Make a balloon rocket for your next science fair project using your own air as the energy.

Here are the materials you need to get to complete this project:

• Fishing line about 30-50 ft.
• A bag of various size balloons. You can get these at a dollar store
• A straw
• Tape
• 2 chairs or something you can tie the fishing line to such as two poles about 10 to 15 ft apart from each other

The instructions for this project are pretty simple but they show a great deal of physics and energy.

Take one of your balloons and blow it up. Do not tie it but pinch off the end and while it is blown up tape the straw to the side of the balloon. You will probably want to secure it in several places to make sure it will stay.

Let the air out of the balloon slowly. You do not want to make the straw fall off.

Now place your chairs with the backs facing each other about 10 to 15 feet apart.

Thread the fishing line through the straw and then take the monofilament thread and tie it around the back of the chairs. You will want this to be very tight so the line does not sag. You may also want to tie a knot that you can easily untie and retie again and again. Now you will want to make sure there is your balloon with a loop of fishing line wrapped around two chairs or poles.

Blow up the balloon and pinch the end again so no air escapes. If you have a balloon pump this works wonders. You can also get these at a local dollar store. They usually come in a package with long skinny balloons to make shaped animals. Pull your balloon rocket to one side of a chair. The end you are pinching closed should be closest to the chair.

Release your fingers and watch your balloon rocket to the other side.

How far did your balloon travel?

You will want to graph this on paper. Measure the length the balloon traveled. Now get a different size balloon and do the same thing. You will want to test different size and shape balloons to see if a certain size or shape is more effective at propelling the rocket farther.

Also you will want to try only blowing the balloon up half full and see what that does.

So how can you explain this as a science project? This is physics. The law states with every action there is an opposite reaction. So the air releasing from one end forcefully cause an opposite reaction by pushing the balloon matter the different direction. Your air blown into the balloon was energy to fuel the rocket. When you opened your fingers that stored energy was released and was able to move the balloon.

Get more great science project ideas at http://scienceprojects.fetching.us

Lesa Bolt is a contributor to science projects

Nor’easters aren’t as powerful as hurricanes, but they can be very destructive. The March Nor’easter known as the Blizzard of 1993 did over a billion dollars in damage up and down the East Coast from Maine to Alabama. Not only was there snow with this storm, but it also spawned several tornadoes and caused heavy flooding. As with almost all Nor’easters, one of the worst effects of this storm was the beach erosion. Miles of coastline were swept away and cottages and vacation homes succumbed to the heavy wind and waves.

So what is a Nor’easter? Is it just a big windstorm with heavy rain? Do the winds always have to come from the northeast? Do they occur more often at one time of the year or the other? And what can the average person do to protect themselves and their property from the effects of one of these powerful storms?

First of all, Nor’easters can occur any time of year and many of them fizzle out before they reach land or form onshore so that they don’t do as much damage. It’s when a Nor’easter forms in the tropics, off Florida, soaks up the warm moisture from the Gulf Stream as its northeast winds carry it up the East Coast, and then meets Cold Arctic Air from Canada that the major cities on the East Coast are threatened.

Boston, New York City, Washington DC, Baltimore and the major cities of the Southeast are all close enough to the coast to be affected and many have rivers that lead to them from the ocean, so flooding is often severe. When there is a higher than usual ocean tide, as there was in April of 2007, erosion and flooding from the sea can be severe. Several Maine communities had to be evacuated, as were communities on Long Island and in other places.

If you live in an area that is subject to Nor’easters, you should be prepared to evacuate if necessary. Even if you’re not near the coast, flooding can be severe and sudden in low-lying areas. Small streams and rivers can rise suddenly and overflow their banks, so if you live near one, make sure that it’s monitored and be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. If your basement or lower floors are liable to flood, move belongings to higher levels and/or have a sump pump ready.

Be prepared for power outages with flashlights, canned foods, bottled water and blankets. Check with the Red Cross or the local authorities for shelters in your area. If someone in your family has special medical needs that require electricity, make sure that you let your power company know that, and have a plan to get them to a shelter if necessary. Nor’easters can last for days and wind and rain can make it impossible or dangerous to drive, so don’t wait until the storm arrives to make your plans.

