NASA Finds Smallest Earthlike Planet Outside Solar System

I could not help but be awed by how human race have evolved. Through the use of technology, we are able to explore what was once impossible. NASA's Kepler spacecraft, for example, can search for planets a few billion light years away from earth. recently, they discovered a planet which is quite "Earthlike". There is even a chance for man to in habit this planet, solving all our global warming problems and ozone depletion. However, this planet is said to have one of its face, consistently facing the Sun, causing it to be 1370 degrees celcius. Furthermore, it orbits around its sun in a short span of 20 hours compared to the 365.25 hours for Earth. Due to the intense heat, an atmosphere is unlikely to be formed as the gases would rapidly escape into space. This is way to hot for any kind of life on Earth to exist. Also, its rocky landscape is unsuitable for living. A possible way to make use of this planet is for an alternate source of energy. The heat could be useful in providing solar power or steam to move turbines. On the other hand, rubbish waste that has been a big problem in land consumption can be dumped here, making Earth cleaner and greener. Could we develop even better technology in the future to solve the problem of habitation? It is highly unlikely but we never know. This article has inspired me. When I grow up, this could be a career choice for me as it is definitely my interest and I want to help mankind explorer the infinite depths of space.

An extended learning

The Snow Leopard
Snow leopards are beautiful big cats with soft, thick gray coats and white underbellies. They have black and brown spots and markings. The leopards are between four to five feet long and weigh 60 to 120 pounds, with males being about 30 percent larger than females. These cats have giant paws that act like snowshoes and tails nearly as long as their bodies that they use for blankets against the cold. Their coats are lighter in the winter as camouflage in the snow. Unlike other large cats, snow leopards can't roar. Their vocal tract lacks the thick pad of elastic tissue that enables other cats to roar
They live at high altitudes, approximately 5,900 to 18,000 feet in alpine meadows, mountain steppes and coniferous forests in Central Asia. Their diet varies across its range, blue sheep, or bharal (Pseudois nayaur), of the Himalayas and Tibet, and the Asiatic ibex (Capra ibex), a wild goat found throughout the major mountain ranges of central Asia are considered big prey. Snow leopards also eat smaller animals, especially in the summer months. Small preys include marmots, pikas, hares, other small rodents, and game birds like the Tibetan snowcock and chukor partridge.
Sadly, these cats are in great danger of extinction. It is thought that 4,500 – 7,500 remain in the wild with an additional 600 – 700 in zoos worldwide. Unfortunately these numbers continue to decline. A number of factors influence snow leopard populations.
Abiotic factors include water, temperature, air and weather. Water is scarce in high altitudes. There is about 16 inches of precipitation but only half of it is rain. Temperature can change drastically from but is mostly at -17.5 to -37 degrees Celsius due to the high altitude. The air is very cold and dry, also caused from the high altitude. Monsoons, floods, high winds, snowstorms and other types of precipitation can come without notice which makes the climate very dangerous.
As stated above, the leopards prey such as marmots and blue sheep. These are gradually disappearing due to global warming. Leopards do not have any predators as it is the top predator of the food chain. However, ever since humans were introduced, everything changed. They are now being hunted by humans for their fur, bones, skin and organs. The fur is used for clothes or decoration while the rest can be made into Asian medicine.

Term 3 Reflections

This is my best term for LSS. I feel that I have understood all the concepts and topics very well, even taught my friends some concepts when they were not sure. I got 83 for my test this term which I considered a relatively high A1. I guess the tireless revision had paid of again. In order to keep up these good grades, I feel that there is a need to keep up with my revision. Also, I have expanded my leaning through ACE assignments which have led me to do some research on topics i am interested in. I am very motivated now and would try to aim for greater achievements in the area of science.

