Science & The 2014 World Cup Ball

Despite all of the buzz surrounding the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, scientists are keeping a very close eye on the ball.

As NPR reported, this year's ball, known as the Brazuca, has been the subject of intense and careful study, especially after the unpredictable performance of of its predecessor in the 2010 tournament in South Africa.

Though traditional soccer balls have 32 black and white panels, the rule book doesn't actually specify how many panels are on the ball or what shape the panels will be. So, in 2006, the maker of the World Cup balls, Adidas, started producing balls with fewer panels. The ball for the South Africa World Cup in 2006 just had eight. 

While Adidas claimed the new ball was state-of-the-art and rounder, John Eric Goff, a physicist at Lynchburg College in Virginia, explained that it got off to a rough start.

"When the players would try to kick the ball straight...there would be an erratic knuckling effect that would take place." 

This would infuriate goalkeepers, one calling it it a "supermarket" soccer ball. After more complaints started filing in, NASA's Ames Research Center in California got involved. After taking a look at the roundness of the 2010 ball, Ames found that the difference in the number of panels had changed the seams between the panels, and that in turn radically altered the ball's behavior. 

Bring on the 2014 World Cup, and Adidas has changed the design of the ball again. Now, it appears that the new ball has longer, deeper seams that keep it from swerving.



Read NPR's full report on the World Cup soccer ball here.

Summer Science: Magic with Milk

Beat the heat with this great summer science experiment! Grab these typical household items and start a journey full of exploration and discovery. In this popular Dr. Mad Science experiment, you and your young scientists will observe how milk reacts with food coloring and soap.

Here's what you'll need:

• Milk (it is recommended that you use 2%)
• A bowl
• Food coloring
• Q-tips
• Dish Soap (it is recommended that you use Dawn)

Now let's get started:

1. Start by filling the bowl with milk and waiting for all the bubbles to go away.
2. Put a large amount of food coloring in the center of the milk.
3. Take Q-tips and dip them into the dish soap. Then put them in the middle of the bowl for 15 seconds.
4. Watch as the food coloring expands on the surface of the milk.

So what about the science? Well here it is: milk contains protein and really small amounts of fat in it. Both proteins and fat are sensitive to chemical changes. The chemicals in the dish soap weaken the chemical bonds that hold the protein together in the milk solution and the food coloring allows us to visually see the changes in the protein molecules. Likewise, the soap molecules cause the fat in the milk to mix and swirl until the fat has been distributed across the entire amount of the milk.

Watch Dr. Mad Science do it!

It's Summertime: Melting Ice Experiment

It's that time of year again: school's out for summer! That means your kids are at home and when they're not away at camp or outside enjoying the warm weather, they need something to do. So why not work a little learning into their schedule?

Give this ice melting experiment a try and you'll stay cool in the summer heat. Here's what you'll need:

• Bowls or Dishes (for making the ice)
• A large tray with sides
• Salt
• Liquid watercolors or food coloring
• Droppers or a spoon

Once you have your materials together, get started!

1. Fill all of your bowls or dishes with water and freeze them overnight. Shallow bowls work great with this experiment!
2. The next morning, loosen the ice in the bowls with a little bit of warm water and place them face down on your tray. A large baking sheet that has sides will work fine.
3. Give your kiddos a small bowl of their own salt - and regular table salt works great - and have them sprinkle it over the top of the ice domes.
4. Once you start to see that the salt is melting the ice and little ravines and crevices are forming, bust out the liquid watercolors. (Or water dyed with food coloring.)
5. Put your liquid watercolors in small jars and place one dropper in each.
6. Squeeze the watercolors on the ice in small sections and don't be afraid to use more than one color on an ice dome.
7. Observe how the color highlights all of the ravines, crevasses and tunnels that are forming as the ice melts. 
8. Discuss what reaction takes place that makes the ice melt in the way that it does. 

Once you're all finished, go outside and check out the ice light catchers you created while you watch them melt some more. Throw in another discussion about the differences in the ways that the ice melts when salt is applied and when heat from the sun is applied. 

The Artful Parent did this experiment with her girls. Check out how it went!

Teach for America's Joe Koglin Leaves Corporate America for the STEM Classroom

STEMblog

Joe Koglin of Teach for America's Greater New Orleans Corps class of 2011 shared his story with STEMblog and we want to share it with you! After working in finance for a multinational conglomerate for six years, Koglin made the bold decision to leave corporate America for the classroom. 

As he writes in his post on STEMblog, "While my position had it all from the outside - the title, salary, and gravitas that comes with many STEM jobs - I craved something which would allow me to use my skills to help directly empower people and communities." 