Common sense and some preparation will get you safely through stormy weather. The more you know about threats like Nor’easters, the more you can prepare to keep yourself and your family safe from harm.

Lill Hawkins lives in Maine and writes about family life, home education and being a WAHM at http://hawkhillacres.blogspot.com. Get the News From Hawkhill Acres: A mostly humorous look at home schooling, writing and being a WAHM, whose mantra is “I’m a willow; I can bend.”

Not long ago a gentleman tells me he is going to go on an expedition to the arctic and check for a possible whole to check out the hollow earth theory. He stated that since Global Warming was melting the ice, they could sail right into the middle.

Going to the arctic would be interesting and I have some thoughts on the fast moving rivers which are being un-covered at the poles that run thru the ice and how these would make excellent energy generation devices for the moon or even a human made planet. I have also considered why an advanced civilization might wish to build a system in such a manner to get hydro-electric power this way and yes, even had considered this for an Ice Colony on Mars.

Hollow Earth Theory?

I very much enjoyed the studies of the various explorer stories and Sci Fi author Jules Vern. I have written some theories on Hollow Earth and talked online at length with the gentleman in Arizona, Mr. Cluff on phone and thru email a few years ago. I am certain that there are Hollow Planets out there considering the number of planets that there are [Drake Equation Concept] and also some of the discrepancy of weight of planets and their locations and predictions.

Of course we have sent waves into the Earth and we know there is something hard mid way down to bounce the waves. But there are also some interesting bounce backs and slow downs of these waves throughout. Meaning either water is down underneath crust or space or something (oil?). There are theories like that too.

One scientist lady has an interesting paper on that Earthquake wave bouncing and believes that there are hollow parts inside the Earth. Indeed for every out of the box or scientific domain theory outsider, there are 20-50 diminishing their works. So, one cannot know the reality, only suspect from reading between the lines.

The old text book diagram stands as legitimate until which time or unless someone can prove otherwise and a re-interpretation of the Earthquake Waves we monitor. It is a cool subject isn’t it? I have no opinion on it at all.

L. Winslow is a Economic Advisor to the Online Think Tank, a Futurist and retired entrepreneur. Currently he is planning a bicycle ride across the US to raise money for charity and is sponsored by http://www.Calling-Plans.com and all the proceeds will go to various charities who sign up.

Scientists have concrete evidence that the Earth is currently undergoing the largest mass extinction in 65 million years. Over 50 species are going extinct every single day.

It’s called the Holocene Extinction — Holocene being the current epoch that began at the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago.

From Earth’s fossil record, we know about Six Great Mass Extinctions:

• The Ordovician-Silurian Extinction occurred about 444 million years ago.

  At the time, all complex organisms lived in the sea. The most common theory is that the onset of an ice age caused the extinction, which wiped out over 100 families of marine life. Many trilobite families bit the dust during this event.

• The Late Devonian Extinction happened 364 million years ago.

  This event saw a major worldwide extinction of coral reefs and the marine life they supported, as well as other groups of animals and plants. Nobody’s sure what caused it, but scientists speculate global cooling and several medium-sized asteroid impacts within a few million years of each other may have been the culprits.

• The Permo-Triassic Extinction occurred 251 million years ago.

  The granddaddy of all mass extinctions, this event saw 96% of all marine species and 70% of land vertebrate species kick the evolutionary bucket.

  The die off happened in less than a million years (a very short time in geological terms) and the recovery took 5 million years to crank back up, and another million years after that to get rolling. While not deemed the smoking gun yet, this event coincides with the largest known volcanic eruption in history.

• The Triassic-Jurassic Extinction occurred 200 million years ago.

  Was it caused by climate change, asteroids, or volcanoes? The verdict isn’t clear. What is clear is that 20% of marine life and many large amphibians were wiped out. At least half of all species on the planet bit the dust.

