Last Show of the Year!

So, this Thursday we had our very last SPICE show of the year, which fortunately was in the Chemistry building, so we didn't have to go anywhere. Unfortunately, I was kind of an idiot that day. Everything was going pretty well up until I started to do a couple of demos with liquid nitrogen. For anyone that doesn't know, liquid N2 is extremely cold, and could easily give you frost bite in a second or two. I was trying to pour some into a flask, and I forgot to warn the kids in the front row not to touch it if it spilled on the floor, which of course some kids tried to do. Luckily, no one got hurt doing that. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of my stupidity. We do another demo with N2 where we freeze a raquetball and then smash it. I kind of did it quickly and without much warning, sending shards of extremely cold rubber into the crowd. Again, I got very lucky in that no one was hit in the eye, but a few kids tried to touch the rubber too quickly, and we heard a few "Ow's" before we were able to get them to stop trying until they thawed out a little bit. I finished the show without any more major issues, but it still made me a little nervous the whole time.

What a way to end the year on a good note...

Jumpstart for Kindergarteners

Last Saturday, I went with about 5 of my fellow SPICE members to go do a demo show for some kindergarteners at Brittingham Park here in Madison. For any of you who weren't paying attention, Saturday was not ideal weather for doing things outside; it was cold and really windy. As a result, we had to scramble at the last minute to figure out what we could possibly do outside when its windy. We really can't do anything with balloons or explosions since everything would fly away.
To top it all off, we even had trouble finding out where to go. Brittingham Park extends for quite a ways around the lake, and there are two pavilion-like buildings at each end, so we spent a lot of time trying to figure out where to go. When we finally did figure it out, there were only six kids there. Apparently most of the parents decided to keep their kids at home that day due to the weather (a very good choice in my opinion).
Overall, however, it still turned out pretty well. We did all the demos we could, and it took a lot less time than we had expected, but the kids seemed to enjoy it. They really liked the stuff we did with liquid nitrogen the most - it looks kind of scary when the "smoke" starts coming towards you. This was also a good day to train a few of the newbies to the group. They all did a good job, but they did tend to give explanations of the demos that were way over the kids' heads. Nobody was maimed or killed, so it was still a good day.

Picnic

OK, so science isn't infallible. We (SPICE) recently did a demo show at the Engineering Centers building recently, where, instead of the normal audience of elementary and middle school students, we did a show for high schoolers. When you're used to doing a show for young kids, it seems really stupid for older ones.

To try to counter this, we tried our fanciest and most complicated demos, along with the detailed explanations for how everything works to try to get at least some people's attention. As luck would have it, nothing worked as planned. Some of our best demos simply wouldn't work and when you're trying to do a show in front of a huge group of people, you can't help but feel like a huge idiot.

All problems aside, we finally had our club's spring picnic at Vilas Park today. It was a great way to relax and wear off some tension a little bit (and get some sunburn too) before these last few weeks where we'll have nothing to do but projects and studying for exams.

More Hell

Following the same pattern as last time, I figured I'd find some more humorous things about science. Mainly, I'm just really stressed about exams and projects, and I need some way to keep myself from going [more] insane.

I thought the answer the student gave in the hell story was really creative, so I wanted to find more of the same kind of thing. Here's a few answers to some science questions that I've been able to find online:

Some 11 year old's answers on science tests:

"The moon is a planet just like the earth, only it is even deader."

"Artifical insemination is when the farmer does it to the cow instead of the bull."

"Dew is formed on leaves when the sun shines down on them and makes them perspire."

"The body consists of three parts- the brainium, the borax and the abominable cavity. The brainium contains the brain, the borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abominable cavity contains the bowls, of which there are five - a, e, i, o, and u."

"The pistol of a flower is its only protection against insects."

"Germinate: To become a naturalized German."

http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~amyb/science_humor.html#point1

More examples of funny test answers:

http://www.jimmyr.com/blog/Funny_Student_Exam_Answers_91_2007.php

I just wish I had the guts to do this kind of stuff myself.

Hell

Science can explain how a lot of things work in the world, but can it be used to tell whether hell is endothermic or exothermic?

