Inculcating Scientific Temperament

Why do things appear darker when they are wet? You must have come across this numerous times in your life when you spill coffee on shirt, paint the wall, throw water on sand and so on. The very first thought that comes into mind, well maybe my clothing brand is not so good. I should try some other manufacturer, whose clothes do not appear darker when wet. If you are thinking the same, then allow me to guide you through the science behind this.  How do we perceive colors in the first place? White light comprises of seven colors Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, yellow, Orange, and Red- we must have read this acronym in school   VIBGYOR . When light falls on an object, some of it gets absorbed while some of it gets reflected. The reflected light is the color we see. In the image below, the white light (comprising VIBGYOR) is striking the surface. All the components of white light are being absorbed by the surface but green. Green is reflected to us and that is nothing but the color o...

Ever wondered, if our blood is red in color, then why our veins are blue? Is blood sometimes blue, sometimes red?  Moreover, we have heard of white blood cells also then why isn’t our blood white in color?   Too much confusion!! Isn’t it? What is blood? Blood is a fluid that flows throughout our body. It has three basic components: Red Blood cells (RBCs) : They carry oxygen from our lungs to rest of our body and takes carbon dioxide back to the lungs to be exhaled.  White blood cells (WBCs) : In simple language these are the weapons of our body for fighting against viruses and bacteria.  Platelets : They come together when we have some injury so that we don’t lose much of our blood. They help our body form clots to stop bleeding. Plasma is a liquid that holds these three together.  The answer to our first question lies in the amount of these cells in our blood. Since the ratio of WBCs to RBCs is very low, therefore, blood is not white in color. But that pa...

This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry has created history by honouring an all-women team. The Nobel prize in Chemistry for 2020 is bagged by Jennifer A. Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier , who pioneered the revolutionary CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology. This technology was first developed in the year 2012. CRISPR (short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) works like a genetic cut-and-paste tool that allows researchers to permanently modify genes in living cells. One of the best parts of CRISPR is its ease-of-use and is affordable. What is genome?  Genome is a language which describes how tall you should be, what color of hair you should have, what color of eyes you should have. They act as instruction manual for synthesis of proteins. There is a particular gene sequence for everything, which determines our traits. How did researchers get to know about CRISPR-Cas9? Had someone dreamt about it?  No. A particular form of bacteria, with an immune sys...

Most of us have tried our hand at a new activity during the lockdown and cooking has been the most popular pastime. A lot of us has been turned into culinary enthusiasts and with social media at our fingertips, we have been busy searching for good recipes. Ever wondered why we are often told to fry the onions until it turns brown? Why do we have to waste our valuable time in waiting for onions to get brown? What kind of reaction is taking place inside it?  Browning of onions Let's delve deeper to learn about one of the world's most delicious chemical reactions . Chemical reactions affect many of the foods we consume everyday. Some of the reactions adversely affect the food and eventually turn them undesirable for consumption whilst others greatly enhance the desirability of the food. There are mainly two types of reactions which lead to the browning of food: Enzymatic and Non-enzymatic reactions.  Enzymatic reactions:  These reactions occur in freshly cut fruits and veg...

Had any of your snacks got spoiled by your sibling, who has put extra condiment on your dish? If yes, ever wondered who is the culprit? Most of the times we can obviously blame our siblings for every bad situation, but this time the ketchup is at fault. Fluids, we come across in everyday life, like water, flows out easily from the bottle. Then why does we have to thwack the Ketchup bottle (glass one) the bottom, for 5 minutes? It is super convenient if you have a plastic squeeze bottle (especially the ones that sit with the cap down) or packets.  Why does ketchup behave so weird? Good question. Let's delve deeper into this.  To understand this behaviour, rudimentary understanding of viscosity might help. What is Viscosity? Viscosity is basically a fluid's internal resistance to flow. Think of water and honey, if we start pouring water and honey from a point, which will flow faster? Water ofcourse, why is it so? Because water has less viscosity than honey i.e. fluids with less...