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The Scientific Companion, 2nd ed.: Exploring the Physical World with Facts, Figures, and Formulas
The Scientific Companion, 2nd ed.: Exploring the Physical World with Facts, Figures, and Formulas
The Scientific Companion, 2nd ed.: Exploring the Physical World with Facts, Figures, and Formulas
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The Scientific Companion, 2nd ed.: Exploring the Physical World with Facts, Figures, and Formulas

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". . . infuses into the reader the conviction that science is exciting and can be understood by everyone." --American Scientist

This new edition of the critically acclaimed Scientific Companion offers a comprehensive introduction to the physical sciences: physics, astronomy, chemistry, geology, meteorology, biology, atmospheric science, and oceanography. Emiliani traces the evolution of the universe from the Big Bang to the present, explaining the nature of the galaxy, the Earth, inorganic and organic matter, and the development of scientific thought.

More than 50 new illustrations appear throughout--from stunning aerial shots of Earth's topography to striking close-ups of the moon provided by NASA. Hundreds of additional photos, charts, maps, and diagrams, plus 35 tables of the most essential facts, figures, and formulas--from Planck's constant to the laws of thermodynamics, from quantum energy levels to Avogadro's number--make The Scientific Companion an ideal desktop reference. Written for the layperson, sufficiently detailed for students, it is the only book of its kind to bridge the gap between works of popular science and college textbooks.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 21, 2008
ISBN9780470302873
The Scientific Companion, 2nd ed.: Exploring the Physical World with Facts, Figures, and Formulas

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    The Scientific Companion, 2nd ed. - Cesare Emiliani

    Introduction

    It is likely that when the human brain achieved its present size and complexity, about 125,000 years ago, humans began asking themselves questions about the world surrounding them. Questions like what is the sun? What makes the rain? Who makes the wind blow? Who makes lightning? Who made this world? What happens when one dies?

    None of these questions could be answered, and so people invented gods. The most imaginative were the ancient Greeks, who, at the time of Homer and Hesiod, had a god, a goddess, or at least a nymph for practically everything. The very same Greeks, however, began finding answers to some of the questions, which reduced the number of divinities still needed. In the 25 centuries since then most questions have been answered. We now know what the sun is and why it shines, we know why the wind blows, how rain is made, and why lightning strikes. We also have a pretty good idea of what happens when we die (but do not want to admit it to ourselves).

    Most of the answers about the nature of our physical world and the life in it have come only very recently, during this century and, more particularly, during the past few decades. Only the ultimate question—why did this world come into existence — is still up in the air (see Chapter 14) and may even be inherently unanswerable.

    Our world is an incredibly coherent system endowed with a rich braid of evolutionary paths from its fiery beginning 15 billion years ago to the evolution of humans on Earth. The recent discoveries make it now possible, for the first time in history, to construct an evolutionary model of the physical universe and of the life in it that fits all observations and does not violate any of the laws of nature. The dream of the ancient Greeks has come true.

    Yet, modern societies still react to their environment and to each other as though nothing had happened. Ancient gods and discredited symbols still hold an amazing sway on the human mind and still cast one society against another into endless conflict. Restructuring of ethical, political, and religious thinking within the framework of the universal system that has been revealed to us now appears to be both a noble purpose and a prime necessity. This effort, if accompanied by a worldwide educational drive, will help resolve some of the more vexing problems that beset our modern world. Indeed, understanding the system will help humans manage that minuscule but vital part that they control—Planet Earth.

    The purpose of this book is not only to describe how our world originated and evolved, but to provide the reader with a quantitative basis and a feeling for the dimensions involved. This approach will enable the reader to reach a personal appreciation of the awesome beauty and wondrous workings of the system of which we all are part, and to draw from it both comfort and guidance.

    CESARE EMILIANI

    Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

    CHAPTER 1

    The Range of Space and Time

    We move through space. We live through time. Our bodies have mass. These are basic quantities, space—time—mass. How are they measured?

    Until 200 years or so ago, each country, and often each province or even each city, had its own system of measurement. This was of course very confusing, especially to merchants and travelers. So, in the year 1790 the French Assembly ordered the French Academy to come up with a system that everybody could use. The Academy complied and developed the metric system, which was adopted in France on November 2, 1801. It has been adopted by most other countries since then.

