Weight Watchers

Chemistry's all about the little things, literally, its the study of individual molecules and the transfer of fundamental particles. But what happens when we want to use it in our own, considerably bigger world? So the question today is, how many molecules of sucrose (sugar) am I going to have to use in order to sweeten my tea?

In order to answer this question we're going to have to think back a bit, to the mid 1800s to be precise, before which chemists worldwide had pretty much just done their own thing as far as mass went. At this point it was getting too difficult to compare anything so it was decided that since oxygen reacted with so much, the relative atomic mass would be the mass relative to 1/16th of that of oxygen.

And it worked well, as far as they thought, but fast forward to 1912 and isotopes were discovered, atoms with different amounts of neutrons in the nucleus, which basically meant that nobody knew how much anything weighed anymore.

Eventually after another 50 years of scratching their heads, chemists worldwide decided to use carbon 12 as the standard, leading to the current definition as the mass relative to that of 1/12th of carbon 12.

But how did any of that relate to our scarily massive world I hear you cry, why was any of that even relevant? I'll tell you.

At this point everything was fine in the world of chemistry, and then possibly the most important unit in the world of chemistry was invented, the mole. The mole isn't like a standard unit, because its a number, 6.022x10²³ to be precise, because this is the number of atoms in 12g of carbon 12. This is also known as Avogardo's constant because although he did not discover it he did come up with the general idea.

From this we can figure out the mass and number of moles in a substance by knowing the other from a very simple equation, number of moles= mass/Relative atomic mass

Therefore if I use 2 spoons of sugar (approximately 8 grams) which has a general relative molecular mass of 342 by doing 8/342 I know I have 4/171 of a mole or 1.41x10²² molecules of sugar to make the perfect cuppa.

Hopefully this has helped you to see how much is beneath the surface of what we can simply see, I hope this blog inspires you to question everything, because the only people who make great strides are those who dare to question what they are told to take for granted. Thanks for reading :)

Are Two Heads Better than One?

So today me, myself and I are going to ask the question are two heads better than one? What is multiple personality disorder? What causes it? And what is it like for the person? because even though it is said that teamwork makes the dream work, how much can one person really handle?

I had to do my research before writing this one because Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is so widely misunderstood, stereotyped and can happen in a variety of situations, causing it to tend to wildly vary from person to person.

Before I get into the post I would like to make it clear to readers that living with this condition can be a living hell, with no privacy and a constant fear of yourself in some cases. However with the proper treatment it can usually be almost completely overcome. Basically please, please, please try to emphasise with those who have to deal with this on a daily basis.

So lets try and get our heads round this then. You ready?

DID, as I said, can wildly vary from person to person, however nearly all cases have one thing in common, it is now generally accepted that DID stems from abuse during periods of development. If the abuse is severe with not enough time in between for the child to recover, they will begin to distance themselves, entering periods of a sort of self induced hypnosis, so it looks more like watching a TV to real life (this is called disassociation). This trance effectively blocks the child's own thoughts from them and stops them from being aware of the overwhelming amount of negative emotions.

During this period, if there is not a sufficient recovery time these disassociated thoughts and feeling may begin to cluster together with a common form e.g. sadness, anger etc. These may eventually bloom into full personalities inside the head, each with their own thoughts and memories, causing DID. Essentially the brain "fragments" in an attempt to protect itself.

People with DID have little to no control over what person will "come out" and when as in most cases the identities are not aware of one another and each will only have memories from times when they are the one in control. Because of this the person (who is always the dominant personality) may experience memory loss, blacked out periods and emotional detachment as a result of this natural defence mechanism.This can often be extremely distressing for the person who may be afraid and not understand what is going on and even for those around them as the multiple personalities may have different personalities, voices, sexes, ages and in some extreme cases even species. These other personalities or "Alters" can be triggered by various stimuli but a big one is a reminder of the abuse or events which led to their creation.

In most cases the alters have no communication with each other, but in some cases, people are actually able to communicate between alters in their own head. Even for those who this does not naturally come to may be able to communicate via a shared journal, recorded messages or other means of non instant communication.

Finally we will ask ourselves how much can a person handle and how exactly can this condition be treated. Cases have been recorded with as few as two or as many as a hundred alters which are usually adapted to the situation to bets cope with what is happening. As a result we do not really know the limits that our brains could handle as every cluster of feeling has the potential to develop, but I'm guessing that a safe bet would be the hundred mark because that many (even if they were only partially formed) would be easily enough to drive someone into mental illness.



