Little Geek Nat

If you haven’t, read my “Hydrogen bonds” blog first if possible. Like I said, this time we are going adhesion and cohesion. Let’s start with adhesion. Adhesion are 2 materials (example: water and glass) that have different polarities and can stick to each other. One interesting thing about adhesion is the capillary action that makes water climb up a glass tube. Now you need to imagine. Imagine that you have a plastic tub. Then you have a very thin glass rod, about 3 mm thick, and it’s hollow. You put the glass rod in the tub, and something interesting happens. The water will climb up the glass tube. It climbs up the glass tube because it’s more attracted to the glass than to itself. This is also adhesion because it is attracted to each other. They are attracted because water has a polarity and glass also has one. Adhesion happens because there are polarities in some atoms, like water and glass. A positive atom will stick to a negative atom. Same goes for cohesion. But, cohe...

Don't drive daredevil!

I think this isn’t a secret to anyone, but water is essential to life as we know it. When you think of your cells, they have chemical processes that include water, and happen in water. Now it’s a little strange. What gives water all these unique properties? Water, as you probably already know, is made of 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom. That’s why we call it H2O. The bonds between the atoms are called covalent bonds. The good thing about water is that oxygen is extremely electronegative. If you don’t know, electronegative means that the element likes to keep electrons for itself. To be precise, it hogs electrons. Because the electrons keep going around the oxygen, the hydrogen atoms have a positive charge. When you put two water molecules together, they are kind of nice. Oxygen has a positive charge and hydrogen has a negative charge. When you put them together, they will stick. That will form a hydrogen bond. Hydrogen bonds are the reason why water has this fluid, nice...

Auroras are the spectacular dancing lights that mostly happen around the poles. Surprisingly, they are caused by the sun’s solar rays. Probably you already know the magnetosphere that protects us from the sun’s harmful rays. There are cracks in the magnetic fields on the poles that produce auroras.  But how do the auroras get their color? Air is made of nitrogen (79%) and oxygen (20%). Oxygen glows yellow-green when hit low in the atmosphere and orange higher up. Nitrogen glows bright red when hit normally, and bright blue when ionized. A halo of light always exists over each pole. Though, they are too faint to see. They are only seen clearly when extra bursts of energy from the Sun come to Earth. The stronger auroras are only produced when Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) are released by the sun. The nearer you are to the poles, the more aurora displays you see every year. For example, New York and Edinburgh are having an average amount of 10 aurora displays every...