OK, so this isn't really about my lab or SPICE, but it's related to science, so I figure that's close enough. I heard this one a long time ago, and it's one of my favorite stories that, as far as I know, is true.

Enjoy:

Dr. Schlambaugh, a senior lecturer at the Chemical Engineering Department,University of Oklahoma, is known for posing questions on final exams like: "Why do airplanes fly?"
In May a few years ago, the "Momentum, Heat and Mass Transfer " exam paper contained the question:
"Is Hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with proof."
Most students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law or similar. One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we must postulate that if souls exist, they must have some mass. If they do, then a mole of souls also must have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it does not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.
As for souls entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some religions say that if youare not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions, and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go toHell. With the birth and death rates what they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change in the volume of Hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of the souls and volume needs to stay constant.
[Answer 1] So, if Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature in Hell willincrease until all Hell breaks loose.
[Answer 2] Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase in souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressurewill drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it? If we accept the postulate (given to me by Teresa Banyan during freshman year) that "it'll be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and taking into account that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then [Answer 2] cannot be correct; ...... thus, Hell is exothermic.
The student got the only A.

http://www.basicjokes.com/djoke.php?id=5410

PCR

Ok, for anybody who has had any doubts that I am NOT a complete nerd, you're wrong, and here's the proof. This is a promotional video from a company called BioRad that makes all sorts of different kinds of lab equipment, including PCR machines. PCR (polymerase chain reaction) is a method to exponentially amplify a sample of DNA. It's used a lot to help in crime scenes, since they can use a tiny DNA sample like a few skin cells or a hair and amplify it, and then possibly get a suspect.

I've never actually performed PCR myself, but I still work in a lab, and I find this to be really funny, but like I said, I am a nerd.



As a side note, I think the old guy who sings in here is actually the inventor of PCR.

Slime

Whenever SPICE goes out and does a "family science night" show at a local elementary show, it usually requires some sort of hands-on type of experiment for kids to do. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is for the kids to make some slime. It's easy, quick, fun, and o so messy, which everyone except the parents love.

We usually do two or three different types of slimes, which is a great way to teach kids about polymers (long chains of molecules), and how lots of different things are made of them, like clothing and plastics.

One type of slime is the kind that most people usually made during elementary or middle school. All you do is get some borax (a detergent) at the store, mix it with some water to dissolve it, and then mix in some Elmer's glue. This one is really easy and cheap, and kids can put in a few drops of food coloring and put it in a bag to take home.

One of my favorite "slimes" is just cornstarch and water. (2 parts cornstarch to one part water). If you watch Mythbusters like I do, they did this one on their show. When you mix it in the right ratio, you get a mixture that is liquid when you pour it or let it rest, but when you apply a force to it (poke it, stir it, etc) it acts like a solid. Its not really a polymer, but what happens is that the starch molecules are very large and branched, so when you apply force, the molecules are shoved together and they can't move past each other, so the mixture acts like a solid. If you don't apply force, the molecules are able to slowly move past each other, so the mixture looks like a liquid.

Try it!

Beautiful Brain Cells

Talking about all of the procedures and in depth stuff that I do in the lab I work in gets really boring for people who have absolutely no idea what anything I say means. So this time, I figured I would just show some of the stuff that I've done in the past.

These are a few pictures of various brain cells that I took on our half-million dollar microscope when I was just starting in lab:

This is an image of a young neuron that hasn't differentiated yet; that is, it hasn't distinctly formed an axon and dendrites. (Axon - information shipping Dendrite - information receiving) These cells were grown for one or two days, and then fixed (killed) with formaldehyde so we could stain them and see them under the microscope. The bright green regions are called growth cones: areas where both axons and dendrites extend.

This is an image of a bunch of neurons growing from somewhere on the right, with a few nice growth cone regions.

A really huge growth cone on a non-neuronal cell (I don't know what kind of cell it actually is). I just think this one looks like a brain cell with a mohawk.

Finally, another couple neurons with very large growth cone regions.

A Haiku Collection About Neuroscience, Chemical Demonstrations, and the Like, Written by People who Know Nothing About It

So I was out tonight, trying to figure out what I should write on my blog before class on Monday. I was with some friends, and I explained to them that I need to write on a blog for one of my classes, and the topic should be related to either the research I do in lab, or to SPICE.

