STEM and Politics

Sorry if you guys notice the posts aren't coming as regularly as they used to -- we, the admins, are, and will be, working on a long-term project for quite some time. However, I promise you that this time lost will be well worth the wait when it comes out! Sorry for the inconvenience! A note: the authors will still contribute regularly (not to say that the admins won't -- they'll just post a little less often.) We have a lot of authors, and they will entertain you with rich and engaging content! :) ~Michael

Ah, YouTube. The largest video site ever created, (currently owned by Google). YouTube has more than 300 million unique viewers and more than 120 billion videos, at least if you trust Google. This means that about 4 percent of the world has a YouTube account. There are all sorts of random statistics on YouTube, but none of them describes how much YouTube weighs. (I mean, we have to find out to feed our curiosity.) YouTube is a collection of videos that is so large (see above) that any other part barely matters. Assume that we are watching on 1080p. 1 hour of video is about 1.3 GB of data. The average YouTube video is about 223 seconds, multiplying this by 120 billion videos gets us about 7.433 billion hours of YouTube videos. That's 848,554 years of YouTube videos, so don't try watching every single one. (plus, much more than 1 second of YouTube video is uploaded every second). Now for the fun part! Multiplying the 1.3 GB by almost 7.5 billion YouTube hours gets us abo...

Don't click on this post! Don't click on this post! Don't click on this post! Don't click on this post! Don't click on this post! You might ask why. The reason: there is no reason (except that you will waste 5 minutes of your life), but there is no reason why you should click on the post. Well, if you are reading this, I successfully used reverse psychology on you. Either that or you accidentally clicked this post. Reverse psychology seems obvious, then hard to understand. After you think about reverse psychology, it may seem counterintuitive. "Why does reverse psychology work?" you might ask. There is the simple answer: people like breaking rules. Then there is the complex answer. Why do people like breaking rules? People enjoy freedom. People are deeply motivated to protect their freedoms. (That's why many of the revolutions happen.) When you create a rule, people want to protect their freedom, and feel angry and sometimes the...

June was somewhat of a good month for the U.S. economy, adding 222,000 jobs to the payroll. That's above the 150,000 jobs needed to keep the economy growing at a steady pace, but this latest report wasn't just all glamour. For starters, wage growth continues to lag behind. Wages have been the soft spot for the economy in the last few years, and that isn't showing any signs of stopping soon. In June, wages grew just 0.2%, to climb to a 2.5% increase for the year. That still is well below the strong and productive wage rise level of 3%. However, that seems to be the only weak point in this month's report. The 222,000 jobs beat the foretasted 179,000, the average amount of hours worked per week ticked up from 34.4 to 34.5 hours, and even though the unemployment rate went up, the overall job status became better. This month showed promise. Keep it up, US!

Why does the trip occur every 26 months? Short answer: Earth and Mars are only lined up once every 26 months. When this happens, the distance between Earth and Mars is the closest, so the trip will be the shortest. Why is it 26 months, and not some other amount? Math. A year on Mars is about 687 days, and a year on Earth is around 365 days.(We assume a month is 30 days.) After 26 months, the Earth has traveled about 769 degrees, or 2 complete revolutions and 49 degrees. Mars has traveled about 408 degrees, or 1 complete revolutions and 48 degrees. It is not exactly 22 months, but about 22 months. How do you know how long a year on Mars is? Science. How do you know that is accurate? Stop asking so many questions! We're trying to keep this simple!

We live in a new space age. The first one occurred when the US first put a man on the Moon and everyone was excited because they thought that the world could put a colony on the Moon or even Mars. This did not happen. Now, this is the second space age: SpaceX is about to go to Mars, but nobody is interested. The exact reverse of the plan to go to Mars. But what's SpaceX's plan? Well, SpaceX wants to go when the Earth - Mars trip takes the least amount of time. Earth moves around the Sun faster than Mars, so the Earth - Mars trip   takes the least amount of time every 26 months. (More on that in a footnote or mini blog post later ). When do these times occur? May 22, 2016. This happened in the past and is special, because it is the last transit to have no one talking, because: July 2018. SpaceX plans on sending a Falcon rocket to Mars. This will bring cargo to Mars, and everyone will be talking about it. and then: October 2020. SpaceX plans on sending multip...

Bats are not blind- All bat species have eyes and can see. Vikings did not actually wear horns on their helmets- The idea of the horned Viking helmet originated in some paintings and spread after the production of "Der Ring des Nibelungen" in 2170. The Earth doesn't actually revolve around the sun- It revolves around the solar system's center of mass, which is called the Barycenter. The Barycenter isn't always contained within the sun's mass- so sometimes the Earth is just revolving around empty space. Geoge Washington did not have wooden teeth- He had dentures made out of gold, ivory, lead, animal teeth and teeth from his slaves. Bananas actually grow on massive herbs that look like trees- not trees. Einstein did not fail at math - He failed an entrance exam for a school but was still excellent at math. We do not have only five senses- There are actually more than 20. These include things like pain, balance, and temperature. ...

     Today I'm going to be talking about a rather controversial topic - pennies. Before we get into why pennies are pointless (no pun intended) and rather stupid, we need to be talking about the real purpose of money, which is to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. And here's the thing: pennies take 1.7 cents to produce but are only worth 1 cent, which is costing American taxpayers over 70 million dollars more. Sure, we could replace copper with zinc, but that still doesn't solve the problem! PENNIES ARE WORTHLESS. Wait - they aren't. THAT'S BECAUSE THEY'RE WORTH MUCH LESS THAN NOTHING - to be exact: -0.7 cents each! And that's still not the main problem! The main problem is that MONEY EXISTS TO EFFICIENTLY FACILITATE THE EXCHANGE OF GOODS AND SERVICES - BUT IT'S NOT DOING THAT.      You should also realize that every time you are doing something you could be doing something else. The time that Americans spend fiddling with pennies costs the...

