Thursday, November 14, 2024

Wind & Solar

One way to gather energy is via wind power, which is used to power wind turbines. There is a difference between windmills and wind turbines, as windmills are commonly used in the Netherlands for grinding grains like wheat, hence the name

Wind turbines are placed in places with strong winds, often used in 'wind farms'. Generators turn the kinetic energy of the rotating blades into electrical energy. 

Solar is gathered by solar panels, which are sheets of metal with solar cells, the the technical term is a photovoltaic cell. 
Often used in watches and calculators since they don't need that much power.

These solar panels are placed in large plots of land, directly in sunlight to gather as much solar power as possible. But since we have lots of plots of land, solar power is becoming more popular, especially in cities with roofs as the roofs of houses or shade can be topped with solar panels to help make passive electricity. 

But solar and wind power have pros and cons, as wind power needs.. Strong winds, while the solar needs the sun, so if it is not a windy day at the wind farm,
it won't produce much power, same with the solar panels if the sky is cloudy the electricity gathered by the cells would be lacklustre compared to a day where the sun is blistering hot. 

A pro to this is that it doesn't make carbon dioxide to generate electricity, compared to fossil fuels or coal, but the upfront cost or the price of setting these alternative power sources is high, along with the fact that making these often makes solutions like carbon dioxide, they also take lots of space and you can't really increase the amount of power if the dammand gets higher.

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Energy Resources

 Humans have relied on wood for energy, for burning for cooking and keeping us warm, but most developing countries use wood for burning. 

Most modern countries use lots of coal, oils and natural gasses, daily, in recent years there are now more ways to get large amounts of energy, although they are not as efficient as the un-renewable sort.  

There are hydroelectric, geothermal, solar, wind, and lots of other ways to generate electricity. In most countries, most of the energy resources collected are used for transport and domestic use, such as in homes.

During the Industrial Revolution, coal was used in trains. It was found that burning coal produced energy that could be used to power trains.
Now most trains are powered by electricity since there are many other ways to gather electricity than coal, along with biofuels, which are types of fuels made from plants which are 100% renewable when farmed correctly, and use of electric cars and now hydrogen cars.

Along with natural gasses, which are burnt on stovetops to boil water, we used unrenewable coals last time. 

One thing about electricity is that it isn't 'renewable' or 'non-renewable', as how it is gathered changes how  

Nuclear energy is actually more efficient and better for the planet than burning fossil fuels, even though it is a finite resource, nuclear energy is harder to use because of how rarer it is, along with the fact that it creates radioactive waste which stays radioactive for thousands of years and must be stored carefully.

It is also very expensive to run a nuclear power plant, and the danger of a nuclear meltdown, which can cause environmental damage by releasing harmful radioactive material into the atmosphere. 


 

Monday, November 11, 2024

Electronic Structure

Most atoms to be stable need a full outer shell, let's start with the element sodium, which has an atomic number of 11 meaning there are 11 protons and that there is 11 electrons in one sodium atom. 
Using the Bohr model, with shells, the first shell will always be full, and require the least amount of energy and it has a limit of 2 electrons.
The second and third can hold 8; the order also matters. You normally add them in the top, right, and left positions. Then, you repeat the order again. Basically, you are adding them clockwise until you fill the shell or run out of electrons.

Since sodium or Na has 11 electrons, that means that sodium is unstable and wants to react with another atom, to become a 'full' or 'complete' atom. S

So atoms like Neon have full outer shells meaning they don't want to gain or lose elections since they are balanced. 

In group 0 in the periodic table, the Nobel gasses have full outer shells. One such gas is the element Argon, which has an atomic number of 18, meaning it has 18 electrons. 
So let's figure out where the electrons are on the shells, first, we put 2 in the first shell, then 8 in the second and third, another way to represent the locations of the electrons is an Argon atom is 2,8,8. Orr 2 in the first, 8 in the second, and 8 in the third. Usually, you will write them as crosses, or dots.




Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Stem Cells in Medicine

 Stem cell medicine can help with Paralysis and Diabetes, but it also comes with its own risks, as it is slightly unethical and dangerous.

Once again stem cells can divide by mitosis and they can also differentiate into different kinds of cells. 
The main types of stem cells are Embryonic stem cells which are found in the early embryos usually from embryos from growing infants to grow into babies, and stem cells found in the bone marrow inside all ages, but the stem cells from the bone marrow can only differentiate into different blood cells.

Lots of medical issues come from damaged or faulty cells, as diabetes is one of them due to the cells in the pancreas not producing insulin, while paralysis is due to damaged nerve cells which can't move, and Sickle cell anaemia is caused by misshaped blood cells this is where the stem cells come into play, as we use the stem cells to replace the faulty cells to help the patent.

The most common way to do this is for scientists to take embryonic stem cells, grow them in a laboratory, and then stimulate them enough to turn them into the specialized cells necessary. 

For example, when scientists want to treat someone with diabetes, they will take some embryonic stem cells, and then stimulate them to turn them into insulin cells, and then inject the cells into the patient pancreas too. 