  This event occurred over less than a 10,000 year period, just before the supercontinent of Pangea began to break up.

• The Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction occurred about 65 million years ago.

  This event was probably caused, or at the least aggravated by, the impact of an asteroid around the size of Manhattan. About 16% of marine families and 18% of land vertebrate families ceased to exist. In North America, over 50% of plant species may have been wiped out.

  And of course…this is the event that doomed the dinosaurs.

• The Holocene Extinction is occurring now.

  Studies of the fossil record show that the normal “background” rate of extinction is about one species every four years. The current rate is between 30,000 and 100,000 per year.

You are now witnessing the fastest of the six great mass extinctions.

And this extinction, without a doubt, is the result of human population growth. By the end of this century, over five million species (half of the species on Earth now) will likely be gone.

“It’s not just species on islands or in rain forests or just birds or big charismatic mammals,” says Stuart Pimm, a conservation biologist researcher from the University of Tennessee. He notes fish, birds, insects, plants, and mammals. “It’s everything and it’s everywhere…it is a worldwide epidemic of extinctions.”

copyright©2007 Joe Crubaugh

Joe Crubaugh is a freelance writer whose psyche is often absorbed with current events, politics, art, culture, society, and the creamy bitterness of a steaming cup of white chocolate mocha. He is the author of numerous personal emails, and on most days he blogs at Hard-boiled Dreams of the World. When he’s not writing, Joe spends weekdays masquerading as a software consultant in an undisclosed Southeastern U.S. state.

Early measurement units in ancient history

People have been measuring things for a very long time. The earliest measurement units known date back to five or six thousand years in Egypt which included length and weight and used a decimal system.

As time went on, units of length started making references to body parts so that normal people could make a rough estimate of the units. We are all familiar with feet and yards; a foot was obviously relating to someone’s (rather large!) foot and a yard was measured from the fingertips to the shoulder. It seems that the people that standardized these units must have been giants since they are all a lot longer than the average person today.

Over time, more and more units were created for various purposes such as the acre for area. “Acre” is an old English term for “field” and was meant to be the area of land that could be ploughed in one day using a yoke and oxen. A farmer with seven acres of land could then immediately deduce that it would take a week to plough his farm.

After a while it became necessary to standardize all of these measurement units and so various methods were put into place to try to make sure that everyone was referring to the same quantity when quoting a number of a certain measure. For instance, a yard became defined as the length of a pendulum for the period of the swing to equal one second- here we see the scientists creeping into the subject to try to pit these units against the laws of nature.

In 1789, the French Revolution took place and after cutting the heads off of all the dignitaries decided to structure their society around knowledge and philosophy and, thus, were the first to adopt the metric system which was in the main, based around scientific observation and natural laws rather than the rather arbitrary units used beforehand.

The Celsius and Fahrenheit scales

The metric system adopted centigrade as the unit of temperature (now more commonly known as the Celsius scale).

Previously, by far the most common temperature scale in use was Fahrenheit. This was, again, based on the human body in part where 100 degrees would be the normal human body temperature and 0 degrees bizarrely was established as the “stabilized temperature when equal amounts of ice, water, and salt are mixed”. The human body temperature was later found to actually be about 98 degrees, which added more confusion to the scale.

Celsius created a very logical scale based on water- 0 degrees was the freezing point and 100 degrees was the boiling point. Everything in between was carved into 100 degrees and this was the unit of temperature. A much more logical approach and easily recreated by experiment so that thermometers and other instruments could be calibrated.

Since then another scale closely related to Celsius has been used in the science world- Kelvin. The only difference with this scale is that although each degree is the same, it starts at “absolute zero” which is the coldest that anything in the universe can get! There are no negative Kelvin values as you cannot get any colder than this, not even in the flat I used to live in four years ago! This makes the freezing point of water 273.15K (warm by comparison) and the boiling point adding an additional hundred degrees to 373.15K. On an odd note, degrees Kelvin is not normally given in degrees and the circle symbol is not used, just the “K”.