After enough consideration to drive anyone crazy, Koglin wondered if he was even qualified to step into a classroom. "The answer was a resounding yes," he writes. "The vast majority of experiences from the STEM private sector transfer into classroom leadership." 

Koglin couldn't be more right. Or could he? He goes on to say that, "these skills are so incredibly needed in our country's classrooms." Yes, he just got even more right. 

Koglin's journey from financial suit to empowering STEM teacher is a story we need to hear more often in America. As we strive to be more competitive in STEM fields, it's STEM enthusiasts like Koglin who can help make that happen.

"STEM teachers are taking the societal changes they've encountered while teaching and tackling them head on. For STEM enthusiasts who want to change the world through innovation, there couldn't be a better place to start than the classroom."

Read Koglin's entire guest post on STEMblog.

Scientists Create World's Smallest 3-D Glasses

SALON.com

The world's smallest 3-D glasses belong to a praying mantis. That's right, researchers at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom have created some pretty nifty bug glasses specifically for the eyes of praying mantises. 

Reported by Sarah Gray on SALON.com, the goal of this buggy experiment is to better understand three dimensional (3-D) vision. Analyzing how praying mantises see in 3-D can help scientists understand the evolution of 3-D vision, as well as help develop and implement 3-D vision and depth perception in robotics. 

I know what you're thinking: So why use praying mantises in a study like this? Well, it turns out that the stick-legged bugs have vision very similar to our own. According to Newcastle University, praying mantises are the only invertebrates known to have 3-D vision. Other animals that possess this same type of vision include cats, horses, sheep, macaques, rabbits, toads and barn owls, as stated in the SALON.com article.

To perform the experiments, which involve presenting 3-D stimuli and moving targets in front of the mantises, the team uses beeswax to attach the tiny spectacles to the insect. With the glasses on, the mantises are placed in front of a computer screen for the series of tests. Once the experiment is over, the glasses are removed and the mantises are placed back in their living space to feed on crickets - what a life!

To learn more about the experiment and to hear from the researchers themselves, see the full SALON.com report.

A video of the experiment can be viewed below:

What to do with All Those Leftover Peeps: A Dissolving Experiment

Easter has passed and if you're joining in a candy coma, we don't blame you. But if you don't think you could stuff another Peep in your mouth if your life depended on it, we don't blame you there either. Do you wish you could just make those sugar-filled, fluffy marshmallows disappear? Well consider your wish granted: cue the dissolving peep experiment.

Here's what you'll need:

• Water
• Vinegar
• Apple Juice 
• Soda 
• Laundry Detergent 
• Five Clear Glasses
• Five Peeps of your Choice

Once you've gathered the goods, it's time to get started.

1. Start by arranging your glasses on a tray. Add one Peep and one of your five liquids/solvents to each glass and label them. 
2. Now for the hard part: waiting. As you wait to see what will happen to your Peeps, write down predictions - what you think will happen and why.
3. After three hours, check on your marshmallow friends and record what kind of changes you see. At this point, the only thing you should be noticing is color change.
4. After 16 hours, take a peek at your Peeps again and see what's changed. More color change should be occurring, though you might not notice any dissolving yet.
5. On day two, you'll start to see signs of the Peep in the vinegar dissolving, and b day three, you'll notice the Peep in the apple juice starting to dissolve.
6. End your experiment on day four (or keep on keepin'-on if you wish!). Carefully take each Peep out of their respective cup and observe what's left of them.
7. Record what you observe (amount of Peep dissolved, color change, shape change, texture change, etc.) and have your kiddos write down why they think the Peeps reacted differently in each solvent.

If there's too many Peeps in your house for you to count at this point, do the experiment again and try out different solvents!

Enrollment in STEM Booms Since Recession

Good news for STEM advocates: a new study suggests that undergraduates at four-year institutions have become much more likely to study STEM fields, especially engineering and biology.

As reported by Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed, the new study suggests that STEM enrollments are growing while professional field enrollments (especially business and education) are shrinking, contrary to what public discussion might suggest.

The new research was presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association last weekend and is by professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania Jerry A. Jacobs and professor of education at the University of California at Los Angeles Linda Sax.

Though much of the data normally discussed on student enrollment patterns is pulled from the National Center for Education Statistics, this new study is based in large part on the "freshman survey" conducted annually by UCLA on a national pool of freshman at four-year institutions. Jaschik points out that in their paper, Jacobs and Sax state that this data set enables them to spot trends much earlier than is possible with the federal database, since that information is based on graduation (which comes later than enrollment) and because government cuts have led to delays in federal data.

