Caroline+Klidonas

Periodic Table Article:

I guess my main concern with replacing the periodic table would be the way it would effect all of the trends dealing with things such as electronegativity, ionization energy, atomic radii, etc. These trends are so useful in the world of chemistry today, but if the periodic table was changed they would no longer be relevant. I had no idea that scientists were even considering a new periodic table, so this article was definitely news to me. I thought that Scerri's idea of triads was a very interesting, innovative view of the periodic table. In addition, I liked Jeff Moran's spiral because he put hydrogen at the center. This makes sense because hydrogen truly does not belong to any one group. As I'm sure many of my other peers would agree, the galaxy periodic table model is just plain wild! It seems to be the least user-friendly, and would certainly take awhile to understand.

Einstein: The Miraculous Years article:

I found this article to be very interesting because I never actually took the time to learn exactly what Einstein had discovered. I'd always heard great things about him of course, but never really knew why. The ideas he came up with are mind-blowing, especially his theory about relativity and the clock example that the author of the article described. It makes perfect sense, but how an individual can come up with something so abstract is unfathomable. Furthermore, Einstein stated that the speed of light is a constant, which we have been using in class as "c" to solve many equations for frequency, wavelength, and so forth. Einstein's contributions to science are incredible, and I have a newfound respect for him after reading this article.

Alternate Energy Article:

I read the article entitled "Turning the Tide..." This article described how off the coast of Portugal large, red, cylindrical tubes are being used to convert the movement of the waves and tide into electricity. It is actually enough to give electricity to 15,000 households. Kinetic energy, something we have discussed and learned about in class, is the kind of energy produced by the movement of the water that is being converted by the red devices into electricity. This new project isn't cheap, costing $13 million, but I was surprised to read that the devices are expected to last up to twenty years, especially when they are in the middle of the ocean having to bear the elements.

Turf Article:

The most prominent data mentioned in this article was what they found about the temperature increase on the turf. I can specifically relate to this because the rise in temperature is quite noticeable during field hockey. I had always heard random statements that "it's ten degrees hotter on the turf!" I guess there is some credibility in this statement! I would have never guessed that something as seemingly minor as dye would cause something to absorb the sun's energy so much more.