    The unit of mass in the metric system is the kilogram, which is just about the mass of 1 liter of water.

    The unit of length is the meter, which is about 3 feet, 3 inches.

    The unit of time is the second, which is close to the length of a heartbeat.

    We will use the metric system throughout this book. If you are not familiar with it, you will learn it as you go along. It is important, however, to associate directly the metric name with the quantity it represents (for example, kilogram to the mass it represents and meter to the length it represents). You should not try to translate a metric unit into the corresponding English unit and then associate that unit with the quantity it represents. Learning the metric system is like learning a foreign language—direct association is important. There is a conversion table in the Appendix to help you.

    LENGTH

    The unit of length in the metric system is the meter. The French Academy defined the meter as one forty-millionth (1/40,000,000) of a circle drawn on the earth’s surface and passing through the poles. Any such circle consists of two opposite meridians, one running from the North Pole to the South Pole and the other one running from the South Pole to the North Pole on the opposite side of the earth.

    The modern definition of meter is the distance traveled by light in empty space in 1/299,792,458 of a second, which derives from the fact that light travels in empty space at the speed of 299,792,458 meters per second. Because the speed of light in empty space never changes, this is a good way to define the meter.

    The meter is a nice unit to measure people, furniture, and houses. For lengths more than a city block, the kilometer is used. One kilometer is equal to 1000 meters.

    For smaller lengths, the centimeter is used, which is equal to one-hundredth (1/100) of a meter, or about the width of the fingernail on your little finger.

    For even smaller lengths, the millimeter is used, which is equal to one-thousandth (1/100) of a meter, or about the width of a tooth on the margin of a postage stamp.

    For really small lengths, the micrometer is used. This is equal to one-millionth (1/1,000,000) of a meter. It is the length of a small bacterium. We cannot see bacteria without a powerful microscope, which is too bad because bacteria can be charming, and we owe them a lot for having developed the basic biochemistry of life some four billion years ago.

    TIME

    The unit of time is the second. The second was originally defined as 1/86,400 of a mean solar day, simply because there are 86,400 seconds in one day (24 hours × 60 minutes × 60 seconds = 86,400 seconds).

    The length of the day, however, changes slightly as the earth moves around the sun and also from year to year, so now the second is defined more precisely as the time that an atom of cesium-133 takes to vibrate 9,192,631,770 times. This number was chosen so as to make the new second essentially identical to the old one based on the length of the day.

    For events that last a very short time, the millisecond (1/1000 of a second) or the microsecond (1/1,000,000 of a second) are used.

    For longer times, one uses the minute (60 seconds), the hour (60 minutes, equal to 3600 seconds), the day (24 hours, equal to 86,400 seconds), or the year (365.242193 days, equal to 31,556,925.511 seconds).

    The number of seconds in one year is a convenient number to remember because it keeps coming up here and there. However, you should not try to memorize this or any other complicated number. It takes too much effort, and then when you try to remember, the chances are that you will remember wrong. You should, instead, try to remember a reasonably close approximation. In this case, 31.5 million will do. For the speed of light, another worthy number to know, 299,792,458 is so close to 300,000,000 that all you need to remember is 300 million. Of course, you must also remember 300 million of what (meters, in this case).

    MASS

    The unit of mass in the metric system is the kilogram, which is the mass of a piece of platinum-iridium metal preserved at Sèvres in France.

    This mass is essentially the same as the mass of 1 liter of water, which was the original definition of kilogram (the switch was made because different waters may have slightly different densities and therefore different masses for the same volume of 1 liter). The liter is a measure of volume or capacity. It is equal to 1000 cubic centimeters, which is the volume of a cube that is 10 centimeters on each side. It is a little more than 1 quart (1 quart plus 2 ounces). The kilogram is a nice unit for groceries and stuff; but for big masses, like the amount of oil carried by a tanker, one uses the metric ton, which is equal to 1000 kilograms. It is the mass of 1 cubic meter of water. In the English system, there are two types of ton, the short ton, which is equal to 2000 pounds, or 907.185 kg, and the long ton, which is equal to 2240 pounds, or 1016.047 kg.

    For small masses, such as pills and things, one uses the gram, which is one-thousandth (1/1000) of a kilogram. An aspirin pill is about one-third of a gram.

