Tornadoes!

Tornadoes are one of the most violent kinds of storms. They occur in most places of the world in one form or another with varying degrees of severity. The USA gets them most frequent. But why do certain areas get them more frequently than others? 

Well tornadoes occur when two masses of different temperature and humidity meet. This causes a thunderstorm. The warm moist air will shoot up and create what’s called an updraft, while the cool dry air falls down creating a down draft. Normally the down draft created in this process will be separate of the down draft created from rainfall. The rain creates its own down draft because it is cooler then the warm air rising. The two down drafts eventually negatively affect the updrafts and the storm dies out. 

What makes a tornado different then a thunder storm, and essentially more dangerous, is that the down drafts become so powerful they wedge the updraft and make it rise faster and more intense. It can become so intense the updraft shoots into the stratosphere.  They will start to feed off of each other, and instead of dying out in 30-40 minutes as most thunderstorms do, it will take on a life of its own and last for hours.

As the updraft rises it will meet varying wind currents traveling at different directions called wind shears. If the wind shears are placed in the right spots and are fast enough it will spin the updraft like a top. That is when you can actually see the storm rotating. This creates a wall cloud, and the start of a tornado. 

“Tornado Season” is normally during the spring time when the climate is rapidly changing. Tornadoes occur less frequent in the winter time. A tornado can happen anywhere, in fact since 1950 a tornado had been recorded in all of the continental states in the US at least once. With central America and the east coast being the most common. This is because cool dry air will travel south from Canada and meet the very warm hot air traveling north from the Gulf of Mexico. The east coast too has the cool air from Canada mixing with the warm humid coastal air. 

The NCDC figures for 1950-2006 show that Pennsylvania reported 697 tornadoes with the only recorded F5 tornado in the region in 1985. Massachusetts reported 153 with an F4 in 1953 that killed 90 people, and New Jersey reported 144. Compared  to Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma whose reported tornadoes are well over 6,000 combined it’s no wonder you rarely hear anything about them. Tornadoes happen much less in these states because the weather conditions are only optimal for a tornado much less frequently. On the east coast the weather is warm and humid most of the time. When the cool air from Canada travels south it makes a much less of an impact as it does to the states in Tornado Ally.

The Universe and Newton: A Love Story

A friend of mine recent asked me “Can you fire a gun in space? And if so would the bullet keep going forever at the same speed?”  The answer for this might not be as simple as one might think. First let me answer the first part of the question.

When a gun is fired a firing pin will strike the primer that will ignite the propellant (in this case gun powder). In older weapons you would have to pack the gun powder in behind the bullet. In both cases the gun power is ignited, and the bullet is dispelled from the weapon. The difference is that in a modern bullet casing, everything is sealed. Since you need oxygen for an ignition, older weapons could not fire. But modern weapons have oxygen inside of the casing allowing them to be fired in a zero oxygen environments.

Now what happens after the bullet is fired is another matter altogether. First let me point out that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction (Newton’s Third Law of Motion). And when the weapon is fired, the recoil will be equal to the force of the propelled bullet. So assuming you aren’t being held in place by something you will fly in the opposite direction. 

Apart from the fantastic visual I get of an astronaut hurtling through space clutching a rifle, there is the matter of the bullet itself. According to Newton’s first law of motion; an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force. Normally the external force that slows down a bullet is friction and gravity, or a body… But in the vacuum of space there is no friction. But there is gravity.

You see, every point of mass attracts every other point of mass (Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation). That is why the moon orbits the Earth, and the Earth orbits the sun. So all throughout space, gravity is acting upon everything including something as small as a bullet. What is confusing is that, those exact forces of gravity are still unknown! If every point of mass is attracted to every other point of mass then logically the universe should be converging, essentially collapsing in on itself. Yet the universe is expanding! These forces of nature are still a mystery to us. So the effects it would have on a bullet are unfathomable.

Considering the mass of the bullet the forces of gravity acting upon it are probably too small to notice. But that doesn’t mean that they are not there. Assuming the bullet doesn’t get too close to a planet and get caught in orbit, or hit the planet, or a rock floating in space, or even an alien! It will eventually slow to a stop and become caught in the currents of the universe.

It's For Science!

First off, what is Science? Is it all test tubes and guys in white coats who never see the light of day? Not so much, Webster’s Dictionary defines science as: knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method. You see, science is in everything we do from waking up in the morning to the second we lay our head down to go back to sleep. Science encompasses all, and for that very reason we should try to excel in it. 

According to Steven Hawking, “The eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe.” 

A Brief History of Time

What he is saying is that, essentially science is here to answers the biggest questions we all have. Why are we here? What comes after death? What is the point of our existence? The problem with this is that it creates a paradox. He argues that, if there was a unified theory that sums up the universe it would also determine the outcome of our actions. In searching for this theory we would enviably find that the theory itself would dictate the outcome for search itself. But what if it doesn’t lead us to the right answer? It is equally possible for it to lead us to the wrong answer, or even no answer at all. 

Steven Hawking says, “The only answer I can give to this problem is based on Darwin’s principal of natural selection. The idea is that in any population of self-reproducing organisms, there will be variations in the genetic material and upbringing that different individuals have. These differences will mean that some individuals are better able than others to draw the right conclusions about the world around them and act accordingly. These individuals will be more likely to survive and reproduce and so their pattern of behavior and thought will come to dominate. It has certainly been true in the past that what we call intelligence and scientific discovery have conveyed a survival advantage. It is not so clear that this is still the case: our scientific discoveries may well destroy us all, and even if they don’t, a complete unified theory may not make much difference to our chance of survival.”

A Brief History of Time

So if Darwin is correct, with every new generation the human race is more prone to discover the laws that govern our universe. Otherwise we won’t survive as a race. And although our scientific discoveries have been largely beneficial such as nuclear power to generate energy for us, it has also sundered us, by using that same nuclear energy to create the world’s most devastating weapon. People as a whole have a tendency to destroy things. It’s a very primal thing to destroy, but with every discovery we make about our universe the closer we get to finally answer that big question. 

What is the meaning of life?