About half the bills presented to the Congress require some knowledge of science for their full understanding. Have your congressmen and congresswomen studied much science ? If they have not, how do they go about deciding how to vote ? Should your congresspersons be required to show that they have had (and passed) some high-school level science courses before they take office ?
Should anthropologists bepermiaed to exhume the bones of deceased Indians in order to obtain scientfic information? Even when their tribal descendants protest ?
A National Inventors Hall of Fame near Washington in 1984 had 52 members. Not one was a woman. Not: - Marie Curie, who discovered radium and won a Nobel Prize in physics in 1903.
- Lise Meitner, who discovered and named nuclear fission.
- Gladys Hobby, for the development of oxytetracycline (TerramycinTM).
- Carrie Everson for her oil flotation system for separating gold and silver from rocky ore.
- Eleanor Raymond and Maria Telkes, for major contributions to modern domestic solar heating.
- Jocelyn Bell, who shared in the discovery of the first pulsar.
- Maria Goeppert Mayer, who won a Nobel Prize in physics in 1963 for her work on the shell model of the atomic nucleus.
- Bette Graham, who invented Liquid Paper.
- Rosalind Franklin, who shared in the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA.
- Barbara McClintock, who won a Nobel Prize for her demonstration of the transfer of genetic information among a single individual's chromosomes.
what responsibility, if any, do sctenttsts have for anticipating or ameliorating the effects of their work on society?
An important fraction of all the scientists in the U.S. are involved in military- related research. Does your answer apply equally to them ? Is the engineer responsible for the consequences when his or her product fails (e.g., automobile manufacturers for faulty design of your car's brakes, or a chemical company for the carcinogenic effects of dioxin in its herbicide) ?
Is the legislator responsible for failure to legislate safety standards ( e.g., not requiring seat belts when most other states do- so you are killed in a collision, or failing to fund the clean-up of a probably hazardous waste dump ) ?
Is the voting citizen ever responsible for the consequence good or bad--of his or her vote ?
Are you responsible in any way for the consequences of your job? Suppose you find a well-paying job working on atomic weapons or building tanks for the military ?
Many scientists and engineers have refused to take such military- related jobs. Would you do so ? Do you approve of "whistle blowers"- workers in government or industry who, as an act of conscience, report shoddy work or dishonest practices by their fellow workers ?
Think about this... "Scientists should be on tap but not on top." Winston Churchill. Do you agree ?
world reserves of petroleum are being depleted exponentially. As exponentially exploding populations press against exponentially declining and irreplaceable natural resources, the world is steadily losing its capacity to feed itself.
How much longer may our petroleum, coal, and iron resources last? How much longer may a community's underground water supply (yours?) keep up with an exponential growth of population? How much longer may commercial whaling continue? Whatever the answer, one thing is certain if the use of the resource is growing exponentially: whatever the limit, half of the entire resource is used up in just one doubling time -- the last one. This mathematical certainty means that the depletion of a fixed natural resource will lead to a sudden crisis unless foresight and long-range planning are supported by political and economic action long before that painful last doubling.
Can you find examples of such foresight? Or examples of foresight that have led to effective planning ?
(See "Petroleum Depletion," p. 65 and "Tragedy of the Commons," p. 110.)
The energy of the sunlight falling on the roof and sides of your car on a sunny day is almost as great as the energy delivered by the engine! And it's free !
The yearly average of sunlight on a horizontal surface when the sun is shining is:
Connecticut 0.2 hp/m2
New Mexico 0.3 hp/m2
At 96 km/hr (60 mi/hr), an ordinary car engine doing 13 km/liter
(30 mi/gal) consumes energy at the rate of 100,000 W (watts) (134
hp [horsepower], turning 80,000 W (107 hp) into wasted heat and
20,000 W (27 hp) into mechanical work.
What are the prospects of a gasless car running successfully in New Mexico? In Connecticut? If it could run, why isn't such a car in general use? ( A car that drove across Australia on solar energy is described in "Fill 'er Up with Sunlight," W. H. Jordan, Smithsonian, Feb. 1988 and "The Lessons of Sunraycer," H. G. Wilson, P. B. MacCready, and C. R. Kyle, Scientific American, March 1989. )
In the farming areas of developing countries, human muscle power is often the most practical source of energy for producing electricity. For operating radios and televisions, battery packs and solar cells are prohibitively expensive, and small gasoline engines driving generators are unreliable and hard to maintain. But a person pedaling a bicycle can easily generate 35 watts, or about 0.05 horsepower (746 W = 1 hp), and a dynamo driven by someone pedaling a stationary bicycle is fairly easy for untrained people to repair.