The Meter and its derivatives

The meter was originally defined by the French as the length between two marks on a platinum-iridium bar (which was designed to represent 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the equator to the north pole through Paris). The bar would be kept in Paris and additional bars could be made against this “master copy” for general use.

Since then it has been redefined against universal physics as the distance travelled by light in absolute vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

All other metric measurements for length, area and volume are derived from this unit. A kilometer is a thousand meters, a millimeter is a thousandth of a meter and so on. Area measurements can either be the square equivalents of the meter (a meter squared is the area covered by a square of one meter by one meter) or the commonly used land unit the hectare which is 10,000 square meters.

Similarly, the volume measurements are the cubic counterparts; a liter being 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters. Derivatives of this include the milliliter (a thousandth of a liter) which is one centimeter cubed.

Another unit used for extremely large distances is the Parsec and the Lightyear which are based on the speed of light in a vacuum.

The metric Mass and Weight measurements

Weight, or for the pedants out there, Mass is measured against the properties of pure water.

The Kilogram unit of weight (which is surprisingly the ISO unit rather than the Gram) is the mass of one liter of water. A gram then follows as a thousandth of a kilogram etc.

Note that a metric ton (or Tonne) is one thousand kilograms and should not be confused with the imperial/ English measurements of short and long ton.

Countries that have not yet caught up

Despite the fact that the future of measurements is clearly metric, there are several countries that seem to be clinging on to their old ways.

The United Kingdom may be metric officially but it took a recent law to force shop keepers from continuing to sell their goods in pounds and ounces “and use those damn French units!”, all of the roads are still in Miles and have Miles-per-Hour speed limits and the weather forcasters still quote both Celsius and Fahrenheit. However, since the price of gas shot up during the first Gulf war they now buy their petrol in liters since it sounds a lot less expensive.

There are three remaining countries which have not adopted the metric system at all- Liberia, Myanmar and the United States. I’m pretty sure I know which country is going to be the last!

Wikipedia entry for the Metric system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system
The International System of Units (SI): http://www.bipm.org/en/si/
Metric Conversions: http://www.metric-conversions.org/

Introduction

Inorganic nitrogen primarily exists in soil as the ammonium ion (NH4+) and the Nitrate ion (NO3-) and represents less than 2% of the total nitrogen in a typical soil. The bulk of the nitrogen in soils is “fixed’ to organic molecules and is not readily available to plants. To estimate the amount of nitrogen that is available for plant growth extraction procedures have been developed and the amount of nitrogen determined under the conditions of the extraction have been termed Exchangeable Nitrogen. The amount of Ammonia or Nitrate extracted is highly dependent upon the extraction solution and over the years a 2M Potassium Chloride solution has become the extraction solution of choice. Colorimetric procedures such as the indophenol blue method for ammonium ion and the cadmium reduction method for nitrate are virtually standard for testing these potassium chloride extracts because they are not subject to interferences from common soil constituents, are extremely sensitive, and are the common automated methods used for the determination of these ions in water and wastewater.

Extraction Procedure

Place 10 grams of soil sample in a 250 milliliter wide-mouth bottle and add 100 milliliters of 2M Potassium Chloride Solution (150 g KCL/L). Stopper the bottle and shake for one hour. Allow soil to settle, filter, and perform analysis on the liquid.

Method Summary and Results

Nitrate + Nitrite Nitrogen:

Nitrate Nitrogen is reduced to nitrite by a small tubular reaction coil made from cadmium metal. The nitrite formed, in addition to any nitrite originally present is determined as an azo dye at 540 nm following a reaction with sulfanilamide and N-(1-napthyl) ethylenediamine dihydrochloride. A range of 0.2 – 10 mg/kg Nitrate + Nitrite Nitrogen can be measured.

Ammonia Nitrogen:

Ammonia Nitrogen reacts with alkaline phenol and hypochlorite to form indophenol blue in an amount that is proportional to ammonia concentration. The color is intensified with sodium nitroferricyanide and the absorbance is measured at 660 nm. Precipitation by of calcium and magnesium hydroxides is prevented by the addition of EDTA. A range of 0.2 – 50 mg/kg Ammonia Nitrogen can be measured.