    For even smaller masses, one uses the milligram, which is 1/1000 of a gram, or one-millionth (1/1,000,000) of a kilogram. It is about the mass of a mosquito.

    For really minute masses, one uses the microgram, which is 1/1000 of a milligram, or one-billionth (1/1,000,000,000) of a kilogram.

    All these metric units are listed in Table 1.1, which also shows the symbol for each unit. Among these you will notice the symbol μ, for micro- or one-millionth (1/1,000,000); μ, pronounced mu, is the lower case letter m in the Greek alphabet. Letters of the Greek alphabet are used for scientific symbols, and we will learn them as we go along. A complete list appears in the Appendix.

    Table 1.1 also shows the exponential notation for the given fractions. Exponential notation is often called scientific notation, although all notations used in science are scientific. The exponential notation is very convenient because it avoids having to write a lot of zeros when dealing with numbers that are either very large or very small.

    Table 1.2 shows how the exponential notation works. Notice that the negative exponent is used when the number with the exponent is at the denominator. For instance, because 100 is equal to 10², 1/100 is equal to 10–2; because 1000 is equal to 10³, 1/1000 is equal to 10–3; and because 1 million (1,000,000) is equal to 10⁶, one-millionth (1/1,000,000) is equal to 10–6.

    The convenience of the exponential notation can be seen from a few examples. For instance, the mass of the sun is 2 × 10²⁷ tons. If you had to write this out, it would be 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Clearly, it is much easier to write 2 × 10²⁷, which tells you right away how many zeros there are (27) and, therefore, how big the number is.

    Other numbers are so small that they also are difficult to write out. For instance, the mass of a hydrogen atom is 1.7 × 10–27 kilograms. If you had to write it out, it would be 1.7/1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Again, 1.7 × 10–27 is much better because it tells you right away how many zeros there are in the denominator (27) and, therefore, how small this number is.

    TABLE 1.1. Metric Units

    TABLE 1.2. Powers of Ten

    a Any number raised to the zero power is equal to 1.

    You will encounter in this book many numbers that are either very large or very small; you will become familiar with the exponential notation as we progress. Meanwhile, look at Table 1.2, which shows at a glance how the exponential notation works.

    The great advantage of the metric system is that it uses powers of 10, which makes calculations easier. The meter per se is no better unit than the foot or the cubit, both of which were so popular in antiquity. As a matter of fact, a unit of length much better than the meter would be the foot, if it were redefined on the basis of the speed of light in vacuo (symbol c) which is constant. Setting c = 10⁹ and the foot = 1, the foot would become equal to 29.997 cm, which is close to the established value of 30.48 cm. Multiples (decafoot, kilofoot, megafoot, etc.) and submultiples (decifoot, centifoot, millifoot, etc.) would follow directly. All of these units would be decimal multiples or fractions of the distance covered by light in vacuo in one billionth (10–9) of a second. A very good system indeed!

    It is very important not only to know the units listed in Table 1.1 but also to have an idea of the values of familiar objects or quantities in these units. Table 1.3 gives the values of assorted items. A feeling for these values will enable you to guess unknown values and to develop a perspective for the dimensions of the world we live in.

    TABLE 1.3. The Measure of Things

    HOW BIG IS THE UNIVERSE?

    The universe is BIG. It is so big that it is not practical to measure astronomical distances in kilometers. So we use instead the distance covered by light in one year. This unit of length is called the light year and is equal to 9.46 × 10¹² kilometers. The nearest star, called Proxima Centauri, is 4.26 light years away.

    All the stars that you see in the night sky belong to a large system called the Galaxy.

    The Galaxy consists of about 100 billion (10¹¹) stars and is shaped like a disc. This disc is 100,000 light years across and 1000 light years thick in the center. It is, therefore, a comparatively thin disc. We are inside it, two-thirds of the way from the center. If you look at the night sky along the plane of the galactic disk, your line of sight will encounter a great number of stars that appear as a broad ribbon crossing the sky. This ribbon is called the Milky Way (Figure 1.1).

    The Galaxy is not the only system of its kind. There are 100 billion (10¹¹) other galaxies in the visible universe. Some of them are smaller and some are larger, but most are similar in size to ours.

    The most distant galaxies that we can see are about 15 billion (15 × 10⁹) light years away. This means that we see those distant galaxies as they were 15 billion years ago. We haven’t the faintest idea where they are now or even if they still exist.

