Em an Inch measurement | |
| On average, how many degrees apart is any one person in the world from another? | p. 193 |
| Where does the measurement of the "meter" come from? | p. 195 |
| How does a laser measure the speed of a car? | p. 197 |
| Does Not Compute computers | |
| Why do computers crash? | p. 199 |
| How do Internet search engines work? | p. 201 |
| How do rewritable CDs work? | p. 203 |
| When did the term "computer virus" arise? | p. 205 |
| Let's Get Physical: Physics | |
| Let There Be Light: light | |
| How do surfaces, such as pavement, become heated from the sun? | p. 207 |
| What is the physical process by which a mirror reflects light rays? | p. 208 |
| How does sunscreen protect the skin? | p. 210 |
| Why are sunsets orange? | p. 212 |
| I'm Very Particular particles | |
| If we cannot see electrons and protons, or smaller particles such as quarks, how can we be sure they exist? | p. 213 |
| Is glass really a liquid? | p. 215 |
| Now Hear This sound | |
| How can the extremity of a whip travel faster than the speed of sound to produce the characteristic "crack"? | p. 216 |
| What causes the noise emitted from high-voltage power lines? | p. 217 |
| What are "booming sands" and what causes the sounds they make? | p. 219 |
| What happens when an aircraft breaks the sound barrier? | p. 221 |
| In Theory: theoretical physics | |
| Is it theoretically possible to travel through time? | p. 223 |
| Is dark matter theory or fact? | p. 227 |
| Would you fall all the way through a theoretical hole in the earth? | p. 230 |
| What is antimatter? | p. 232 |
| Does the speed of light ever change? | p. 234 |
| You Won't Believe Your Eyes the physics of seeing | |
| Why do beautiful bands of color appear in the tiny oil slicks that form on puddles? | p. 236 |
| Why is it that when you look at the spinning propeller of a plane or fan, at a certain speed, the blades seem to move backward? | p. 237 |
| Why do jets leave a white trail in the sky? | p. 239 |
| Shake It Up everyday physics | |
| Does hot water freeze faster than cold water? | p. 241 |
| How does a microwave oven cook foods? | p. 243 |
| Why does shaking a can of coffee cause the larger grains to move to the surface? | p. 244 |
| Why does a shaken soda fizz more than an unshaken one? | p. 246 |
| Bottom of the 9th, Bases Loaded: the physics of baseball | |
| What makes a knuckleball appear to flutter? | p. 248 |
| Why does a ball go farther when hit with an aluminum bat? | p. 250 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
How crowded is the asteroid belt?
Answered by:
Tom Gehrel, University of Arizona, Tuscon, Arizona.A veteran asteroid hunter, he and his colleagues findroughly 20,000 objects a year -- many of themuncatalogued asteroids -- using the SpacewatchTelescope on Kitt Peak.
Some scientists were seriously concerned about the possible high density of objects in the asteroid belt, which lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, whenthe first robotic spacecraft were scheduled to be sentthrough it. The first crossing of the asteroid belt tookplace in the early 1970s, when the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft journeyed to Jupiter and beyond. The danger does not lie in the risk of hitting a large object. In fact, such a risk is minuscule because there is a tremendous amount of space between Mars and Jupiter and because the objects there are very small in relation. Even though there are perhaps a million asteroids larger than one kilometer in diameter, the chance of a spacecraft not getting through the asteroid belt is negligible.
Even if there were 100,000 sizable asteroids (morethan a few kilometers in size) in the asteroid belt -- and thereal number is quite likely about 10 times less-- the average separation between them would be about five millionkilometers. That is more than 10 times the distancebetween the earth and the moon. If you were standing onone of those asteroids and looked up, you would not see asky full of asteroids; your neighbors would appear so smalland dim that you would be quite lucky to even see one, letalone hundreds.
In some ways, the asteroid belt is actually emptier thanwe might like. In the early 1990s, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration wanted the Galileo space-craft to encounter an asteroid while it was passing throughthe asteroid belt on its way to Jupiter. But it took someeffort to find an object that was located even roughlyalong Galileo's path. Special targeting was required toreach this object, but the result was the first close-up view of an asteroid, the one called Gaspra.
The number of objects in the asteroid belt increasessteeply with decreasing size, but even at micrometer sizesthe Pioneer spacecraft were hit only a few times duringtheir passage. That is not to say that asteroids cannot pose any danger, however. It is worth noting that for a large planet like Earth, over a long period of time, there is an appreciable chance of being hit. This hazard comes from the fragments of mutual collisions in the asteroid belt; after their break-up, some of these fragments move toward the earth under the gravitational action of Jupiter.
An asteroid about 12 kilometers in diameter crashedinto the earth 65 million years ago, killing nearly 90 percent of the animals, including the dinosaurs. Such majorimpacts are very rare events, but for smaller objects thelikelihood of impact increases; the chance of the earthbeing struck by an object approximately one kilometer insize is about one in 5,000 in a human lifetime. An objectone kilometer across would still be large enough to cause aglobal disaster because of the enormous energy it wouldrelease upon impact:at east a million times the energy ofthe bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
What causes a meteor shower?
Answered by:
Gregory A.Lyzenga,Professor of Physics, Harvey Mudd College,Claremont,California.
Meteor showers occur when the earth in its orbit aroundthe sun passes through debris left over from the disintegration of comets. Although the earth's orbit around the sun is a most circular, most comets travel in orbits that are highly elongated ellipses. As a result, some comets have orbits that intersect or partially overlap the earth's path.
Because a comet's nucleus is made up of a combination of icy materials and loosely consolidated "dirt," whena comet is heated by passing close to the sun, it more orless slowly disintegrates, producing the visible tail. Therocky debris, consisting of mostly sand-size particles, continues in an elongated orbit around the sun close to thatof its parent comet. When the earth intersects this orbit inits annual trip, it can run into this debris, which burns upon entry into the earth's atmosphere, producing a visibleshower of meteors.
Meteor showers associated with particular cometorbits occur at about the same time each year, because it is at those points in the earth's orbit that the collisions occur. However, because some parts of the comet's path arericher in debris than others, the strength of a meteorshower may vary from one year to the next. Typically ameteor shower will be strongest when the earth crosses thecomet's path shortly after the parent comet has passed.
Is it possible that a meteorite could strike a commercial airliner and cause it to explode?
Answered by:
David Morrison,NASA Ames Research Center, Maffett Field,California.
It is certainly possible, a though the probability is low. We can make a very rough estimate by comparing thearea of airliners with the area of cars in the United States.A typical car has an area on the order of 10 square meters, and there are roughly 100 million cars in the UnitedStates, for a total area of about 1,000 square kilometers. The typical airliner has a cross-sectional area of severalhundred square meters, but the number of planes is muchsmaller than the number of cars, perhaps a few thousand.The total area of airliners is therefore no more than 10square kilometers, or a factor of at least 100 less than that of cars. Three cars are known to have been struck bymeteorites in the United States during the past century...
Scientific American's Ask the Experts
Excerpted from Scientific American's Ask the Experts: Answers to the Most Puzzling and Mind-Blowing Science Questions by Scientific American Editors
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
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