Conclusion

Precision was evaluated by repetitive analysis of standard solutions. Potential interferences will vary depending upon sample matrices that are specific to each individual sample and sampling locations. An alternative buffering system used for nitrate prevents potential carryover from the EPA ammonium chloride buffer into the ammonia test.

Introduction

Environmental Ion Chromatography (IC) has traditionally been applied to the analysis of anions in Drinking Water. Recently IC has been gaining acceptance for wastewater analysis. Typical anions analyzed by IC are: F, Cl, NO2, Br, NO3, HPO4, and SO4. We cannot argue that IC is a superior method compared to flow for the routine determinations of Chloride and Sulfate in multiple samples of relatively consistent or “clean” matrices such as drinking water, low solids ground waters, and select industrial discharges. With additional columns and detectors IC can also be used for the analysis of Ammonia, Cations, and trace metals such as Chromium VI.

Detection limits for IC are about 0.1 mg/l for clean samples such as drinking water. Once samples begin to contain high dissolved solids, dissolved organics, or an over abundance of on anion in relation to the others detection limits begin to suffer. This is caused by the dilutions necessary to eliminate interferences.

Interferences

The interferences that are common with IC rarely cause problems with flow chemistry methods. For instance:

The accurate analysis of low level Chloride in SWEX leachates by IC is prevented by the high dilutions necessary to dilute the Copper, Aluminum, and Iron Sulfates to levels that would not destroy the IC column. The flow chemistry method, however, is able to analyze the solution direct without dilution.

High Chloride concentrations interfere with the determination of trace amounts of Nitrite.

Chloride does not interfere with the flow methods.

Samples for Nitrate cannot be preserved because, even if adjusted to neutral prior to analysis, the high sulfate levels require sample dilution. Because preserved samples cannot be analyzed by IC, Nitrate samples must be tested within 48 hours. Sulfuric acid (added at appropriate levels) does not interfere with the flow methods.

Fluoride is not recommended for determination by IC at levels below about 1.0 mg/l. Although there are adjustments to overcome this problem, they require deviations from the normal procedure.

Orthophosphate methods by IC are very pH specific and plagued with interferences from trace metals. The undiluted detection limit of 0.1 mg/l suffers from any required sample dilutions. Total P cannot be determined. Flow chemistry methods for P are very sensitive and interferences are rarely present. Flow chemistry can determine all forms of P in solution.

Low level sulfate is difficult to determine in high chloride brine solutions because of dilutions necessary to bring responses on scale. If samples are analyzed without dilutions the high salt content typically causes retention time shifts causing sulfate to be identified by data systems as phosphate.

IC is an excellent method for CrVI, however, this analysis requires a separate column and detector than used for anions. Flow chemistry methods utilize the same type of detector as all other color methods.

Cyanide can be determined by IC using the same CrVI column, however, CN determinations require another detector.

Ammonia can be determined by IC, however, it is separated using different column, and different reagents as anions.

Conclusion

Ion chromatography provides an unsurpassed method for the determination of anions in drinking water, and other low TDS solutions. Flow chemistry uniquely allows automated analysis of difficult sample matrices for anions, as well as trace non metals, and non metals. Flow chemistry also allows the automation of distillations, digestions, extractions, and matrix cleanup.

Introduction

The EPA has defined Total Cyanide as the amount of cyanide ion liberated by distillation with a sulfuric acid – magnesium chloride solution followed by either colorimetric, titrimetric, or ion selective electrode measurement. The high heat and low pH of the distillation process have been demonstrated as causing low reproducibility and questionable accuracy, as well as being known to produce both false positive and false negative results depending upon the sample matrix.

Distillation

In the absence of interference, simple cyanides such as HCN, KCN, and NaCN are determined readily by each of the determinative steps, however, to determine “total” cyanide metal cyanide bonds must be broken and cyanide separated to produce simple cyanide. In all the approved EPA methodology this is accomplished by distillation from acid solution. Although distillation is assumed to eliminate, or at least minimize, most interferences the high temperature and strong acid solutions can potentially introduce significant positive or negative bias.