There is not currently a cure for DID and as it is a natural process and a separation of the mind, not the brain, it is unlikely that there will ever be one. However long term treatment tends to be extremely successful if the patient has the commitment and willingness to comply. Such treatment may involve processes such as psychotherapy which attempt to "unfragment" the mind to a certain extent, or even just general therapy for the different personalities and inter alter communication in the hope that this will eventually let them coexist and function as a normal person does.
There are so many stereotypes about people with DID and an incredible amount of prejudgement towards these people, but what people fail to see is the incredible mechanics of the human mind, which even has the power to create whole new people and identities in order to protect itself. This extraordinary ingenuity of the mind is a perfect example of how powerful our brains really are, and why they allow even those in the direst situations to flourish truly exponentially.

I hope you enjoyed this post and have a better appreciation for those with DID, I know that I enjoyed making it and have personally learned a lot about about the mind in researching this. But I think that we can now all agree on the fact that in many situations, two heads are not necessarily better than one. Thanks for reading :)

ooohhhhh fwendddsss

Sorry there was no post last week guys, I was away over the weekend and didn't have time to to write one. However on the bright side it did give me a bit of inspiration for this week. As those who understood the reference in the title may have guessed, this weeks post is all about besties, baes and bffs.

So lets start at the beginning, when we're little we often feel no desire for friends, our parents are enough and sure its nice to have company but really our toys and family were enough to keep us company. Fast forward to later life and friends have become a pivotal part of our lives and social balance, without friends people can spiral into depression, loneliness and mental illness. Friends have the ability to give meaning to lives that people would otherwise deem to be menial, meaningless or even downright dreary.

But what is it about friendship that we find so comforting and key in our lives? Surely in this modern society it is more efficient and productive to be alone? Well no, having friends and acquaintances is a vital part in the development in a healthy human mind, as they allow us to let our guard down and not constantly be on edge, worried or intimidated. This most likely links back to our very roots, in the wild many animals live in groups, packs or prides to keep themselves safe. What we can take around this is that friendships, ironically, are based largely around giving and taking between the two people.

And as sociable people will know, the more time we spend with people, the better friends we become, as both parties give to and take from the relationship, and due to the strong mental bonds we form with these people, they will become our friends, and effectively the more this happens, the better friends they become.

Once again I would like to thank those who read this, I think of each of you as a friend and I hope that you enjoyed this weeks writing. I apologise for the lack of actual science and studies but the fact of the matter is that we don't need science for this, and some questions can be solved with nothing more than a good think about a topic. Thanks for reading :)

Dividing by 0

So this week I won't be talking about anything, in fact I will be talking about absolutely nothing. Naught. Zilch. Zero to be precise.

So zero means nothing. It is the number we use for when we do not have something, invented by the Sumerians along with pretty much all of the numbers, first used by a guy called Brahmagupta who used dots to symbolise the number, eventually becoming the number that we all know and love (or hate depending on the context) today.

But what zero is really is an absence, like a vacuum in science or a blank page in english, zero is what we have when we have nothing else, some even argue that it isn't even a number, but the real question is what is so difficult about dividing by zero?

we can add zero and add zero too other stuff because 1 + 0 = 1 and 0 + 1 = 1, and we can subtract where we enter the world of the negative numbers 0 - 1 = -1 and so on and so forth. We can even multiply by this phantom of the numerical world, which will always result in 0 because you really just have x amounts of nothing. We can even divide 0 by numbers for the same reason. But why is the division by this evil oval so special?

Imagine the chocolate bar analogy we were all taught back in our numeracy lessons, if our chocolate bar has six pieces and we divide them between three people then each will have two. But when you are dividing it between 0 people how much do they get each? None. Because there are no people.

Then why is it not just 0 I hear you ask? Well here is the problem: at its heart division is just glorified subtraction, how much do we have to subtract x from y to make 0, for example 8/2 = 4.
8 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 2 = 0 we have 4 twos therefore there are 4 twos in 8.
However if we divide 8 by 0 we get:
8 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 = 8

which will stretch on for forever, which is far more than I can type on this blog. No matter how many zeros you subtract you will never get less than 8, therefore proving that division by zero doesn't result in 0 or even infinity, it can literally just not be done.

Thank you for reading guys, I appreciate everyone who takes the time to read this and hopefully you find even maths as interesting as I do! Because at the end of the day everything around us can be simplified to maths. In the same way that Shakespeare wrote his sonnets, pure maths is the poetry of logical ideas and rational minds. Be sure to come back next week and thanks for reading :)

Come Fly With Me

Odds are we all spent large amounts of our childhood making paper airplanes, and as with everything, some were better than others, soaring through the classroom, swerving into people, the majestic origami artworks of young bored kids. But although we know that they fly, and that it’s fun to make them fly, has anyone ever stopped to consider how?