Term 3 Ecology

Ecology is the study of relations between living things. In Ecology, we study how one population might affect the other. The carbon cycle is an important part of ecology. Carbon is constantly being removed from and released into the environment, in the form of carbon dioxide. Hence, the carbon dioxide concentration in the environment remains relatively constant. The various processes by which carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide, is removed from and released into the environment make up the carbon cycle. During photosynthesis, green plants absorb carbon dioxide from the environment and converts it to glucose. When animals feed on the plants, the carbon is transferred to them. When animals die or produce waste they are broken down into carbon which is absorbed by the plants through soil. There are a few types of relationship among living things. Firstly, there is the predator prey relationship where one benefits while the other suffers. Parasitism is also part of it. Commensalism is the relationship whereby the one party benefits while the other is not affected. Amensalism is the type of symbiotic relationship that exists where one species is completely obliterated and one is unaffected. Mutualism is when both benefit from a relationship an example is the goby fish, which sometimes lives together with a shrimp. The shrimp digs and cleans up a burrow in the sand in which both the shrimp and the goby fish live. The shrimp is almost blind, leaving it vulnerable to predators when above ground. In case of danger the goby fish touches the shrimp with its tail to warn it. When that happens both the shrimp and goby fish quickly retract into the burrow. I feel that this can be applied in our everyday life, we should always aim for a win-win solution so that both parties benefit. Other relationships only does nothing or cause harm.
In conclusion, science can have its morals too, through the study of ecology, we can find better ways to

Enlightenment sabbatical day 5

Today was the last day of Sabbatical Week. Naturally, my mentors reserved the best for last: the spectrum of light. Firstly, we were taught on the different colours of light. Blue, red and green are the primary colours of light. It is a common mistake that yellow, instead of green, is the primary colour of light. However, this is a misunderstanding between the colours of light and paint. Two primary colours can be mixed to form a secondary colour. These include magenta, yellow and cyan. White light is formed when the three primary colours are mixed. Black colour, is the lack of light given off by an object. The experiment we did was to examine the colours obtained by spinning different patterns of black and white design on a spinning platform. I was wondering what could happen to a few black and white circles with weird patterns when I just spinned it for fun. To my amazement, many different colours started to appear out from the circles. Some gave out blue colour, some red, some all! The next experiment was about examining the effect of adding and subtracting colours. Basically, we used ray boxes and colour filters to mix colours together to form new colours. I am sad to say that this experiment was a complete failure. I was unable to create new colours as some filters were thicker than others, resulting in a higher of intensity of a certain colour. When I added blue with red, I got blue. Overall, I feel that I have learnt a lot. I also had more fun than my previous sabbatical last year. In the aspect of light, I have been elightened.

Enlightenment sabbatical day 4

Today, I went to the Science Centre to view all the illusion exhibits. The illusions were very eye catching, yet confusing to the eye. Take Kitaoka’s illusion for example. Her illusion consisted of many lines and squares. Although the lines are straight, the boxes are crooked, making the lines appear crooked. This illusion is called a distorting illusion. There are other forms of illusion as well. What interested me the most were the paradoxical illusions. These are illusions that are not really possible in real life. One extremely common one that everyone must have seen is an image of an elephant. If one were to look closer at it, he would notice that the legs are not connected to the feet. This is impossible, and therefore, a paradoxical illusion. I like these forms of illusions as the artist requires a lot of imagination and skill to create it. Another interesting form of illusion is an ambiguous illusion. These illusions show us an image at first glance and another at second glance. Usually, it is named after what is shown in the illusion. Rabbit or Duck; People talking or Vase are some of the common ones. Science Center trip was very interesting and enjoyable, the best thing was, the sabbatical sponsored the whole trip!

Enlightenment sabbatical day 3

Today, I put my knowledge of light into making toys! The first toy I made was an optical illusion toy. An optical illusion is an image of any sort that tricks the eyes into seeing it as something different. As I was neither Picasso nor some professional artist, so I did something simple, a bird in a cage illusion. Basically, I drew a bird on one side of a cardboard and an empty cage on the other. I then attached it to a straw so it can be turned rapidly. When something moves to quickly, our eyes cannot see it properly; sometimes our eyes just put the two things together. Therefore the bird would appear to be trapped in the cage when in fact; it’s as free as a, well, bird. The second toy was more of an image of a toy, a 3d image that is. I used my favorite key chain, a shark to and made a hologram out of it. A hologram is the first, true three dimensional imaging in technology. Unlike photography that only records the brightness and contrast of an object, a hologram records brightness, contrast and position. This means, we can see up-down left-right and forward-backward. This is called “depth”. There are two ways whereby a hologram can be made. Transmission and reflection. I used the transmission method. Holographic plate is used here. Basically, the interference pattern recorded takes the incoming light and reconstructs it according to the information that was recorded, giving a 3-D scene. Sadly, after hours of hard work, my hologram was a failure. Only a little glint of my keychain could be seen in the glass. I guess I have to work harder in handling things so it would

