It is a big feat to estimate the number of trees on Earth! Satellite images can tell you a lot about the forest area and canopy cover, but they cannot see individual trees. In 2005, one group converted that coverage …
Melted chocolate in an American scientist’s pocket in 1946 led to the development of an appliance that changed the way many of us cook our meals today. Percy Spencer, a researcher at Raytheon in Waltham, Mass., was testing communications equipment when he …
The molecularity of an elementary reaction is the number of reactant species (atoms, molecules, or ions). For example, a unimolecular reaction involves the reaction of a single reactant species to produce one or more molecules of product: A ⟶ product The rate law for a unimolecular …
Micturition, or urination, occurs involuntarily in infants and young children until the age of 3 to 5 years, after which it is regulated voluntarily. The neural circuitry that controls this process is complex and highly distributed: it involves pathways at …
Terminal velocity and free fall are two related concepts that tend to get confusing because they depend on whether or not a body is in space or a fluid (e.g., an atmosphere or even water). Take a look at the …
Processes have a natural tendency to occur in one direction under a given set of conditions. Water will naturally flow downhill, but uphill flow requires outside intervention, such as the use of a pump. Iron exposed to the earth’s atmosphere …
The electron transport chain uses the electrons from electron carriers to create a chemical gradient that can be used to power oxidative phosphorylation. Oxidative phosphorylation is a highly efficient method of producing large amounts of ATP, the basic unit of …
When doing lab experiments, the more data you have, the more accurate your results will be. Often when scientists are trying to measure something, they will repeat an experiment over and over to improve their results. In the case of …
Free energy is a state function, so its value depends only on the conditions of the initial and final states of the system. A convenient and common approach to the calculation of free energy changes for physical and chemical reactions …
Abscisic acid is called stress hormones as it induces various responses in plants against stress conditions. It increases the tolerance of plants toward various stresses. It induces the closure of the stomata during water stress. It promotes seed dormancy and …