Thiocyanate and Sulfide are commonly occurring compounds in industrial waters and wastewaters, and are the most common and significant interferences in distillation based cyanide methods. While there are ways to remove sulfide, there are no adequate solutions for the removal of thiocyanate prior to analysis. The assumption that thiocyanate interference can be compensated for by the analysis of “Total Cyanide including Thiocyanate” and subtracting thiocyanate determined by a separate analysis depends on the accuracy of the cyanide measurement made in the presence of thiocyanate. Because thiocyanate can produce both positive and negative interferences, without an accurate analysis of each matrix one can never be sure whether to add or subtract.

Development of a Distillation Free Method for the Determination of Total Cyanide Recognizing that most interferences in accepted total cyanide determination methods stemmed from the distillation step that was supposed to eliminate interferences researchers developed a distillation free total cyanide method based on segmented flow – on-line UV digestion – gas diffusion with amperometric detection.[1] This novel method that quantitatively liberates most strong metal cyanide complexes, and accurately measures total cyanide from 0.002 mg/l to 5.00 mg/l at a rate of two minutes per sample is available from OI Analytical as Total Cyanide by UV-Digestion Amperometric Detection.

There are no known spot tests to detect thiocyanate, sulfite or thiosulfate accurately so no treatment can be applied to these samples. Recovery data indicates that cyanide can be accurately measured when analyzed by this non-distillation method, and that cyanide is not recovered when these same samples are distilled.

Conclusions

Approved total cyanide methods requiring a preliminary distillation step often produce unreliable data in complex real world samples. A method available from OI Analytical “ Total Cyanide by On-Line UV Digestion Amperometric Detection” solves most interference problems by producing reliable data in the presence of known interferences.

Although the method has not been EPA approved (EPA defines total cyanide as cyanide determined after distillation) it is still advantageous to analyze cyanide by a method known to produce correct results. Analyzing strictly for compliance purposes can result in serious errors including potential under-reporting when cyanide is actually present, or in over-reporting when cyanide is not even there.

[1] Ljiljana Solujic, Emil B. Milosavljevic, and Michael R. Straka, Analyst,1999, 124, 1255-1260

Today, everybody lives on a planet that has been battered by careless generations of the past. And we are still contributing to the earth’s eventual loss.

There are so many factors that could cause the planet’s demise. Water, air, land pollution, also, global warming. Global warming is defined as the increase in Earth’s temperature (on both its bodies of water and atmosphere). Scientists have also projected a continuance on the temperature increase. Most people believe that global warming has occurred because of many, harmful human activities. Partly, of course, it is true. But let us try to look at all the other factors that lead to this catastrophe - well, before you start to panic or fuss about being toasted alive. Know first, that most of them are myths!

The National Center for Policy Analysis in the United States has contested the common myth that humans are the primary cause of global warming. According to them, there is no known scientific consensus in the globe that establishes the fact that humans have made a major contribution to global warming. That sort of eases the burden on our conscience, doesn’t it?

There are so many myths about global warming that we are now led to think that they are facts. Let’s start busting them one by one:

1. Scientists all over the world agree that there is global warming. Myth. Although the earth’s surface is a bit warmer (by 0.3 degrees Celsius) since the 1800’s, no known scientific organization or group have agreed on that fact. In fact, scientists have recorded that over the past 18 years, there was no increase in earth’s temperature.

2. Humans caused global warming. Yet another myth. In fact, the burning of fossil fuels alone is not enough to cause earth’s global warming. And scientists agree on that fact. This is not a denial of man’s negligence rather, they dare to establish the fact that humans comprise just a small percentage on the cause of global warming.

3. There will be major natural catastrophes that will occur on the planet’s surface as the condition worsens. Myth number 3. Globally, scientists agree that no major hurricanes are on their way just because the earth’s temperature rose slightly. They also stated that the ocean levels would not rise to consume humankind. The sea levels have risen, yes. But this is just within normal bounds. Also, the ice caps are not melting at an alarming rate.

