Bill Bryson - The Stuff of Life

Every living thing is an elaboration on a single blueprint. This blueprint is called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid).

DNA was first discovered back in 1869 by Johann Friedrich Miescher, a Swiss scientist working at the University of Tubingen in Germany. While searching microscopically through the pus in surgical bandages he found a substance he didn’t recognize and called it nuclein (because it was found in the nucleus of cells).

As far as anyone could tell DNA didn’t do anything at all. But there were two problems with dismissing it. Firstly there was nearly 2 meters of it in nearly every nucleus and secondly the fact that it kept turning up, like the suspect in a murder mystery. DNA appeared clearly in two particular studies – one involving the Pneumoncoccus bacterium and another involving bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria). The evidence found here suggested that DNA was somehow involved in the making of proteins, a process vital to life. Yet it was also clear the proteins were being made outside the nucleus, away from the DNA. No one knew how DNA could possibly be getting messages to the proteins. The answer is RNA (ribonucleic acid) which acts as an interpreter between the two.

DNA is made up of four basic components called nucleotides – adenine, thiamine guanine and cytosine. Every living thing is a variation of these four components but every now and then, about one time in a million, a letter joins in the wrong place. This is called SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) more commonly known as ‘Snip’. These variations or ‘snips’ get passed down through generations and make us different from each other. ‘Snips’ can sometimes leave you vulnerable to diseases, but they could also give you an advantage e.g. increased production of red blood cells for someone living at high altitude.

It was first thought that humans had at least one hundred thousand genes, but that number was drastically reduced by the first results of the Human Genome projects, which suggested a figure more like 35 to 40 thousand genes, about the same number found in grass. Interestingly almost half of human genes, the largest proportion known in any organism, don’t do anything at all, except reproduce themselves.  

In some sense we are all slaves to our genes.

Ainslie

Bill Bryson - Goodbye to All That

This chapter is mainly about life beginning on earth, extinction of certain species and the survival of other species through these extinctions. If the events that Bill Bryson describes in this chapter didn't happen, we most likely wouldn't be here.

Bill Bryson compares 4,500 million years of earth’s history to one day.

4am - simple, single-celled organisms appear

8:30pm - microbes appear

9:04pm - trilobites appear

10pm - plants begin to appear on land

11pm - dinosaurs appear

And we, humans, only come in 1 minute and 17 seconds before midnight. On this scale we can see how recent human existence is compared to all other living organisms.

Scientists have been trying to find our possible ancestors, the first land-dwelling creatures. Plants began land colonization about 450 mya. Larger animals took longer to emerge, but by about 400 mya they were out of the water. Scientists envisioned these first land dwelling creatures to look somewhat like the modern mudskipper, which can jump from puddle to puddle in a drought.

A search began for the first animals to walk the earth. A man called Erik Jarvik held up this research for almost 50 years, after finding a fossil with the help of Scandinavian scholars, thought to be a land dwelling creature old enough to be one of the first creatures on land. The problem was that he took it upon himself to examine it. Nobody knew what he had actually found because he wouldn't show his work to his fellow scholars. Only in 1998, when he died, did the other researchers see his work. It turned out to be a disappointment because the creature found clearly had 8 toes not 5 and had a weak spine which could not be strong enough for walking. Scientists are still looking for a possible ancestor of the human race.

The Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic and Cretaceous periods were the five major “extinction episodes” of Earth’s history. The Permian period (in which the dinosaurs lived), 245 mya, ended suddenly and dramatically, wiping out at least 95% of life on Earth at the time. Although scientists don’t know what exactly caused this mass extinction, they have theories of what could have happened. Some of these are solar flares, global warming, global cooling, and extreme volcanic activity. Many scientists believe that the most likely cause of this mass extinction is a solar flare, so big that it penetrated Earth’s magnetosphere and atmosphere, which literally fried the surface of the earth and most of the life on it.

Leeza :)

Microbiologist

Microbiologist study microscopic organisms too small to be seen without a microscope, such as bacteria, viruses, algae or fungi, and the effects they have on plants, animals and humans. They use this knowledge to develop products and procedures to benefit humans or the environment.