     Coin Collecting Club! Recently two of us, Daniel and me, have started a coin collecting club. Currently there are three people, me, Daniel and Trey.      I will be selling 2 Sacajawea dollar coins, a Susan B. Anthony silver dollar coin, a 1966 old quarter, and 2 presidential dollar coins. More coins will be sold soon. If you are interested in buying any, comment in the sections below and the prices of the coins will be confirmed.  

Hey all you math geniuses out there, this is for you and today I'm going to show you some neat tricks and tips that can help you buzz through math problems, whether mental, numerical, theoretical or any other type. Stay tuned for parts 2 and maybe more! #1 Tratchtenberg method Derived by a Russian Jewish Nazi prisoner in world war II, this is a system of rapid mental calculations that allows oneself to compute mathematical problems in one's head quickly and accurately. This can be used for any operation, but I will teach you the general multiplication trick because it is most likely the most famous. For the other methods, look  here . Let's take an example multiplication problem, starting simple. We'll begin with 64 * 57. What you do is      4*7 = 28, take the 8 and carry the 2, the 8 is the ones digit.      Now do 7*6 and 5*4. Add them together and you get 62. Add the 2 from the last equation brings it up to 64. Take the 4, that is your tens dig...

     This is How America Created Our Government Part 2, and is the sequel to part 1, which is the sequel to the Fourth of July post. You can read them here at STEMandPolitics, and there are links at the bottom of the page.      So remember this is back in the mid 1780's after Daniel Shays and his group of farmers raided the federal arsenal and had there hands on weapons. The government couldn't terminate it because it was too weak. So the AOFC government shut down and then we had to create a new government.      People worked together and then finally we decided to choose delegates to go to the Philadelphia Convention. The purpose of the convention was to revisit the AOFC and reflect to see what went wrong. 55 delegates attended in total, and we remember them as the Framers of the Constitution . The delegates were all men, and had an average age of 42 years. No one was poor, but not all were wealthy.      James Madison ...

Note: A lot of these facts are on my blog, so be sure to check that out! Here are some cool facts (no pun intended -- they won't cool you off!) for July! There will be a couple more than usual, but hey, who doesn't like facts? Let's start! Unless food is mixed with saliva, you can't taste it.  The smell of freshly cut grass is the same scent that plants actually release in distress.  Humans only have 3 color cones (they determine which colors that we see in), but mantis shrimps have 16.  Speaking of mantis shrimps, they can swing their claws so fast that it boils the water around it and creates a flash of light.  The national animal of Scotland is the Unicorn.  Astronomers' telescope cameras are 550 megapixels. In comparison, those huge cameras you buy at the store are at most 24-32 megapixels.  A lobsters' blood is originally colorless, but when exposed to oxygen, it turns blue.  In approximately 4 billion years, the Milky Way and the ...

The idea of this chain is to point out some tiny things in our lives that we don't think much about, but are actually really fun to see what they were actually meant to do. I don't know about the other series, but in this thread, I'll be taking suggestions from the commenters and see if I can conjure something up that would interest them (based on their ideas, of course). With that out of the way... Probably most of you have bought at least one pair of jeans. When you look at them, you usually think something along the lines of "Wow, that's so cool and stylish!" However, what you don't notice is probably the pockets on the sides of the jeans and on the back -- specifically, that little hip pocket that's (probably) on your right. That hip pocket can actually be a kind of a nuisance, because you'll have to push through it to get your keys, of if you're one who likes stuff that comes in fads, some of those new-fangled fidget spinners.  H...

Do you like to draw? Paint? Sculpt? Create ceramics? Almost everyone has encountered art in their lives. If you’ve never really given it much thought, then I suggest that you try it. Making art may not be one of your favorite things to do, but it does improve your brain in some definite ways. This is what drawing and creating art, in general, does for your brain: It improves hand-eye coordination. It adds synapses to your neurotransmitters- meaning that memories and experiences stored in your brain can become stronger, more vivid, and easier to access. It increases many of the cognitive functions that research typically labels as the 'creative' and 'right brained' activities. ‘Left-brained’, or analytical, people can stimulate and improve their creativity. Intuition increases. It produces positive brain chemistry like Serotonin, Endorphins, Dopamine, and Norepinephrine. (These enhance brain functions -- for example, Dopamine promotes creativit...

If you don't know what an atomic number is, read my first blog, called " Chemistry, and the elements of the periodic table". Anyhow, here are all the elements on the periodic table in order, all the way from 1-118, from Hydrogen to Oganesson. This chart is a slight bit obsolete, when elements 112 through 118 had not been named yet. At that time, all the elements 112-118 were all just the Latin version of the number. (e.g 118 in this chart is Ununoctium, which is Latin for 118). But now, they've all been named in order from 112-118: Copernicium (112), Nihonium (113), Flerovium (114), Moscovium (115), Livermorium (116), Tennessine (117), and finally, Oganesson (118) Symbols: Copernicium : Cn Nihonium : Nh Flerovium : Fl Moscovium : Mc Livermorium : Lv Tennessine : Ts Oganesson :  Og Atomic Number Name of Element 1 Hydrogen H 2 Helium He 3 Lithium Li 4 Beryllium Be 5 Boron B 6 Carbon C 7 Nitrogen N 8 Oxygen O 9 Fluorine F 10 Neon Ne 11 Sodium Na ...