    FIGURE 1.1 A portion of the Milky Way in the Cygnus-Cassiopeia region. A distant galaxy is visible in the top right corner.

    TABLE 1.4. The Range of Space

    If light traveled at infinite speed, we would see the universe exactly as it is now everywhere, just as you see New York exactly as is at the moment you watch it from the top of the Empire State Building. But the limited speed of light allows us to see only to a limited distance. In fact, the radius r of the visible universe is given by

    r = ct

    where c = speed of light, t = age of the universe. If the universe is 16.5 billion years old, we can see to a maximum distance of 16.5 billion light years. This is then the radius of the visible universe. According to some theories, however, the real universe is much bigger (see Chapter 6).

    Distances within the solar system can be conveniently stated in light seconds, light minutes, or light hours. Table 1.4 lists some astronomical distances which will give you an idea of the range of space.

    There are about 10¹¹ stars in a galaxy and about 10¹¹ galaxies in the visible universe. The total number of stars in the visible universe is, therefore, 10¹¹ × 10¹¹ = 10¹¹ + ¹¹ = 10²².

    Notice that exponents are added when multiplying numbers in the exponential notation. For instance, 1000 × 1000 = 10³ × 10³ = 10³ + ³ = 10⁶ = 1,000,000.

    The number 10²² is very large indeed. Just to give you an idea of how large it is, I will tell you that it is similar to the number of sand grains in all the deserts and beaches of the earth. That’s how many stars there are. The sun is just one of these stars, and it is, in fact, a rather average star. There are stars that are bigger and there are stars that are smaller, but 16 percent of the stars are just about like our sun.

    Percent means per each hundred. If you have a box with 400 marbles, 300 of which are white and 100 blue, you will have 100 blue marbles in a total of 400 marbles. Therefore, for each 100 marbles there are 25 blue ones; thus the blue marbles are 25 percent (25%). You can also say that the concentration of blue marbles in your box is 100/400 = 1/4 = 0.25. Notice that 25% and 0.25 express the same thing, namely, the number ofblue marbles with respect to the total number of marbles in your box.

    Stars consist mainly of hydrogen, which is the simplest element. There are about 6 × 10²³ atoms of hydrogen in 1 gram of hydrogen gas. The mass of the sun is about 2 × 10³³ grams, so the sun has about 6 × 10²³ times 2 × 10³³ atoms, or 6 × 2 × 10²³ + ³³ = 12 × 10⁵⁶ atoms. Assuming that all 10²² stars in the universe have the same number of atoms as the sun, the total number of atoms in the visible universe comes out to be 10²² × 12 × 10⁵⁶ = 12 × 10²² + ⁵⁶ = 12 × 10⁷⁸, or 1.2 × 10⁷⁹. See how easy things are using exponential notation?

    Notice that by using a decimal point (1.2 instead of 12), I have divided the number by 10; but by increasing the exponent by one unit (79 instead of 78) I have, at the same time, multiplied it by 10. The number has remained the same, but 1.2 × 10⁷⁹ looks a bit simpler than 12 × 10⁷⁸. You can also do the reverse. If, for instance, you have the number 0.005 × 10⁶, you may wish to write instead 5 × 10³. In this case, by writing 5 instead of 0.005, you have multiplied the number by 1000; but by subtracting 3 from the exponent, you have divided the number by 1000. The value does not change, but the number looks simpler.

    CHAPTER 2

    Matter and Energy

    ATOMS

    The ancient Greeks noticed that when a piece of amber (a fossil tree resin) is rubbed with wool cloth, a spark passes between the two. The Greek name for amber is λεκτρον (pronounced electron). The spark was believed to represent a kind of fluid that came to be called electricity. Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790) demonstrated that lightning is a giant electrical spark that shoots down from a cloud into the ground. He then reasoned that electricity, like all fluids, would naturally flow from a point of high pressure (which he called positive) to a point of low pressure (which he called negative). He believed that wool cloth and clouds were positive, while amber and the ground were negative. In 1891 the Irish physicist George Stoney (1826–1911) suggested that electricity was not a continuous fluid but consisted of charged particles which he called electrons.