If your input from food is 2400 kilocalories per day or 100 kilocalories per hour, your input from food, averaged over the day, is 420,000 joules per hour, which is 117 joules per second or 117 watts. Hence, your efficiency at pedaling a simple electric generator is
output 35 W
input 117 W"' 0.30 or 3A,
which is better than a gasoline engine for the length of time that you or a farmer can keep pedaling-presumably for hours.
The same pedal-power applied to a stationary bicycle can be rigged to pump water out of a well or to drag a plow across a field with a winch or to operate winnowing or grinding machines.
Sending powerful labor-saving machinery to developed countries may seem like a good idea, but it usually is not. The 18,000 tractors once shipped to Pakistan increased no crop yields there but simply put thousands of people out of work. Considerations like these guide the development of what is called "appropriate technology" for helping people in developing countries that have little or no access to Western technology but have a large under-used labor force.
Many parts of your body can be replaced by artificial parts ( prostheses ). Plastic hips, hearing aids, pacemakers for your heart, wigs, dental structures, and artificial arms and legs are only a few of the more familiar ones.
Many more parts of your body can be replaced by transplanting living, healthy organs from someone else. Cornea and kidney transplants, skin grafts, and blood transfusions are common. Entire hearts are now being transplanted from animals and from accident victims into people with terminal heart disorders. The need for transplant organs now far exceeds the number of donors becoming available. This situation raises tough questions.
As a first example, consider the problems raised by the scarcity of organs. Given two desperately needy patients, both about to die, how do you decide which one is to be saved by the one available heart from an accident victim Would you be willing to donate one of your two kidneys to save the life of a stranger ? Of a family member ?
Second, fresh transplant organs typically are acquired from the body of someone who has just died or been killed in an accident. Speed is important in performing the transplant, but how do you know the donor is truly dead ? Brain waves ? Heartbeat ? Breathing ? Who has the right to grant the use of a donor's organs? Relatives ( often unavailable )? The surgeon ( a heavy responsibility for one person who is a stranger ) ? A committee (hard to assemble quickly ) ? Although delay may cost the life of the recipient, haste also may cost the life and rights of the donor.
Third, in France a law decrees that at death all the organs and tissues of a person s body may be used for transplant purposes unless he or she objected in writing before the death. This measure makes available a copious supply of organs for transplant purposehearts, lungs, livers, kidneys, corneaand undoubtedly will save numerous lives. Do you think a government has the right to decide the use of your body at death, even for humanitarian purposes? On the other hand, isn't it selfish, if not almost criminal, to refuse the use of your dead body for humanitarian purposes ?
Fourth, it is becoming practical to implant an entire artificial heart into an ailing human (Barney Clark, 1983; William Schroeder, 1984). About 50,000 people a year stand to gain added years of life from the operation, which costs $100,000 (1988). But that same total investment of $5 billion would save many more than 50,000 lives if it were invested in measures to prevent heart disease in the first place. (See "Tobacco," p. 8.)
In 1983, 172 transplants of natural hearts actually were performed in the U.S. As many as 5000 people could have benefited from the operation. The available organs often go to those who can pay. Should people be allowed to die for lack of money to pay for medical treatment ?
A new and practical use for a transplant: Perhaps in jest, it has been proposed that people liable to be kidnapped (e.g., important business people or public figures) have tiny radio transmitters implanted somewhere in their bodies so that they and their kidnappers can be tracked !
Think about this... Putting fluorine into the public drinking water supply reduces cavities in your teeth, but it is medication without your consent. Should it therefore, be stopped ?
Does a garden fertilized with synthetic chemical fertilizer grow as good a crop as one fertilized with natural plant and animal material ?
adapted - edited - modified from --
source:
one minute readings: issues in S-T-S
Richard F. Brinckerhoff addison-wesley -- 1992
Air Conditioning
After World War II, engineers developed techniques for cooling large
volumes of air below its dew point to condense and remove its water
vapor inexpensively. Mechanical air conditioning was born, and it
revolutionized life in the South.
In the 1960s, for the first time since the Civil War, the South experiened a net in-migration and the prosperity associated with the Sun Belt began. Along with prosperity came isolation and a loss of regional flavor. It can be argued that, along with other manufacturers of air conditioners, General Electric Company has had a more unsettling effect on the South than General Sherman did during the Civil War.
In what ways is an electric fan better than an air conditioner? How do people elsewhere in hot, humid climates manage to stay comfortably cool ?
Would the widespread use of air conditioners be a sensible response to an impending greenhouse effect ? Why ? ( Consider how an air conditioner works. It uses CFCs. As it cools indoor air, it heats outdoor air. )
Solar home heating and solar water heating have become economically practical in many parts of the country. Imagine that your house or apartment has been equipped with one or both of these. A tall apartment building is put up next door, blocking half the sunlight. Should you have any legal recourse ? ( For half the sunlight, substitute one- quarter--or all.)