Most of this was championed by my girlfriend, but here's what our collective minds came up with. Some of it is about brains, some about spice, and some are just weird, but just as fun.

Dendrites, synapses
My brain's working very hard
Neurons are firing

Tiny mouse babies
I remove them from the womb
And take out their brains
It is for science
Society benefits
Don't judge my actions

Here, this is your brain
That Chris extracted for you
Ow! labotomy!

Brains are good for you
Hannibal Lector ate one
Frankenstein stole one

Clouds reflect the moon
Quietly mice are sqeaking
They fear the scissors

I send and receive
Like a tiny post office
Sometimes I get spam

Beer, beer, beer, beer, beer
Alcohol slows my senses
The floor is quite cold

I scare small children
Explosions from chemicals
Demonstrate science

Goop and flames combined
to entertain the public
I like chemicals

Fungus is not fun

One of the most exciting things that I have done since I came to college was to start working in a scientific research lab here on campus. What I didn't realize was just how difficult research can be. Aside from the huge amount of background knowledge that is required just to perform elementary lab procedures, there is the huge amount of knowledge required to be able to figure out just what the heck you're supposed to be doing. Even after you know all of that stuff, there's still a lot that can go wrong, and in most cases, it will go wrong.

I work with mouse neurons on a weekly basis, and these cells are extremely picky; they have to be at just the right temperature, pH, and nutrient levels. The most important thing, however, is that everything has to be kept sterile. I have to always be extremely careful whenever I'm working with anything that gets even close to our cultures, or everything will be lost. On several occasions, I spent about 5 hours one day preparing and culturing neurons only to look at my cultures the next day and find that all of the dishes are bright yellow (they should be red-orange, the yellow color indicates bacterial contamination), or to see huge fungal colonies in the middle of the dishes. In either case, I have to bleach my cultures, which not only makes me feel like I wasted two days of work, but I also wasted close to $100 worth of resources as well.

In spite of all this, working in this lab is something that I really like to do, and I'm not likely to give it up any time soon. Here's the link to the lab website:http://www.anatomy.wisc.edu/Dent/index.htm
It needs to be updated, and most of the videos don't work, but it still gives a good idea of what we do.

Success!

Last Wednesday was our first meeting for SPICE this semester. This was our kickoff meeting, which we had to postpone from last week due to our lovely Wisconsin weather. We had a pretty small turnout for a recruitment meeting, but we still had enough people to make it worth all the trouble.

I had gotten to the chem building a little late, and for that reason I spent the next half-hour or so running around trying to get everything together for our mini demo show. After explaining a little bit about what our group does, we wanted to show any new people some of the fun things we get to do, so we put together a short show with some of our favorite demos (most of which involved explosions). Some of my favorites were the nitrogen and ethanol cannons, metal salts in a flame, and hydrogen/helium balloons. Everything went quite well, and no one lit their hands on fire, as was the case during our last training session, where we teach our members how to do our demo shows. I did almost hit someone in the head with a cork when I set off one of the liquid nitrogen cannons (we cork a flask with liquid N2 until the pressure builds up and the cork shoots off), but luckily I didn't wound anyone.

This was also the grand debut of our brand new microwave demos, all of which worked on the first try, which is a rather novel experience for us. These especially gave us a really good response from the prospective new members. I think what makes these demos especially interesting is the fact that this is a normal microwave that everyone has at home, and if you put a toothpick inside, you can create a mini plasma storm (by the way, from what I understand, no one actually knows how or why this works).

After the show, we gave everyone a quick tour of our very messy demo lab (a different part of Jim the demo guy's lab, for anyone who's ever taken a chemistry class), and then fed everybody some freshly made liquid nitrogen ice cream, which is just cream, sugar, and vanilla mixed for a few seconds with liquid N2, and then all the toppings you could ever want. Overall, the few people that came seemed really interested in what our organization does, and with how well things are going, I think this is going to be a really good semester for SPICE.