    The electron was discovered in 1897 by the British physicist Sir Joseph Thomson. It turned out that when amber is rubbed with wool cloth, electrons are stripped from the wool and concentrated in the amber. When the concentration of electrons in the amber becomes too large, a flow of electrons passes from amber to cloth, ionizing the air and creating a spark. So the flow of electricity consists of negative particles moving from negative to positive, which is just the opposite of what Benjamin Franklin believed. However, so much work on electricity had been done before the discovery of electrons—all under the assumption that electricity flowed from positive to negative — that the assumption has not been changed practical electrical work, therefore, such as wiring a house or erecting transmission lines, the electrical current is assumed to flow from positive to negative, when in effect it consists of electrons flowing in exactly the opposite direction. In practice it makes no difference because the effect is the same.

    All matter consists of atoms. An atom consists of a nucleus, where most of the mass is concentrated, surrounded by a cloud of electrons (Figure 2.1). The nucleus has one or more positive electric charges, while each electron carries one negative electric charge. Normally the number of electrons surrounding a nucleus is equal to the number of positive electric charges in the nucleus, so that the atom usually is neutral.

    The atom is very small. Its radius, from the center of the nucleus to the surface of the electron cloud, is about 10–10 m, or 10–7 millimeters. This means that it would take 10 million atoms lined up next to one another to make 1 millimeter (the width of a tooth in a postage stamp, remember?). Because atoms are so small, it takes a lot of them to make up a visible amount of matter. A human body weighing 80 kg contains 3.4 × 10²⁷ atoms. If you were to line up all these atoms, you would reach 36 light years away, eight times farther away than the nearest star.

    The nucleus of the atom has a radius of about 10–15 m, which is 100,000 times smaller than the atom itself. If the nucleus of an atom had the size of a pinhead (2 mm across), the electron cloud would be 200 m away. And yet nearly all the mass of the atom is concentrated in the minute volume of the nucleus. The nucleus is therefore extremely dense.

    We all have some idea, from our everyday experiences, of the different densities of common substances. I am sure you know that iron is denser than stone and stone is denser than water. Density is mass per unit of volume and is expressed in grams per cubic centimeter. The density of pure water at 3.98 °C (the temperature at which pure water is densest) is 1 gram per cubic centimeter (1 g/cm³) and is taken as a standard of reference to express other densities. [Pure water consists of H2O alone; fresh water is rainwater plus the salts normally dissolved in it.]

    Table 2.1 lists the densities of common substances, just to give you a better idea. The density of the atomic nucleus is shown at the bottom of the table. It is, as you may see, very great indeed. If the earth had the same density, it would be a sphere only about 240 m in radius.

    FIGURE 2.1 The electron distribution in the hydrogen atom (1 electron) or the helium atom (2 electrons) in their ground state. The density of the dots represents the probable location of the single hydrogen electron or the two helium electrons at any one given time. As may be seen, the electrons in these two atoms spend most of their time close to the nucleus. The nucleus is so small compared to the size of the atom that it is not visible at all in this illustration. The radius of the atom may be defined as that space within which the electrons spend 99% of their time. The radius of the hydrogen atom so defined is about 0.5 × 10–10 m. Occasionally, an electron can stray as far as 25 · 10–10 m from the nucleus even under normal conditions. In outer space, where temperature is very low and the available energy equally low, electrons can stray as far as 3· 10–5 m (0.03 mm) from the nucleus and still remain bound to it. The radius of the helium atom is not precisely known, but it should be similar to that of the hydrogen atom. Helium and the heavier neon, argon, krypton, xenon, and radon, do not combine with other elements. They are called noble gases and form Group 18 in the Periodic Table of the Elements.

    TABLE 2.1. Densities

    PROTONS, NEUTRONS, AND QUARKS

    The nucleus of the most common type of hydrogen consists of a single positively charged particle called a proton. A rarer type of hydrogen, called deuterium, has a nucleus that consists of a proton and a neutron. Neutrons have no electric charge. Protons and neutrons form all atomic nuclei except that of the common type of hydrogen which consists of a single proton. For this reason, the proton and the neutron are collectively called nucleons.

    Protons and neutrons are considered to be elementary particles, although they are made of simpler particles called quarks.

    Quarks are the fundamental units of matter that form not only protons and neutrons but also other elementary particles called mesons. It takes 3 quarks

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