4. The government should act fast in global warming legislations. Myth. While it is true that the government should try to protect the planet from further damage, there should be no rush on our legislators. The effects of global warming haven’t reached the point where extinction should be feared. According to scientists, the government can wait until the year 2020 to cut on emissions, that is, if they want to wait until that year.

5. This next myth could be attributed to humankind’s denial of global warming. People say that global warming is not true because winters are much colder than what they use to be. Although more and more people are bundling up during the winter season, this does not erase the scientific fact that the earth’s surface is warmer now than in the previous years. But then again, there is no cause for panic.

6. The level of carbon dioxide on planet earth is at a staggering rate. Myth number 6 now. With or without the help of humans, the levels of carbon dioxide do rise and fall. And just so you would be appeased, carbon dioxide levels were much higher in the past when industrial developments were non-existent, than they are now.

7. The fluctuation of carbon dioxide levels cause global warming. Busted again! It is the other way around. Global warming can cause a shift in the levels of carbon dioxide.

8. Walking or using bikes would help save the planet from global warming. That is a false idea. Giving up all the gas-driven vehicles in the world would not make a major change on the earth’s temperature. Remember that it is the solar activities that cause major changes on the earth’s temperature and not carbon dioxide (or monoxide for that matter).

These are globally accepted ideas about global warming but are actually myths. Why don’t you go about and tell the ‘real facts’ to your loved ones. Start with the one beside you.

For more information now go to: http://www.solutionstoearthdestruction.com
http://www.stopearthdestruction.com/Change-Climate-Global-Warming.html

Understanding how fluorescent light tubes work begins with a basic understanding of how light is produced. The basic unit of light is the light photon, which is released by an atom when its electrons become energized. As you may know, electrons are negatively charged particles that orbit around an atom’s positively charged nucleus. Electrons have different levels of energy, and move when energy is gained or lost by the atom. When heat passes energy to an atom, electrons quickly shift to another orbital, and almost instantaneously jump back to their original positions. As the return jump takes place, extra energy can be released in the form of a light photon, thus creating light.

We have all heard that fluorescent bulbs are more efficient than incandescent ones, but why? Fluorescent bulbs utilize a more energy efficient process of producing the light that we see. The main difference between incandescent lighting and fluorescent lighting is in the process of stimulating the atoms. Incandescent light bulbs excite atoms through the introduction of heat, resulting in an excess of unused heat energy. Fluorescent light bulbs, on the other hand, utilize a chemical reaction to excite atoms without the same excess heat energy. Both types of bulbs create ultraviolet light, which is not visible to humans. But only fluorescent bulbs utilize a substance that converts the ultraviolet light to visible light, resulting in less wasted energy.

An ordinary fluorescent lamp is a tube shaped glass shell with an electrode on each end for connecting to the electrical source. Phosphor powder lines the inside of the tube, and a small amount of mercury and an inert gas are contained within it. When current flows to and between the electrodes, electrons travel the length of the tube, creating energy that converts part of the mercury to a gas. As some of the moving atoms and electrons make contact with the mercury atoms, electrons become excited, jump to a new orbital, and emit light photons as they return to the original orbital.

However, the light created by this chemical reaction is mostly in the ultraviolet range, which again is not comprehended by the human eye. The phosphor powder lining the fluorescent lamp serves the important purpose of converting the light to visible light. When the light photons created from the chemical reaction collide with a phosphor, the energy excites the phosphor’s electrons, thus emitting visible light. Phosphors are the reason for the white light we typically see from fluorescent lights.

The popularity of fluorescent lighting is on the rise as consumers are becoming more environmentally conscious and are looking for energy saving solutions. Once widespread mainly in large office buildings and schools, the fluorescent bulb is now manufactured with a standard bulb base making it compatible with more common home light fixtures.

About the Author: John Billington is the president and CEO of Five Rivers Inc., a leading online provider of home lighting and decor. For more information, please visit http://www.fiverivers.com.