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Biology in the News is presented by Dr. Lamar's Biology A/B classes. Each student is responsible for posting ONE blog entry and commenting on ONE post submitted by a fellow student.

About your initial posting . . . . . (approximately 150- 300 words)

Your initial posting is worth 30 points. It must be submitted by October 15th. - Locate an electronic article about a new finding in biology. Article must be been written in the last 12 months. Your posting should include 1) the name of the article (3 point), 2) article source - be specific (3 point), 3) date of article (2 point), 4) link to article (2 points), 5) summary of article in your own words (0-10 points), and 6) significance of article (0-10 points). Comments on significance of article can include (but not be limited to) importance of article to self, to society, or to the further advancement of a particular area of biology.

NOTE: To add link, select text in post that you want to link, click on link icon above posting field, and then paste URL information into appropriate field.

About your comments to a fellow classmate's posting . . . . (approximately 100 - 200 words)

Your comments to another student's posting is worth 20 points. Comments must be submitted between October 16 and November 19 - "The more you know, the more you realize there's a lot more to know" is certainly true to science. Read our Biology in the News blob posts. Pick one post (not your own) and submit comments about this post. Comments should included 1) A question that is raised in your mind by the post. The question should have scientific relevance (0 - 5 points) 2) a response to your question. (0-15 points) Research your question and answer it. If the answer is currently unknown, provide additional background information, describe research that is being done in this field, and/or research that is required for the question to be answered.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Sound Can Leap Across a Vacuum After All

New Scientist Physics & Math
Sound can leap across a vacuum after all
01 October 2010 by David Shiga
Magazine Issue 2780
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827804.600-sound-can-leap-across-a-vacuum-after-all.html

The sound article is mainly an experiment explaining that sound cannot travel in space. Sound waves are vibrations that travel through the media such as air, water and metal. Sound cannot tavel in empty spaces, when there are not atoms, molecules, or vibrations. Inside of a vacuum is an empty space; therfore, sound would not be able to travel in there. However two scientists named, Mika Prunnila and Johanna Meltaus, argued the fact that sound waves can travel through a vacuum. They are able to travel in a vacuum by jumping on and off of what they call piezoelectric crystals. These piezoelectric crystals generate, when squeezed, and electric field. The sound waves travel through the vacuum and when they reach the edge of one crystal the electric field that is connected to the edge of the crystal can stretch across the gap; therefore, making sound waves. Prunnila says, "It is as id the sound waves don't even reconise the vacuum - they just go through it." Researchers said that the gap within the vacuum need to be small gaps in order to create sound waves inside of a space with no air, metal, or water. Depending on how large the gap is in the vacuum decides how loud or quiet the sound is and usually if the gap is small the sound waves rarely lose energy.
In my opinion, these researchers needed more facts and they needed to do more experiments because we cannot be inside of a vacuum. I think that sound can travel in empty spaces because we always have sound regardless if there is air, water, or metal around, because we always have sound. I believe that sound cannot travel in space because there is no gravity or anything for the sound waves to bounce off of.
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