To be a Microbiologist you need Bachelor of Science, majoring in microbiology, biotechnology, biochemistry or molecular biology.

To get these qualifications you can study at Auckland University of Technology, University of Otago or Victoria University of wellington.

Will you are at school you should tack biology, math, chemistry and physics. 

Bill Bryson - Small World

The Chapter "Small World" is all about bacteria. Bacteria is everywhere even when you think it's gone. There is no point in trying to hide from bacteria, it's virtually everywhere. If you are in good health and averagely diligent about hygiene, you'll have about one trillion bacteria  on your skin alone. About a hundred thousand of them on every square centimeter of skin. There are trillions of more bacteria in your gut, noses ect.

We can create antibiotics and disinfectants, it's easy to think to ourselves that we have removed bacteria from existence. But bacteria will never go away, they will be in when the sun explodes are more. We couldn't survive a day without them. They process our wastes and make the usable again, like little natural recycling plants. They purify our water and keep our soils fertilized. Bacteria in our gut convert things we eat into useful sugars and other stuff.

Microbes, supply the greater part of the planet's breathable oxygen. Algae and other tiny organisms under the sea push out 150 billion kilograms of oxygen every year. There is so many of them that they can create a whole new generation in 10 minutes. If the bacteria have enough nutrient supply a single bacteria cell can create 280,000 billion individuals in a single day. About once every million divisions, they make a mutant. These mutations can have advantages, such as the ability to repel an attack of antibiotics. Bacteria share information, If a bacteria cell is immune to antibiotics it can share it to other cells.

They will thrive on almost anything you spill. Just give them a little moisture and they will bloom as if created from nothing. They will eat wood, glue and metals in hardened paints. Scientist in Australia found a microbe know as the Thiobacillus concretivorans which lived in radioactive metal barrels, slowly destroying them.

Fungi, the group that includes mushrooms, moulds, mildews, yeasts where nearly always treated as plants even though they do not photosynthesize. Instead they grow directly on their food source, which could be anything. Fungi will eat anything between your toes, things no plants do.

By Brandon

Into the Troposphere

The Troposphere is why we are alive. It keeps us warm and without it we would have an average temperature of minus fifty degrees Celsius. The atmosphere is equivalent to four point five metres thickness of concrete. Without it invisible visitors from space would destroys us and raindrops would beat us silly. The atmosphere extends up to one hundred and ninety kilometres and is divided into four different layers. The Troposphere, Stratosphere, Mesosphere and the Ionosphere which is now more commonly known as the Thermosphere. The Troposphere alone has enough warmth and oxygen to keep us alive. It’s thickest at the equator. 

Beyond the Troposphere is the Stratosphere where an invisible boundary lies in between them and flattens storm clouds into anvil shapes. It is called the Tropopause which was discovered in 1902 by a Frenchmen called Leon-Philippe Teisserene de Boit. The temperature there at 10km is minus fifty seven degrees Celsius. After you leave the Troposphere the temperature warms back up to four degrees Celsius because of the absorptive effects of the ozone then it plunges to a minus ninety degrees Celsius in the Mesosphere before it sky rockets to one thousand five hundred degrees Celsius where in the Thermosphere the temperature can vary over five hundred degrees from day to night.

Temperature is the measurement of active molecules. At sea level air, molecules can only move a tiny distance before they bang into each other due to how thick they are. Molecules are always colliding into each other and when they hit one another heat gets exchanged except at fifty kilometres on the top of the Thermosphere where molecules will barely come in contact with each other which is good for spaceships, satellites because if there was more heat any manmade objects would burst into flames.

Spaceships must take extreme care in the outer atmosphere. If a spacecraft comes in at a steep angle for example 6 degrees it can generate drag of an exceedingly combustible nature. Also it could simply rebound back into space.

In the 1780’s people began to experiment with balloon ascents in Europe and were surprised at how chilly it got above the ground. For each one thousand metres the temperature dropped one point six degrees Celsius. They thought the closer you got to a source of heat the hotter it became. The only problem with that is the sun in ninety three million miles away and if it came another hundred metres closer it would cause bushfires in Australia and the smell of smoke in Ohio. Sunlight energises atoms which increases their activity which leads to them banging into each other and releasing heat into the atmosphere. Whenever you feel the warmth from the sunlight its really excited atoms you are feeling.

