Escape The Science Lab

You may have heard that diamonds are a girl`s best friend or are forever, but have you ever heard of these shiny pieces of bling falling from the sky as rain? Diamonds are also well known for being super hard, so much so that they are attached to the tips of drills to cut through the toughest materials. Where, then, would you find liquid diamonds? That`s right, liquid!  One of my favourite pastimes is to read about and listen to podcasts about the planets. Why is this subject so fascinating to me? Apart from the fantastic photographs that spacecraft have sent back from these objects, some of the ways they work are unlike anything we will ever see on Earth. In the solar system, temperatures and pressures never occur naturally on our planet. This means that substances we are familiar with do strange things elsewhere in the solar system. For example, ice far away from the sun`s influence gets so cold that it behaves like rock. Methane, the gas used for cooking and heating, can be a li...

 You may of heard how Galileo got into trouble for claiming that the Earth orbits the Sun. Did you know there were others that were saying the same thing? In the 16th century, Johannes Kepler was one of these. He was an astronomer who took measurements of the stars, but also an astrologer, producing horoscopes for the rich and powerful. Back then, the lines between science and mysticism were blurred and Isaac Newton himself was as much an alchemist as a scientist.  Kepler took measurements of the movements of the planets, checking the measurements of other natural philosophers*. You can easily see planets with the naked eye, binoculars, or telescopes. They look like bright stars, but they move from night-to-night, giving them their name 'planetai' or 'wanderer'. Back in the 16th century six planets had been discovered.  Kepler's idea of how they moved in their orbits was mixed with some ideas that we may find strange today. He combined his measurements with ideas th...