Moonwalking With Einstein

If you have ever thought that enjoying your life and being a straight A student at the same time was impossible then this TED talk might be of interest to you. It will help you learn to study efficiently instead of studying more.

Its also a really cool story.

I urge you to read the actual book, Moonwalking With Einstein. Its probably one of the best books I’ve read a long time.

Beyond the Zonules of Zinn

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Many students have been asking me why I decided to study Neuroscience. Choosing a major is a very difficult and important decision. However, in high school you can afford to make a few mistakes along the way. To be honest, I originally went to Dalhousie University to study Microbiology and Immunology. If you asked me why now I wouldn’t be able to give you an answer. It wasn’t until half way through my first year that I realized my true love was Neuro. Half of my inspiration came from an incredibly enthusiastic and motivating professor I had. But the other half came from reading a book called Beyond the Zonules of Zinn by David Bainbridge. The name is weird (it makes sense once you discover what the Zonules of Zinn are), but the book is incredible. It explains topics in neuroanatomy and evolutionary neuroscience as an elegant story. Everything I read in this book stuck with me because of how wonderfully it was written.

So, for any of you who were wondering if Neuroscience was something you’d enjoy, read this book. Maybe you’ll hate it, and that’s okay. But maybe you’ll love it and realize Neuroscience is exactly where you belong.

Go find your inspiration.

Why you should care about optics

We’ve been talking about optics for the past few days and I thought I would write a quick post about why optics is actually awesome. Yeah its cool we can bounce a laser beam around the classroom, but why should I really care about optics?

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This. This is why you should care about optics. Without understanding the basics of how light is reflected, we would never have incredible images like this one. Reflecting telescopes work by bouncing light off curved mirrors to enlarge an image. There are a number of different telescope designs, all with there own strengths and flaws. The image below is a Cassegrain telescope.Image

The light enters from the left, bounces off a hyperbolic mirror in the back of the telescope, bounces again off a secondary parabolic mirror, and then back through a hole in the first mirror where the light will reach the viewers eye. The reasons I have shown you a Cassegrain design specifically is because the telescope that created that incredible image above is a modified version of a Cassegrain telescope (a Ritchey-Chretien variation to be specific).

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has been orbiting the Earth for 23 years now. It was launched by NASA with contributions from the European Space Agency. Because it is orbiting Earth, it is able to take detailed images of deep space without interference from the atmosphere.

Yes, the images it sends back of nebulae are pretty darn cool, however, there is way more to it than pretty pictures. The discoveries made by the HST have changed our understanding of the universe and created new fields of science all together. The HST has refined the estimated age of the universe (13.7 billion years, plus or minus a few hundred million years), discovered nearby black holes, showed that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing speed, and determined the composition of some extrasolar planets. These are a few of the many groundbreaking discoveries by this one incredible telescope. If you want to learn more about these and other cool findings from the HST head over to the HST website.

You can also learn more about the first image at here. It explains what is happening in this photo, its significance, and how the HST created it (FYI, The colours are not how its actually seen in space, the colours represent different gases).

This is the Cat’s Eye Nebula. Its a dying star.

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Bam. Optics rules.

Richard Feynman

25 years ago today, the world lost an incredible man and revolutionary physicist. Richard Feynman was a professor of theoretical physics and well known for his riveting lectures. He won the Nobel Prize in 1965 for his contributions to the development of Quantum Electrodynamics, also known as the quantum field theory of light. This included his now very famous Feynman Diagrams, which are pictorial representations of subatomic particle behaviour. It might not sound that cool, but Feynman diagrams actually made physics easier for everybody. Without QED, there would be little hope for ever finding a unifying theory of everything. You also probably would never have HD video games without the quantum theory of light. So don’t forget to thank Richard Feynman the next time you’re shooting down that last Viet Cong soldier. Or crossing the finish line as Mario.

For the geeks out there

If you’ve been thinking lately, “Hey, I’m tired of listening to music every day. I need something more stimulating.” Well, you may be a geek like me. But I’m sure you’ve heard, geeks are cool now. So don’t worry about it. Start listening to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast. Its super nerdy but super interesting. Listen to it on your way to school. Then impress everyone with all the amazing science news items you know. Tip: girls love smart boys.

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You can also get it on iTunes.

Life of a Cell

The best cell animation of all time.

To think this is happening in almost every cell of our body, every second of every day.

The kinesin motor proteins carrying the vesicle along the microtubule is the coolest thing to see. Every “step” the motor protein complex takes uses 1 ATP. That’s a lot of energy just to transport stuff around the cell. You can read more about kinesin motor proteins and vesicle transport here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinesin

There is also an extended version of this animation which includes labels for most of the molecules and organelles.