Altogether there is about five thousand two hundred million tonnes of air around us. Seven hundred and fifty million tonnes of cold air is pinned under billions of tonnes of warm air. The air above our heads is also a source of energy. One thunder storm has enough power to generate four days’ worth of electricity in U.S.A. The sky is a very lively place. Every second about one hundred lightning bolts hits the surface of the Earth accompanied by about forty thousand thunderstorms per day. Air moves due to the internal engine of the planet namely convection. Warm air rises from the equational area until it hits the Tropopause then it spreads out across the sky cooling down overtime until it sinks looking for an area with low pressure and then it heads back to the equator where it finishes its cycle.

Low pressure areas are made from rising air which follows water molecules into the sky forming clouds and rain. Tropical and summer storms are heavier than other storms because warm air can hold more moisture than cool air. Therefore areas with cloud and rain have a low pressured area and areas with sunshine and a fair weather and a higher air pressure. Air pressures are different due to the uneven heat from the sun. Air can’t avoid this so it travels around trying to keep the air pressure even everywhere.

In Ecole Polytechmique in Paris a scientist named Coriolis worked out the details of the interaction in the wind. He explained that anything moving through a straight line laterally to the Earths spin will to the right towards the Northern Hemisphere or to the left towards the Southern Hemisphere. This effect is called the Coriolis Effect and is the creator of spins that create cyclones and sometimes hurricanes.

Oceans differences in temperatures, salinity, depth and density have a huge effect on how heat is moved around. The Atlantic Ocean is saltier than the Pacific therefore the water is denser.  Because dense water sinks the Atlantic currents do not reach the North Pole.  If they did it would deprive Europe of its warmth. The main heat transfer is Thermohaline circulation which originates in slow, deep currents far below the ocean’s surface which was discovered in 1779 by Count von Rumford. Thermohaline moves heat around and helps to stir up nutrients as currents rise and fall making the oceans habitable for fish and other marine life.

The oceans are crucial for life because they soak up huge volumes of Carbon Dioxide. The sun now burns twenty five percent brighter which should have had a catastrophic effect on the Earth, but life itself is keeping the Earth cool. Trillions of marine organisms capture atmospheric carbon in the form of carbon dioxide which they trap in their shells keeping the earth’s temperature at a liveable level.  If this did not happen the earth’s temperature would rise.  When these organisms die they fall to the bottom of the ocean and turn into limestone keeping the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Unfortunately humans have a knack for burning things as a total of one hundred billion tonnes of carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere in 1850. Nature has saved us from ourselves with the Earth’s oceans and forests soaking up huge volumes of carbon dioxide. The Earths rapid increase of heat would cause many trees and plants to die and they won’t be able to store carbon dioxide for us.  But luckily nature is magnificent and the cycle of the earth cleaning itself allows organisms to live on it.

Bill Bryson - The Bounding Main

Bill Byson - The Bounding Main 

The chapter “The Bounding main” is about water and the oceans. Water is everywhere,  a potato is 80% , a tomato is 95% and a cow is 74% water . Water molecules move around constantly, pairing with other molecules and then moving along with another .This is why water has surface tension. There are 1.3 billion cubic kilometres of water on earth and there won’t ever be any more because of the water cycle there will be the same amount of water. 97% of water on earth is in the ocean 51.6% of the ocean is the pacific.

The average Depth of the ocean is 3.86 kilometres. In the 1830s British naturalist Edward Forbes surveyed the ocean beds in the Atlantic and Mediterranean and declared there was no life in all the seas below 600 metres. This was proved wrong when one of the first transatlantic telegraph cables were hauled up for repairs from more than 3 kilometres down and was found to be thickly encrusted with corals, clams and other living  things.

In 1930 the first submarine to go 183 metres deep was a cast iron camber with walls 1.5 inches thick (3.81 cm) and had two small portholes containing quartz blocks 3 inches thick. It held only two men . the camber had no manoeuvrability it just hung at the end of a long cable. To neutralize their  own carbon dioxide produced from breathing. they opened cans of soda lime. The men inside were Charles William Beebe and Otis Barton .In 1934 They went down to just  over 900 metres. Barton was confident that the device was safe to a depth of about 900 metres. In 1958 Jacques Piccard designed and made a deal with the navy to build a new bathyscaphe (meaning “deep boat”) that he went down to 10,918 metres it took four hours to fall that far .repeating this today would cost at least $100 million.