When a plane, paper or otherwise is in flight there are four main forces that are key in keeping it up in the air:

Thrust: this is the driving force behind the motion of a plane, the force we apply when we launch our beautiful creations at the nearest head/doorway. This pushes forward from the back of the plane and without it the planes simply wouldn't move.

Drag: This is the force that acts backwards on the plane as its mighty nose barges through the multitude of air particles in the way. Due to their very small surface area this tends not to be so much of a problem for paper planes as….

Gravity: let’s face it we all know what gravity is and that it pulls the plane down so here is a cool picture made to depict a complex theory about what gravity is to compensate.

Lift: Now this is a more complex thing, the wings on any professionally made plane are created to maximise lift by curving them and angling slightly upwards as shown, but any sort of wing can achieve it as it is the basic principal that as an object flies through the air, if it is aerodynamic and provides enough thrust then the air underneath the wings should be angled downwards and as an equal and opposite reaction the plane is forced upwards, hence the flaps on real planes, paper planes however do not have a constant thrust so this force only lasts a small amount of time before gravity does its thing.

Well that’s it for this week and I can say I was once again shocked by the complex forces that we have learnt to master even with inventions made of paper. Human ingenuity really is an incredible thing, I really appreciate everyone who reads this, it's great to know that other people are curious like me, see ya. :) 

Burn Baby Burn

What is fire? To some people, fire is beautiful and incredible due to its random flickering beauty. To others is is feared, a force for destruction capable of consuming forests and the carbon based life which thrives on our planet. At risk of sounding like a pyromaniac my second post will be about this deceptively complicated process and the true nature of flames.

To understand fire first we have to understand what it means to burn. To burn or to combust is a chemical process which it is why so many things can burn as it is not limited specifically to wood or any other one material. Combustion is basically a high temperature chemical reaction between the reactant (the fuel) and an oxidant which is usually oxygen. This process produces oxidised products which form smoke, depending on the amount of oxygen available these may react further or just be comfortable in their own state.

The oxidisation reaction which occurs when fire burns is extremely exothermic which means that it gives out heat, this means that it transfers heat energy to other particles in the fuel, so they also break down. This means that fires are self sustaining and is why they grow out of control so easily, there is a surprising number of types of combustion, however they all work on this basic principle. 

Now for the flame.

When the molecules absorb energy this "excites" the electrons. This basically means that the move up a level or two. The flame itself comprises of an extremely hot gaseous mixture in which the electrons have been excited a considerable amount and as they drop down to their normal energy level they release bursts of electromagnetic radiation as visible light which is why flames can be different colours as the more excited the electrons are, the more energy they release and the bluer the flame is. 

The shape of a flame is caused by convection currents of soot and this also accounts for the changing colour as you go further out from the base. In minimal to zero gravity e.g. in space (right) flames are spherical as gravity plays a factor in the formation of convection currents.

And there you have it :) I hope you find this as interesting to read as i did to research and it really shows how much we have left to discover. As we probably know fire was the first chemical reaction man learned to control back when they needed a way to cook their mammoth steaks, and yet we are only now coming to terms with the complicated quantum mechanics which govern the way in which one of our most defining tools is made. Our universe is more vast and complicated than we will ever comprehend and it will forever inspire questions. Thanks for reading.

Why are we groggy/tired when we wake up?

We’re going to start off with something which we’ve all experienced, why, when we wake up, are we often as tired or more tired than when we went to sleep? Let’s firstly think why do we need sleep? Well that’s something science has yet to answer definitively and at the moment we do not have a clear answer as it has been linked to development in children, restoration of the body and healing, conserving energy in times where we would use much less (due to factors such as a lower metabolism), and even that it was an evolutionary defence to keep animals out of a nocturnal predator’s way, and as it is likely to be a mixture of these and not any one specific function we probably won’t know for certain any time soon.

What we do know a fair amount about, is what actually happens in our heads happens when we sleep; this can be split into 4 stages. Stage 1 is light sleep, this is when we first fall asleep and we begin to calm down. Stage 2 is true sleep, our breathing and heartrate are slow, we then enter stages 3 and 4 which are REM or rapid eye movement sleep, where all the fun stuff like dreams and nightmares happen, these last for about 30 minutes at a time, although this decreases with age, and the whole cycle can take up to 110 minutes repeating every 90 minutes.

If we are woken up during the REM section of this cycle then we tend to feel groggy as our minds attempt to adjust from sleeping to being awake, effectively this feeling of grogginess otherwise known as “sleep inertia”  is caused as the brain is powering up, ready for the day. So if you want to beat that Monday morning feeling try getting up twenty minutes earlier, but that’s probably not going to happen. Anyhow now that the question has been answered goodbye until next week. Thanks for reading :)