Using data collected by UCLA, Jacobs and Sax write that enrollment in STEM fields steadily declined between 1997 and 2005, hitting a low in 2005 of 20.7 percent. While modest gains appeared in 2006 and 2007, significant increases started to show up in 2008. The percentage of freshmen planning to major in STEM fields increased from 21.1 percent in 2007 to 28.2 percent in 2011, just as the recession was prompting students and families to focus on job opportunities in various fields. That represents a 48 percent increase in just a few years.

Read Jaschik's entire article to find out how the growth in STEM fields played out across the subjects and if the gender gap so commonly discussed in conjunction with STEM fields changed during the boom.

Three Egg-cellent Science Experiments for Spring!

Easter is just around the corner, but before you start dyeing eggs, experiment with them first! Here are three egg-cellent science experiments from science-sparks.com just in time for spring.

Eggs always break so easily. Or so you thought. To make an egg unbreakable, all you need is cling wrap! Wrap the egg in cling wrap, place it in your palm and close your hand around it so your fingers are completely wrapped around the egg. Squeeze as hard as you can. The egg should remain in one piece and your hands should stay clean. If you're feeling bold, do the same thing without the cling wrap.

Age-old bouncy balls don't have anything on bouncy eggs. To make an egg bounce, place the egg in vinegar for a couple of days to remove the shell. Be careful when you remove the shell and wash the egg - if you puncture the membrane, it will break. To bounce it, drop it carefully from a low height and the egg should bounce back up from the surface. Try bouncing it on different surfaces. Better yet, try to figure our at what height the egg breaks.

Honey, I shrunk the egg! For this experiment you'll need two eggs, water, two glasses, vinegar, sugar and a pin. Get started by removing the shell of the egg after soaking it in vinegar for at least 24 hours as you did when creating a bouncy egg. After you've exposed the membrane, make up a concentrated sugar solution by dissolving sugar into water. Place one egg in water and the other in the sugar solution. Let them sit for 24 hours. You'll notice that the egg in the sugar solution looks much smaller than the one in the water. Prick the egg that was in the water glass with a fine needle and watch a jet of water shoot out! Put the shrunken egg in water and watch as it grows and reabsorbs water (this may take a few hours). 

For seven more eggy experiments, check out the Science Sparks website.

Happy Pi Day! But it's also Einstein's Birthday...

Today is March 14, or 3/14; infamously known as Pi Day. Number aficionados across the country are chowing down on pie and discussing the importance of numbers as we speak. But did you also know it's Albert Einstein's birthday as well?! The theoretical physicist was born on March 14, 1879, in what was then the Kingdom of Wurttemberg in the German Empire.

As Andrea Peterson of The Washington Post states in her refresher course, pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Most of us learned the abbreviated 3.14 number in grade school, but pi can actually be calculated our infinitely without a discernible repeating pattern. The number is both irrational and transcendental. 

Einstein started working at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. in 1933 and remained associated with the institution until his death in 1955. Princeton now celebrates Einstein as part of an elaborate "Pi Day weekend" featuring walking tours, pie judging, pie throwing, a pizza competition, and an Einstein lookalike contest, among many other activities.

National Inventors Hall of Fame to Induct Father of 3D Printing!

You'd probably be surprised to find out that 3D printing has been around for decades. Yes, decades! Though a lot of buzz has surrounded 3D printing as of late, the first somewhat functional 3D printer prototype was built back in 1984. This year, the printer's inventor, Charles Hull, is being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

In the U.S. Patent Office's eyes, this puts Hull up there with inventors like Thomas Edison, Jobs/Woz, the Wright Brothers, Einstein, and Eli Whitney.

As Greg Kumparak of techcrunch.com reported earlier this week, Hull had a realization in 1984: if you pointed a highly focused UV light at a special, goopy material (referred to as a "
photopolymer"), the material would instantly turn solid wherever the light would touch. If you did this repeatedly, layer by layer, you could essentially "print" an object into existence. Cue the gospel choir: Hull dubbed the process "stereolithography," and 3D printing was born.

It's not surprising that 3D printing has come a long way since 1984. New techniques combined with easier-to-use software and cheaper hardware have made objects printed much stronger. And as advancements continue to happen, Hull finds himself in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Other inductees include Frances H. Arnold; Richard DiMarchi; Mildred Dresselhaus; Ashok Gadgil; Howard Aiken, Benjamin Durfee, Frank Hamilton, and Clair Lake; George Antheil and Hedy Lamarr; William Bowerman; Otis Boykin; David Crosthwait; and Willis Whitfield.

All of the inductees will be honored during a special Induction Ceremony scheduled to take place on May 21 at the U.S. Department of Commerce's United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). At that same time, The National Inventors Hall of Fame will unveil the new National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum located on the USPTO campus.