It is estimated that about a quarter of every finishing net hauled  up contains “by catch” which is fish that can’t be taken to land because they are too small , are the wrong type or caught in the wrong season. For every kilogram of shrimp harvested, about four kilograms of fish and other marine creatures are destroyed.

Around 1957/8 there was lots of nuclear wastes to get rid of so most countries were just putting their radioactive gunk in metal drums and threw them overboard. It wasn’t very smart because the type of drums they used are the ones you see rusting behind petrol stations. With no protective lining of any type. When they failed to sink the drums where shot at until they did but  this release plutonium , uranium and strontium . before dumping waste was halted in the 1990’s the united states , Russia , china , Japan , New Zealand (The book said NZ but I didn’t think that NZ had ever had any form of nuclear power?) and nearly all the nations of Europe had dumped some form of Nuclear waste into the ocean.

By Ethan Roylance 

Bill Bryson- Dangerous Beauty

Bill Bryson: Dangerous Beauty- Hamish Priest

Dangerous beauty is the 15th chapter of Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and its main focus is on a National park in America called Yellowstone Park, and in the 1960s something strange happened. A geologist named Bob Christiansen was studying the volcanic history, the only issue was that he couldn't find the volcano.He was puzzled as he couldn't find a caldera. The reason behind it was the fact that the whole 9,000 square kilometer park was the caldera, the national park was one big volcano.

Yellowstone is known as a super volcano. It sits on a hot spot of molten rock beginning at at least 200 km underground and comes close to the earths surface. This is known as a super plume. The magma chamber is 72km across and 13 km thick. That is the the size of a English country filled with TNT going 13km into the sky and people are walk on top of it! 

The latest 3 eruptions have been massive. The last one was 1000 times more powerful than the VEI (Volcanic Explosivity Index)scale of 5 which was the measurement of Mount St Helens eruption. The one before that was 280 times bigger and the one before that was so big that they couldn't even measure how big it was. Some say it was at least 2,500 times as big but 8000 times as monstrous.

The scary thing about Yellowstone park is they average a massive blow to happen once every 600, 000 years, and the last time it erupted was 630,000 years meaning its 30,000 years overdue and people are walking on it. The last time it erupted, nobody was around so nobody knows what the warning signs are, so nobody knows if Yellowstone is about to blow up . It could be giving us a warning right now and nobody wold know and nobody would know.

The park gets 3 million people visiting every year. If they did know the warning signs and know the park is about to blow, they would assess the degree of danger and inform the superintendent, who would then decide whether to evacuate everyone or not. Once you are past the park gates its every man for himself. 

Yellowstone is also on a fault zone and in 1959 at a place called Hebgen Lake, which is located just outside the park a 7.5 magnitude earthquake happened. It wasn't too big but was so abrupt that it made a mountain side collapse. That was 80 million tonnes of rock going at 160kmh. 28 people died but back then not many people went to Yellowstone so if it happened now the numbers would be much larger.  Also Paul Doss (the national park geologist) reckons that a BIG earthquake is going to happen.

South of Yellowstone there is a place called the Tetons which is a jagged mountain range and 9 million years ago, they didn't exist but then a 64km long fault opened  and supposedly every 900 years a big earthquake happens causing them to grow 2 meters. Saying this the last earthquake that happened there was somewhere around 5-7 thousand years ago meaning like the volcano itself, its over due-Big time.

There are at least 10,000 geysers in Yellowstone which is more than every other one in the world combined, and nobody knows when a new vent might open. Paul Doss showed Bill a place called Duck Lake which was a massive geyser that blew in the last 15,000 years. Paul Doss describe the blow as "several tens of millions of tons of earth and rock and super heated water blowing out at hyper(not super)sonic speed", and once again if another was to happen there would be no warning.