For paralysis, it is the same thing, first, take some embryonic stem cells, then stimulate them into nerve cells and then inject them into the patient's limbs. 

There are some slight problems about using stem cells in medicine such as embryonic stem cells. It is because we need embryonic stem cells, we need them from embryos and collecting the embryonic cells involves some ethical issues.  

And also a rejection of the stem cells, so the immune system might destroy the carefully obtained cells, although we can give medication to slighty reduce the risk of the immune system thinking it is harmful.

The easier way of getting stem cells are from Adult stem cells, but these cells come with a large caviat, as they can only differentiate into only bloodcells such as red and white cells.

These can combat bloodcell disorders like Sickle celia, but these since these cells cannot be used in other applicatios like paralysis and diabetes. But new research are finding out that we can implement the adult stem cells in other ways than just bloodcells basically turning the adult stem cells into embryonic stem cells.

One of the dangers about this is that, where the scientists gather the stem cells also matter as if the donator has a virus of any kind, it might affect the patent and might even cause more problems in the future.

Another problem is that the stem cells might cause tumor development, as the cells can divide via mitosis so quickly, that having the cells form into a tumor might a danger by forming into a cancer or a tumor.

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

The Hittite Empire and the Battle of Kadesh

So the Hittite people conquered a place named Hatti in what is now modern-day Turkiye. 

Many modern languages come from Proto-Indo-European languages, Greek, Latin and Germanic languages like English, Celtic, Persian and Indian.

In the 4th millennium BCE, the region of what is now southern Russia, and then in 2500 BCE they spread further and further.

We don't have much knowledge about the Hittites, compared to the Mesopotanians or the ancient Egyptians, but we do know that they were a very powerful civilization during that era. 

Then around 1600 BCE, which is when Mycenaean Greece was made, to about 1100 BCE, then the New Kingdom of Egypt 1550 BCE to 1100 BCE, the new kingdom of Egypt was important since they were rivals with the Hittites, and during the time of the new kingdom in Egypt is when they were the most powerful and advanced.

During the second millennium till 1600 BCE, we get the old Hittite kingdom, then around 1400 BCE, it was called the NewHittite Empire, which is where they were the most powerful, but this was the same time as the new kingdom of the Egyptians were developing.
This was during the 14th century, At this time many civilizations were at their peak, such as the Mittanni civilization, the middle Assyrian Empire, and then Kassite Babylonia.

This is known as the "Bronze Age", and used in weapons and jewellery, the Hittites were one of the first to use Iron, as you needed the furnace to be much hotter than bronze, along with being great Charioteers which helped them establish their empire. 
Then around 1595 BCE, they overthrow Hummurabi's dynasty, but they can't maintain the control because of issues back at their own home in

Monday, November 4, 2024

History of the Atom


The first theory was the atomic theory, in 500 BC, which was that everything was made out of tiny particles that are separated by empty space, this idea was proposed by Democritus from ancient Greek.

Then the 1800s John Dalton said that objects were built out of spheres that make out all the elements.

After John Dalton, JJ Thomson made the "Plum pudding" model in 1897, which stated that what we would call atoms today, were not spheres but negatively charged particles, which are now named elections.
He said that 'atoms' are balls of positive charge with small amounts of negative charge.

Ernest Rutherford and his students found in 1909 that if they shot an 'Alpha' particle at a thin sheet of gold, it would pass right through if the plum pudding model was to be true, the alpha particle would have shot clean through the gold sheet.
But instead, some particles would deflect off the gold, and some would even be completely redirected the way they were coming from.

So Ernest and his students proposed the Nuclear theory, which stated that the atom was a compact nucleus which was positively charged, while the negative charge is more like a cloud around the nucleus, there was one thing that was weird about this model, as there is nothing stopping the 'cloud' of negative charge from charging into the centre of the nucleus collapsing the whole thing.

It was not until 1913 that Neils Bohr said that the electrons orbited around the nucleus in shells similar to planets around the sun the part where it orbits around the nucleus is very important.
As that is what keeps the atom from collapsing, Ernest once again found that there are small particles inside the nucleus that were giving positive charge, which we now know as Protons.

Then a person named James Chadwick provided evidence that there are neutral particles no named Newtrons along with the protons. 



  

Specialized Cells & Differentiation

 Every 'complex' organism, is built out of cells, and these cells are known as specialized cells.
For humans, those would be and there are over 200 times of specialized cells in humans, muscle cells, nerve cells, and sperm cells. While a plant will have Root cells, Phyleom cells, and Xylem cells.

Let's take a Sperm cell, they take generic material to an egg cell, and sperm cells have half the genetic material to make an adult cell.
Because it is meant to combine with the egg cell to make one adult cell, they have a tail named the Flagellum and 
mitochondria to help the sperm swim through the uterus and the fallopian tubes to reach the egg cell and at the tip is a digestive enzyme to break a hole in the egg. 

Nerve cells and Red blood cells are completely different due to differentiation, as they are used in the body for completely different reasons.

Zygotes are fertilized egg cells, which will duplicate due to mitosis  and then they can differentiate into other cells, like red blood cells, nerve, muscle or skin cells.