Enlightenment sabbatical day 2

Today, I learnt a very cool and interesting topic, LASERs. Yes, they are in capital letters as they are actually an acronym! It stands for light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation. Thus, the laser is a device which produces and amplifies light. My impression of lasers was beams of light that were extremely harmful to living things; The thing that shoots out of guns and slices through anything in the movie “Star Wars”; The thing that Cyclops shoots out of his eyes in “X men”. However, laser can actually be very useful to humans. For example, lasers are used in practically every major industry, from medicine and computers, to entertainment and construction. Lasers are so useful as they can burn through almost anything. On the other hand, they can be extremely weak so that they can be used as pointers during presentations. As a result, scientists have classified lasers into different classes. Class 1 being the safest and 4 being the most dangerous. Sadly, even the meekest of lasers can harm a person, mainly, the eye. A concentrated light, when shined into a person’s eye, can burn the cornea and retina. Laser is like a double edged blade, it can be very useful to humans but it can also harm humans in many ways. Therefore, it is important to know how to be safe while handling laser. Some safety measures I have leant today are: Never point a laser into someone’s eyes. Never point high power laser beams at any body part. Never use mirrors or crystals to deflect laser.

Enlightenment sabbatical day 1

Today, we were introduced to our sabbatical, EnLightment. This sabbatical aimed to teach me some concepts of light. Also, by the end of the sabbatical they hope that they would be enlightened! We were introduced to the most basic concept of light, reflection. At first, I thought this would be extremely easy and boring as I had been taught reflection in Term 1. However, I was astounded by the experiments that they gave was very different from the curriculum. After revising the stuff we have already learnt, we did an experiment to prove the relationship among the tither and n, the tither being the angle between two mirrors and the n being the number of images in the mirror when an object is placed between the mirrors. 360/tither=n+1 was the relationship. Afterwards, we did some fun activities like drawing out mirror images. I was happy to say that I did exceptionally well as I got 19/20 for my test at the end of the lesson.

An extended learning

Sulfuric Acid, H2SO4, is an extremely dangerous and oily chemical. However, when used properly, it can solve many problems we face. It is the most commonly manufactured acid in the world. In 1999, 40 million tons of this chemical was manufactured! What are its uses and what exactly makes it so useful? These are some of the questions I would be answering in this essay.

One of the uses of sulfuric acid is to make fertilizers. Fertilizers are substances that supply plant nutrients or amend soil fertility. This is the fastest and most effective way of improving the quality of the plant. Basically, Sulfuric acid is important in the production of fertilizers such as ammonium sulfate (sulfate of ammonia), (NH4)2SO4, and superphosphate, Ca(H2PO4)2, which is formed when rock phosphate is treated with sulfuric acid. Therefore, sulfuric acid, ammonium and phosphorus are needed in the production of fertilizers. Some famous brands of fertilizers are Scotts, Lesco, Milorganite, Fertilome, Vigoro. As you can see, there are already so many brands in the fertilizer market, imagine the amount of sulfuric acid is needed for that.

Sulfuric acid can also be used to remove of oxides from iron and steel. When there is an oxide on a metal, it can no longer be used for electroplating or galvanizing. Thankfully, a bit of sulfuric acid is all that is needed to remove the problem. Sulfuric acid reacts with the oxide to form carbon dioxide and a salt, therefore, eliminating the oxides from the metal. Rust or iron oxide, is the reddish brown crust that forms on materials containing iron and is the result of the corrosion of iron. The corrosion itself is an electrochemical reaction, oxidation, which occurs when iron comes in contact with water and oxygen. Sulfuric acid, or battery acid(will be explained in later), reacts with rust to form non-toxic iron sulfate and is also used in its diluted form.

Battery is what powers most of the electrical appliances today. Sulfuric acid has a crucial role in creating these batteries. Sulphuric acid is a very reactive substance and because of its instability it is able to distribute itself very evenly throughout the electrolyte in the battery. Over time, this action ensures that an even reaction can occur between all the plates. producing voltage and current. The chemical reaction between constituent parts of the electrolyte and the 1. spongy lead of the negative plates and 2. the lead dioxide at the positive plates turns the surface of both plates into lead sulphate. As this process occurs the hydrogen within the acid reacts with the oxygen within the lead dioxide to form water. The net result of all this reaction is that the positive plate gives up electrons and the negative plate gains them in equal numbers, thereby creating a potential difference between the two plates. The duration of the reactions producing the cell voltage is limited if there is no connection between the two plates and the voltage will remain constant.