By Hamish Priest                                            

Bill Bryson - The Earth Moves

This chapter is about how different scientists throughout the century thought about how continents were formed and how they ended up in the positions that they are now.  The reason that this became a topic of interest was the fact that the same types of rocks and plant fossils were found in countries on opposite sides of the oceans.  Also, some scientists had observed that continents like Africa and South America looked like they fitted together.  one early theory by Austrian Eduard Suess said that the earth had cooled and become weaker in the manner of a baked apple pie, creating ocean basins and mountain ranges.  Another theory was that there used to be land bridges between continents, which allowed animals and plants to travel between these land masses.  Finally, scientists decided that the continents did move, and this was called ‘Continental Drift’.  One theory stated that there were convection currents underneath the earth that moved the continents around.  The continents were found to be sitting on large plates that were first called ‘crustal blocks’ or ‘paving stones’.  Finally they agreed to call them ‘plates’.

Connor McKenzie  

Food Science

Food Scientist

What the scientist does

Food Scientists study the nature of foods using engineering, and biological and physical sciences. They also study the causes of deterioration, the principles underlying food processing, and the improvement of foods for the consuming public, such as preserving of foods, etc.

What qualifications and training you would need

To become a food scientist you will need a Bachelor's degree in food science, food technology or food engineering.

Where to gain qualifications

• Otago University
• AUT University
• Auckland University
• Lincoln University

What subjects should you take at school

You should take:

• Biology
• Chemistry
• Physics
• Mathematics
• Food & Nutrition

It would be helpful to take all of the subjects at NCEA level 3 for more of a chance of getting into a university.

By Rebecca

Pharmacist

Pharmacists

Pharmacists prepare, mix and dispense prescribed medicines. They also give patients advice about their medication and medical conditions, and help ensure patients know how to take their medication properly.

To become a pharmacist you need to:

• have a Bachelor of Pharmacy
• complete an internship of one year working in a hospital or community pharmacy
• register with the Pharmacy Council of New Zealand
• have an Annual Practising Certificate, which requires ongoing training.

You can study Pharmacy at Otago and Auckland University with 5 years training.

Secondary education

NCEA Level 3 chemistry, physics, biology and maths is preferred.  

Personal requirements

Pharmacists need to be:

• honest and efficient
• responsible and careful, particularly when dealing with any dangerous drugs they may have on the premises
• able to work within a professional code of ethics and keep information private
• accurate, organised and observant, with an eye for detail
• friendly, patient and helpful, with communication and listening skills
• good researchers
• able to manage and train staff
• good at maths, and have record-keeping skills.

Pharmacists also need to have an understanding and awareness of a variety of cultures.


Lisa

Analytical Chemist.

Analytical Chemist

Analytical chemists examine substances to determine their composition. They also look at how elements in a compound interact with one another. Their work requires information about the make-up and possible interaction of substances that might be turned into medicine.

Analytical Chemistry has been an important area of science since the beginning of chemistry, It provides us with ways of identifying the elements and chemicals that are present in the object or substance in question. Analytical Chemists typically work in laboratories where they operate and maintain machinery such as spectrometers (an apparatus used for recording and measuring spectra, especially as a method of analysis) and Chromatographs (an apparatus for performing chromatography.)

How do you become an Analytical Chemist?
To be an Analytical chemist you usually need a Bachelor's degree in chemistry also have a relevant postgraduate qualification such as Master of Science or a Ph.D.
Take the courses of Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Physical Chemistry and Analytical Chemistry.

Where can you get a Bachelors degree in chemistry?

• Victoria University of Wellington.
• Massey University (Palmerston North)
• Canterbury University
• Otago University (Dunedin)

-Rebecca

1. 
   

Bill Bryson-BANG

The chapter first talks about Manson, Iowa and the Manson crater. People knew for a long time that there was something odd about the earth beneath Manson, Iowa. In 1912 a man by the name of Manson dug a well drilling for water, when he discovered a strangely deformed rock. (crystalline clast breccia with a melt matrix and overturned ejecta flap). In 1953 geologists agreed that the rocks were formed by a unspecified volcanic eruption. Where Manson now stands has become a hole 3 miles deep and more than 20 miles across. Unfortunately, after 2.5 million years of passing, ice sheets filled the crater of Manson. This is why not many people of heard of the Manson crater. Every June now Manson has a week-long event called Crater Days, to help people forget a unhappy anniversary of a tornado that hit Main street that killed many people.

