Escape The Science Lab

I'm fond of disaster movies, so I've been watching the updates on NASA's DART mission to smash a spacecraft into an asteroid. NASA and other space organisations regularly monitor the skies for asteroids which could be on a collision course with Earth. Asteroids travel at incredible speeds, so even a relatively small one could cause significant damage if it hits a populated area. There is a great deal of evidence that asteroids have hit Earth in the past.  There are many large craters which provide evidence of collisions. Some of these are difficult to spot because erosion and vegetation hide them. Even the vast crater left by the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs remained hidden under the jungle and ocean until it was discovered. More recently, an object struck the forest of Tunguska in Siberia.  This impact was seen by many people, but the thing that caused the devastation is still a mystery. Was it an asteroid that exploded over the Si...

  Here's a really bad science joke that I've heard. Why don't ants get sick? Because they have little anty bodies.  I'll get my coat. That's not the only link between ants and disease prevention. I was listening to a podcast the other day where the discussion was about antibiotic resistance. This is a huge problem, which has lots of doctors and scientists are very worried. Antibiotic resistance is when antibiotics no longer kill bacteria. You can take the tablets, but they won't make you better. To understand why doctors are concerned we need to look back at what life was like before antibiotics.   In 1941 Police Constable Albert Alexander was injured in an air raid. A small cut near his mouth became infected and he was taken to hospital.  The infection got worse, and he developed sepsis, which is when your immune system overreacts to an infection and starts attacking your own organs. Most people who develop sepsis die. Doctors in 1941 were used to seeing people...

  Ever wondered how a rainbow forms? Raindrops act like a prism and split the light into the colours of the visible spectrum. The splitting is called dispersion. The splitting is caused by refraction. That's not the whole story though. After entering the raindrop, the light is reflected off the back surface. It then travels out of the front of the drop, refracting again at the boundary. If, when this light leaves the raindrop, it happens to travel to your eyes, you see the familiar bow in the sky. What this means is that nobody sees the same rainbow as you. A friend stood next to you sees the light that has been refracted in their direction. Ever heard of the famous double rainbow? They are formed when the light reflects twice inside the raindrop. Have you ever noticed that the colours in the second rainbow are reversed? The diagram above shows why. Other affects you may notice when you see a good rainbow are supernumerary bows (green and magenta bows underneath the other bows. The...

  The splitting of light when it travels into a prism is called dispersion. The splitting is caused by refraction. Refraction occurs when light moves from one material to another. Each wavelength of light is refracted through a different angle, so the colours separate. One of the most famous effects of dispersion is the rainbow. These are always good to see, but there are many more atmospheric light effects to look out for. In this image, you can see a halo around the sun, two sundogs (parhelia) on the left and right of the halo, an upper tangent arc (on top of the halo), a parhelic arc (going through the two sundogs) and infralateral arcs (far left and right of the image). These are all caused by ice crystals refracting light. Look  here  for some other light effects you may see in the atmosphere. I would really like to see the spooky Brocken Spectre. The light really is fantastic. Take up my escape challenge by clicking on the image below.

Welcome to the first puzzle. In school, science is taught in separate topics. Sometimes these topics overlap. For instance, we study ants as part of biology. Imagine my amazement when I found out that a colony of ants know physics! Separate areas of science overlap in unexpected ways. So, click on the image to solve my puzzle and comment when you think you have the connection.