The apartment building has tennis courts alongside. The courts are lit at night, lighting your bedroom brilliantly and making it hard for you to sleep. Should you have any legal recourse ? ( For tennis courts, substitute a shopping center or a mobile home park. ) ( See "Scattering of Light: Light Pollution," p. 89. )
The nearby airport adds a runway that leads planes directly over your house at take-off, making conversation and sleep difficult. The maximum loudness is 100 decibels, 10 times a day. ( See "Loud Sounds," p. 87. ) Should you have any legal recourse ?
Finally, close to the other side of your house, oil ( or other valuable mineral ) is discovered on your neighbor's land. The deposit presumably extends underneath your home at a depth of 3 meters (30 meters, a kilometer), but you do not want it mined. How deep into the earth does your ownership extend ?
If you argue that the homeowner has a right to stop each of the four threats to his or her comfort, consider each situation from the opposite point of view. Should your plans to build a big apartment house be blocked by the existence of one neighbor's modest solar panel ? Or your plans to play tennis at night be blocked by someone else's desire to have a bedroom on the same side of the house ? Should the airport of an entire town be thwarted by one family's dislIke of noise ?
In resolving any of these questions, the measurement of heat, light, or sound is important.
Winston Churchill once said: We shape our buildings and then they shape us. ( See "High-Voltage Power Lines," p. 90. ) Mechanics
Issue 46 -- Science and Athletic Records
The laws of science have always had a lot to do with athletics. The understanding of those laws continues to result in improved performances and steadily broken world records. Consider the idea of force. The study of how forces act makes it clear that:
Further use of the various laws of physics, chemistry, and biology continues to push human performance to still greater limits. Think about this... were is the best area in your state on which to "go back to the land, "raising your own food, living simply, and becoming as nearly indmient as possible from the tools, amusements, and energy sources of twentieth-century America ? If the pioneers did it couldn't you do it today ?
Though too much ozone in ground-level smog is a health hazard, too little ozone in the upper atmosphere is a health hazard too !
The ozone layer in the upper atmosphere ( 12 to 50 kilometers up ) filters out all the solar ultraviolet light shorter than 3000 Angstroms. Any significant destruction of the ozone layer will, therefore, result in an increase in cancer-causing and plant-killing ultraviolet radiation at ground level.
Ozone ( 03 ) is highly reactive and is destroyed by the nitrous oxide ( N2O ) and carbon dioxide ( CO emitted by stratosphere-flying planes ) ( for example 3N2O + O3 ~ 6NO) and by chlorine from Freon spray-can propellants and refrigerants, such as CFC-l3 and CF2C-l2 ( called chlorofluoro-carbons, or CFCs for short). In sunlight, Freon breaks down to release chlorine, which catalyzes the reaction 203 = 302. Since each chlorine atom acts as a catalyst and therefore is not used up, it can go on wreaking havoc in the ozone layer for as long as 70 to 100 years.
Continuing destruction of ozone will result in an increase in serious skin cancers and birth defects, kill plankton in the oceans, reduce the yield of many crops, and may even destroy forests and alter climate. The effects probably will take years, perhaps decades, to be fully apparent. By then, the damage will be irreversible.
There is no agreement even among experts on how much destruction of ozone results in how much increase in ground-level ultraviolet light or how destructive any given increase in ultraviolet light would be. Extensive study of the problem is urgently in order, but any agreed-on actions will take years--even decades--to have an effect. It already may be too late to avert senous consequences.
In view of these facts, what do you think should be done-and by whom ? International treaties ? Unilateral restraint by Freon producers ? Nothing? (See "Absorption of Radiation: Greenhouse Effect," p. 92.)
Progress is being made. In 1987, the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer was signed. Since then, 66 countries have ratified it. But only 20 of them are from developing countries, among them India and China, which have over one-third of the world's population. Like other developing countries, which together produce only 3 percent of the CFCs, India and China cannot afford the higher price of CFC substitutes. They want the industrial countries that created the ozone hole in the first place to assist them in devising non-CFC technologies.
Despite widespread agreement among the treaty signatories, however, the U.S. until recently has opposed the creation of any such fund. The fear was that it would set a precedent of providing environmental aid money to developing countries and would lead to more demands to help face such looming problems as global warming. Our failure ( currently 1990 ) to share in the proposed fund risks the future of the ozone layer Should the U.S. support such a fund ?
Think about .....
. Should science courses be required
for obtaining high school (or college) diplomas ? why ?
1. Some numbers are especially lucky for some people.
2. Because of their knowledge, scientific researchers have a power that makes them dangerous.
3. The positions of the sun, moon, planets, and stars have at least some influence on human affairs (astrology).
4. It is likely that some of the (UFO's) that have been reported are really space vehicles from other civilizations.
5. Space shots have caused changes in our weather.
6. Science tends to break down people's ideas of right and wrong.