The chapter then talks about asteroids. Asteroids are rocky objects orbiting in loose formation in a belt between Mars and Jupiter. As of July 2001, 26,000 asteroids had been named and identified. With up to a billion to identify the count has barely begun.

In 1985, two geologists by the names of Anderson and Witzke, went to an annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union where two scientists, Izett and C.L. Pillmore of the US Geological Survey announced that the Manson crater was the right age to have been involved with the dinosaurs extinction. Unfortunately, a more careful examination of the data was revealed that Manson was not only to small but also 9 million years too early. Since this happened Anderson and Witzke no longer had the crater that made the dinosaurs extinct.

If a asteroid or comet travelling at cosmic velocities it would enter the Earth's atmosphere at such a speed the air beneath it couldn't get out of the way and would be compressed, like a bicycle pump. Since compressed air grows swiftly hot and the temperature would rise below it, when it enters the atmosphere everything in the meteor’s path would just crinkle or vanish. People up to 1500 km away would be knocked off their feet or clobbered by a blizzard of flying projectiles. Beyond 1500 km the devastation from the blast would gradually diminish. But that's just the initial shock wave. The impact would set off earthquakes, cause volcanoes to erupt, tsunamis would rise and within an hour a cloud of blackness would cover the Earth and burning rock and debris would be pelting down everywhere. It has been estimated that at least a billion and a half people would be dead just after the first day. If we managed to get a warhead to the asteroid it would turn into a string of rocks that would slam into us one after the other.

The good news is that it appears to take an awful lot to extinguish a species. The bad news is that the good news can never be counted on. We shouldn't be looking at space for petrifying danger. As we are about to see. Earth can provide plenty of danger of it’s own.

Biochemist

Biochemist

Biochemists study the chemical process and transformation on living microorganisms. This includes viruses and bacteria, the chemical function of digestion, vaccines, DNA and cell parts. They use their study to present to scientists, engineers and coworkers to help improve the life of humans through agriculture, medical research and industrial research.

To enter the work force as a biochemist you need either 

- A bachelor of technology specialising in biochemistry

- Bachelor of science

- a bachelor of science and technology 

At college getting NCEA level 3 in chemistry, biology, maths or physics will help at university 

Where to get a bachelor in biochemistry 

-Waikato university

-Otago university

-Auckland university 

Pay for biotechnologists depends on their qualifications and experience.

• Biochemists with Bachelor's degrees working at the technician level usually earn around $35,000-$55,000 a year.
• Those with Master’s degrees usually earn around $55,000-$75,000.
• Senior biochemists, who have PhDs, may earn $76,000-$94,000.
• With more responsibility and experience, pay could rise to about $130,000 a year or more.

(Pay amounts from www.careers.co.nz)

In 2012 there were only 76 biochemists working in New Zealand, the number has been dropped from 87 in 2010

Molecular Biochemist

What is a Molecular Biochemist

The job of a Molecular Biochemist is to study chemical processes within living organisms. This means that they study living creatures on the molecular level.  It is very similar to other kinds of chemistry but they mainly specialise in the study of living cells. They study creatures cell by cell and how the cells react with each other. They study anything that is alive including plants and fungi. They study the proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and other important molecules that make up living organisms. Molecular Biochemists are highly respected in their field of science due to their high knowledge of their

How to Become a Molecular Biochemist

To become a Molecular Biochemist it would help to study Biology, Chemistry and Physics. After that you need to get a Bachelor’s degree in Biology or Biochemistry. After that it would help to get a Masters in Biology or achieve a PHd in a subject of biology. It will take about 7 years to get all of the degrees you need to succeed in this field.

By Luke Walker

Oceanographer

Oceanography covers a wide range of topics, including marine life and ecosystems, ocean circulation, plate tectonics and the geology of the sea floor, and the chemical and physical properties of the ocean.

Generally you will need a Bachelor of Science specializing in oceanography. Most Oceanographers complete a PHD as well.