In conclusion, sulfuric acid has many uses. It is impossible to list them all in one research. However, I have covered a few of the most common ones. This essay has taught me a lot of sulfuric acid so it has been such an enlightening experience.

Term 2 Light

Although I have learnt the topic on light in P6, many of the things taught are very new. Many interesting facts and concepts.
Light is the form of energy that enters our eyes and enables us to see things. It moves very fast at a speed of 300 000 000 m/s. Light can be obtained from two ways: directly, through the form of luminous objects and indirectly. through the reflection of non-luminous objects. This brings me to an important concept of light, reflection. When a ray of light strikes any surface, it changes its direction of travel. We say that the light ray is reflected. The law is basically Angle of incidence is equals to the Angle of Reflection. Surprisingly, this law applies to every single surface, convex, concave or straight. Even on a rough plane, this law applies when the light is reflected of the small lumps. However, due to the irregularity, the light is sent into different directions, causing it to be diffused or irregular.
Light can also be refracted. This refers to the bending of light as it passes through different mediums. For example, light bends away from the normal when it travels from an optically denser medium to an optically less dense medium. Optical density is a measure of the extent to which a substance transmits visible light. However, there is an exception. When a light ray strikes perpendicularly to the surface of an optical medium, there is no refraction this is because when it travels from air into glass, its angle of incidence is zero, thus its angle of refraction is also zero. Even though light is not bent, its speed still decreases when it enters the optically denser medium, glass.
White light might look colourless but it is actually quite colourful. It consists of the colours of the rainbow, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet also called the spectrum of light. These colours combine together to get white light. Thereforfe, white light can also be split into the colours of the rainbow through refraction. This is usually done through a prism. Sometimes, we can see this in the sky before or after raining. This is because there are still some water droplets in the air which refract the sun's rays.
All in all, lenses was an extremely interesting topic and pretty easy to grasp.

Term 2 Acids, Bases and Salts

This is a relatively easy subject, especially when compared with the nightmare chemical equations. Acids are substances which have a ph level lower than 7 while bases are those which are higher than 7. 7 is neutral, an example of a neutral substance is water, pure water. Salts are created by chemically bonding an acid and a base, thus neutralising both of them. Some examples are sodium chloride, copper(II) sulfate and ammonium chloride.
Many salts are brightly coloured and many are highly poisonous and not at all suitable for sprinkling onyourfish and chips! Salts containing copper ions are usually blue, those containing nickel are pale green, those containing iron can be green or orange and cobalt salts are pink.
Acids, Bases and Salts is sort of an extension from chemical bonding though as some working still involves chemical equations.

Term 2 Chemical Equation

This is definitely the hardest LSS lesson I have ever had. Chemical Equation was just a bunch of symbols which defied all laws of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It might have looked like Algebra but it was very different. Fe + O2 → Fe2O3 did not make any sense. My teacher also said that this would be a tough term as chemical equation was quite hard. However, practice makes perfect, I did a lot of chemical equations and I managed to cope with the subject normally. Sadly, I am still baffled by those long chemical equations which seem to stretch forever. I hope that I can master this by the end of Sec 2.

My Term 1 reflections

Overall, i feel that i have done well for my LSS this term as i understood all the principles memorised part of the periodic table and scored pretty well in my term test. However, i feel that improvements could be made so that i can do better in LSS. I should revise topics learnt from time to time to ensure that I remember all of it. Also, I can take a step further and do some research on my own about the periodic table, chemical bonding or anything related to Science. I look forward to a better term ahead.

Term 1 Chemical Bonding

Chemical Bonding refers to a strong force of attraction holding atoms together in a molecule. There are a few kinds of chemical bonding. Firstly, and most commonly, covalent bond. It is a type of chemical bond where two atoms are connected to each other by the sharing of two or more electrons. For example, carbon and oxygen would bond covalently to form carbon dioxide, sharing 4 outer electrons to stablise each other. Secondly, there is the ionic bonding. This differs from covalent as the electrons are not shared. One gives away electrons while the other receives it. As a result, the one that gives becomes positive and the one that receives becomes negative. I felt that this was a very interesting topic as it can lead to many different findings in the future, we never know what we can created for mixing a few elements together.