Microwave + Toothpicks = Fun

Have you ever been bored sitting at home, saw your microwave sitting all by itself, and decided "Hey, I'm gonna put a light bulb in there and see what happens...?" This is essentially the kind of thing that I did this saturday afternoon. I'm in an organization on campus called SPICE (Students Participating in Chemical Education). In this organization, we perform chemical demonstrations for elementary and middle school aged kids at various schools and locations around Madison. The idea is to get those kids interested in learning and science, but for those of us in the organization, its just plain fun.

We're always looking for new demos to show kids, and recently, one of our members heard about lots of things that we can do with your everyday microwave and other various household items. All saturday, we tried out lots of different experiments to see how well they would fit in with our other demo shows (we always try to have scientific themes: solid/liquid/gas phases, polymers, gas expansion, etc.). I was really surprised at just how many sites there are on the internet that are dedicated to this specific topic (here is just one example: http://www.everist.org/special/mw_oven/). The only problem is, most of the sites just tell you how to do them, and don't give any explanation of why the experiment works, and now I'm going to be spending a good amount of time doing research on how these things work.


Here's a list of a few things that we put in the microwave:

1. Lightbulb - Apparently, if you put an average incandesent lightbulb (we used a 75 W bulb) in the microwave, it will light up. It uses the microwaves as energy in a similar fashion to when you screw it into a socket. What's even cooler is when you put it at the edge of the turntable, the bulb will flash in different colors and brightnesses due to the power variations of various regions in the microwave. However, you do need to put the bulb in water because it gets very hot.


2. CD - A CD is composed of several layers of material which contain metals, and when its exposed to microwaves, the different layers cause energy to arc across in a patterned fashion, which makes it look like lightning. The big problem with this is that it gives off quite a strong odor, which I'm told is vaporized metal and possibly arsenic. This is one of the things we need to work on a bit before we put it in a show.


3. Soap - If you take your typical bar of soap and put it in the microwave for about 3 minutes, it will grow and expand to about 4x its normal size. We figure this one is just based on gas expansion: the microwave causes any water in the soap to boil, create water vapor, and the soap traps the vapor in bubbles. All science aside, this one is just kinda cool to watch.


4. Toothpicks - This is by far my favorite. We took a toothpick and stood it upright in a cork in the microwave. When we lit the tip of the toothpick and started the microwave, it started shooting out fireballs. It was a little scary too, because when it shoots out the fireballs, there is a strange electrical noise that sounds like it might be power fluctuations. We don't quite know how this one works yet, but its still the coolest one I've seen.

I know it's kind of cliche, but I feel obligated to say that you probably shouldn't do this at home, kids. Knowing that you probably will, please be careful, and I am not responsible for any fires, explosions, power surges, injuries (mental or physical), or anything else related to anyone doing these experiments at home.

With that said: have fun!

Yay Brains!

Hello and welcome to the inside of Boltzmann's Brain! My name is Chris and I am a student at UW-Madison studying Biochemistry. I am heavily involved in neuro-anatomy research in a lab on campus and science education through demonstrations, and I really enjoy sharing my experiences in these areas. After all, who doesn't like hearing about brains and flashy explosions?

First, a little explanation of my blog's title:

The Boltzmann Brain Paradox refers to the second law of thermodynamics: that entropy (disorder) in the universe will always increase. Ludwig Boltzmann noticed that in our universe, there is an unexpectedly high level of organization for this law to be true. Similarly, if our level of organization in the universe, which contains many self-aware entities, is the result of random chance and fluctuation in entropy, then it would be much more likely that the universe would be able to create single self-aware entities, since this would require much less organization. Based on this reasoning, for every organized universe we see, there should be numerous self-aware brains floating around in unorganized environments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann%27s_brain).

This was something that a friend of mine told me about recently and I found it really interesting. The concept is something that I enjoy pondering about, but it really has nothing to do with what I'm going to be writing about in this blog - other that the fact that I work in a neuro-anatomy lab where I dissect brains. (In fact, I spent 2 or 3 hours out of my Sunday afternoon dissecting around 15 brains or so... my eyes hurt.)

In the future, I will write all about the fun things that I'm doing in the lab that I work in, as well as the cool chemistry demonstrations that I help perform for elementary and middle school students around Madison to get them excited about science education. Until then, I'm going to go rest my brain for a while, and maybe feed my stomach too.