Where to gain qualifications:

·        University of Otago

·        University of Waikato

·         Victoria  University

·         University of Auckland

Useful subjects to take at College would be:

Physics, chemistry, maths with calculus and/ or statistics, geography and English.

University of Otago recommends students have at least 3 of year 13, Biology, Calculus, Chemistry, Statistics, and Physics.

One of the first places you could look for a job as an Oceanographer would be with NIWA. The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA) is one of New Zealand's leading environmental science and applied research service provider, specialising in atmospheric, freshwater and marine research. They have 15 offices around New Zealand.

Muster Marks Quarks

in 1911 a british scientist called, C.T.R. Wilson was studying cloud formations by tramping up the same mountain everyday. But he thought that there must have been an easier way instead of the daily tramp. So he built an artificial cloud chamber which could cool and moisten the air. it worked well but gave an after affect of leaving a trail while he accelerated an alpha particle making the particle detector or also known as the atom smasher because the accelerated alpha particle would fly into another particle and they would see what came off. Modern "atom smashers" can move particles at a speed to be able to run 47,000 laps around a 7km tunnel! But it is feared that scientists using these machines will create either a black hole or a thing called "strange quarks" which have the potential to uncontrollably explode. In 1980 production begun, for $8 billion to dig a 84km hole into the ground and create a huge "atom smasher" but they ended up only spending $2 billion on the project and only dug 22km deep and abondoned the project because of expenses. Quarks have the potential to explode the universe and the atom smasher is the only way we could create the quarks.

by Oscar

Bill Bryson- Getting the Lead Out

Bill Bryson- Getting the Lead Out

This chapter is about Thomas Midgley, Clair Patterson, and carbon dating. 

The chapter starts by talking about Thomas Midgley: he was trained as an engineer, and worked for the General Motors Research Corporation in Dayton, Ohio. He was also fascinated by industrial chemistry. One day while working in the late 1940's, he investigated a compound called tetrahedral lead, and discovered that it stopped engine cock, which was a common problem in those days. Lead was widely know as dangerous but was still used in everyday products such as toothpaste holders and food cans, if you get too much lead in your system then in can permanently damage the brain and cause serious health problems, for example kidney failure, delirium and comas. 

When the 3 biggest petrol companies in the USA heard that tetrahedral lead stopped engine cock they formed a company called Ethyl Gasoline Corporation to make as much tetrahedral lead the world could take. They discovered that it was very easy to work and extremely profitable. The company used 'ethyl' instead of 'lead because it sounded less toxic. The problem was when lead was introduced into petrol, it had the massive and long-lasting effect on the amount of lead on the earth.

The chapter then starts to talk about carbon-dating, which is the process of finding the age of rocks through the particles in it. Many people had tried to find a way to accurately do this but it was proving near impossible it seemed. Willard Libby and Arthur Holmes both put forward theories in the early 1940s but they were both proved wrong in one way or another.

When everyone had given up Clair Patterson worked on, even when he lost all funding from his university and didn't even have the funds to afford a calculator he tested and trialled with the most basic and cheapest equipment around.  It took seven years but finally, in 1953, he had samples to take into the National Laboratory for final testing, and it was discovered that he was right, his theory, involving Carbon-14 was correct. During his research Patterson had found unusual amounts of lead in the atmosphere,  he decided to research more into this.

After researching for a while he was astounded to find the amount of lead in the atmosphere and was shocked to see that by trial different things, before the 1900s, and the introduction of leaded petrol and use of lead in household items, there had been almost zero lead in the atmosphere. 50 years later and there was hundreds of thousands of pounds, all because of Thomas Midgley's idea of leaded petrol. 

Patterson was so stunned by the information he found, he started a full scale campaign to ban lead from petrol. It started a war between him and the Ethyl Corporation, Patterson arguing that the lead had devastating affects on the environment and people living there. The war lasted decades, when it finished Clair Patterson had no friends, and hardly any possessions, but he had won, leaded petrol was banned in the early 1990's and began to phase out.

The Ethyl company is still active and as late as 2001 it was still trying to get leaded petrol introduced again.

Environmental Chemist

Environmental chemists try to understand how chemicals move through the environment and their effects on human health and the environment itself. This is done through field and laboratory work, including measurements, data interpretation and computer modelling.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• To become an entry- level environmental chemist you need a bachelor of science in environmental chemistry or a closely related flied such as organic chemistry.
• To work as a consultant for environmental chemist you require a masters degree in environmental chemistry or a closely related flied.
• If you would like to do research and or have a teaching position  at an university you will need a PhD in environmental chemistry or a closely related flied.

To become an environmental chemist you can study at the following universities:

1. Otago
2. Massey
3. Waikato
4. AUT (Auckland university)
5. Canterbury
6. Victoria

To be able to study environmentel chemistrty at universiry you need to take the following subjects:

• biological sciences
• chemistry
• geography
• geology

Bill Bryson - The Mighty Atom

Bill Bryson - The Mighty Atom

The Caltech physicist Richard Feynman once observed that if you had to reduce scientific history to one statement it would be: 'All things are made of atoms'. Everything you can touch and see around you is made up of atoms, including the air.

Atoms combine together to form molecules. At sea level, an object the size of a sugar cube will contain 45 billion billion molecules. Half a million atoms lined up side by side could still hide behind a single human hair. This shows how tiny atoms and molecules are and that there are a lot of them.

Atoms are also fantastically durable. They are passed from stars, to people, to plants. It has been suggested that a billion of the atoms that form a part of you, once belonged to William Shakespeare. So in a way, we are all reincarnations. When we die our atoms will be disassembled and reused into something else eg. another person, water, or a leaf. It has also been estimated that atoms can survive as long as 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.

In the 1800s scientists such as John Dalton theorized the construction of atoms and molecules but because they are so tiny, it as impossible to prove who's theories were correct. This was the case until Earnest Rutherford conducted a series of experiments at Cambridge University in 1910. Rutherford's experiments proved atoms have a dense nucleus made up of neutrons, protons (positive charge), with electrons (negative charge) orbiting the nucleus. The nucleus only occupies 1 millionth of a billionth of the atom's full volume and atoms are essentially made up of empty space. If you expanded an atom to the size of a cathedral, the nucleus would only be the size of a fly in the middle of it, except the fly would be thousands of times heavier than the cathedral.

As all things are made up of atoms and atoms are almost completely empty space, you might wonder why you don't just fall through the floor when standing on it. This doesn't happen because the negative charge the electrons have, repels the negative charge from atoms that it comes in contact with. So while you think you are standing of the floor, you're actually levitating 1 atom above the floor.

Further research that happened after 1905 by Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein gave rise to a theory called Quantum mechanics which describes the behavior of atoms and subatomic particles. These theories have been tested and proven to be correct although from our everyday experiences they sound crazy. The current experiments at C.E.R.N using the large Hadron Collider are continuing to explore atoms and the very small world.

- Ella Jackson

Bill Bryson - Einstein's Universe

In Bill Bryson's A Short History of Everything, he writes a chapter about Einsteins Universe, in which he talks about the speed of light and other things. At the start of this chapter Bryson talks about the speed of light and how in the 1800s when physicists Albert Michelson and Edward Morley accidentally discovered the Ether, A medium that was thought to permeate the earth.This was needed in the 1800s when physicists thought that light and electromagnetism were seen as waves. Skip ahead a couple years and you find yourself Max Planck, a 42 year-old theoretical physicist at the university of Berlin. Planck unveiled a new quantum theory, which posited that energy is not a continuous thing like flowing water but comes in individualized packets, which he called quanta.This becomes relevant when talking about Einstien. Now on to everybody's favorite person, Alert Einstein, born in Ulm in 1879 Ablert wasn't a stand out kid, until later in life when he wrote the scientific paper "On the Electrodynamics of moving bodies". His famous equation "E = McSquared" came months later. In essence what relativity is, is your position relative to the moving object. Bryson goes on to talk about space time, and how gravity is a byproduct of space time. Edwin Hubble, the greatest astronomer of the 20th century, because he tackled these 2 questions. How old is the universe? and how big is it?. Although he did this, he couldn't understand why the universe never stopped expanding, that was discovered by Belgium pries-scholar Goerges Lemaitre who said that, the universe began as a geometric point, a 'primeval atom' , which burst into glory and hasn't stopped ever since.