I Am Going To Read Your Mind.

Okay, so I have a psychology test on Monday and since I've already revised a fair bit of Cognitive, I'm going to post on Developmental.
At the moment we're studying attachment and I don't like my teacher because she's annoying imo.

So anyway, what is attachment? Well, there's a definition I need to learn - attachment is a strong emotional and reciprocal bond between two people (especially an infant and caregiver(s)). It serves to maintain proximity as both experience distress when separated. Attachment also serves as a basis for later emotional development.

Now, all the mumbo jumbo is out of the way, lets get on with some real learning.

Maccoby is a guy who said that we can tell when two people have an attachment because of how they behave. These behaviours include - seeking proximity, separation anxiety, joy at reunion and general orientation.

Now, why do we form attachments? Many people would argue that it's purely on an evolutionary basis - that babies need to bond with the mother in order to maintain the care, food and safety she provides. Newborn humans are born helpless and remain so for a long time after birth, so we need to keep a close relationship with our parents in order to survive and continue the species. However, there are also some short term benefits to attachment, such as the fact the caregiver we bond with supplies us with food, protection and education, and other general skills that we'll need as we grow older.

It's also evolutionary beneficial for a parent to remain close to the infant as they've put a lot of resources and energy into rearing the infant and need to ensure it lives through to adulthood and reproduces. Finally, its been argued that attachments provide us with a schema which will help us form attachments later in life. Some have also argued that attachment discourages incest, which would be very bad for the species.


So then, how and when are attachments formed? It's believed that they're formed very early on, and this is especially try for birds who imprint on their parents within the first 13-16 hours after hatching. This was proven by Lorenz's geese experiment. Lorenz also learnt from his experiment that if imprinting didn't occur within the 32 hour critical period, it wouldn't happen at all.

All of these processes are also true for humans - we too form bond in the early stages of life, and if we fail to bond within the first year of our life, it becomes very hard to, and after five years it's impossible. When and how we bond with our parents makes a big difference on the relationship we have later on with them. This is shown in Klaus and Kenell's 1976 experiment on newborns in America.

It has been found that at around 7 or 8 months babies begin to show real signs of attachment. According to Shaffer and Emerson's 1964 study, babies under the age of 3 months will accept care from any human. After 4 months however, the baby will start to show preference to certain people and by 7 months one or maybe two specific and special attachments would have been formed. After 9 months, the baby is ready to develop multiple attachments, such as with siblings and grandparents. The study carried out by Shaffer and Emerson has a high ecological validity and is ethically sound.



There are several explanations for attachments, and we can split them into two groups. First we'll take a look at Learning and Behaviour Theories of Attachment. These theories say that all behaviour is learned and not innate, as many people believe.

Classical conditioning, is what it says on the tin - classical. The idea is that the baby associates food (a necessity of life) with its mother in the early stages of life and carries this love of the mother through to the rest of their lives. In this case, before conditioning, the baby has an unconditioned stimulus (food) and an unconditioned response (happiness). During conditioning the mother becomes the neutral stimulus who just comes along with the food. As time passes, the child will be conditioned to respond happily to the mother alone.

Another learning and behaviour theory is Operant Conditioning and Attachment. This is the idea of learning by enforcement. There are two types - negative and positive. Two examples below -

Behaviour = crying --> food = positive reinforcement to cry

Behaviour = crying --> food = negative reinforcement for the mother to feed the child.

However, food isn't always necessary to form an attachment, as Schaffer and Emerson found that 39% of babies formed an attachment to people who didn't feed them, such as grandparents. This gives us the theory of comfort over food, which is backed up by Harlows 1959 experiment on monkeys. I can't be bothered to go over the ins and outs of this experiment because I know it all anyways :)

Finally in the learning and behaviour theory is Social Learning Theory, which is just for a couple of extra marks in the exam NOT a key point. Bascially, social learning theory is the idea that -

• children copy affectionate behaviour between their parents
• parents watch their children and encourage appropriate behaviours
• parents teach their children to be affectionate. 

Now, we can move onto the second category - Evolutionary Theories of Attachment. 

One of the biggest theory is Darwin's Evolutionary Theory, which shows us that attachment is necessary because it keeps the infant close to the parents and hence keeps it safe. It allows the infant to explore within a secure base and to develop a loving and reciprocal relationship which is passed on through generations. 

Now we come to Bowlby who's a big guy when we talk about all this. He was mainly interested in the caregiver-infant relationship and produced a theory of attachment by combining Freud's ideas with the ethological concept of imprinting. There are seven key principles in Bowlby's theory, so I'll list them below.

• Adaptive and innate - Bowlby believed that although children form several attachments, only one is of significance and the rest form a hierarchy. He believed that the primary attachment belonged to the person who responded best to the infants social releasers. This bond also forms the foundation for future relationships and the infants development. 
• Social releasers - children have an innate drive to becomes attached as it has long term benefits, so that have characteristics which encourage caregiving. 
• Monotrophy - this is the idea that an infant has an innate readiness to have an attachment with its mother.
• Sensitive period - Bowlby believes that there is a crucial period of 2.5 years to form an innate attachment.
• Secure base - the idea that the infant forms attachments in order to have a secure base from which to explore and grow.
• Internal working model - theorizes that children learn what to expect from a relationship from how their attachment to their primary caregiver is. 
• Continuity hypothesis - is the idea that there is a link between early attachments and later emotional behaviour. 

Now I'm stopping here and coming back to all this at a later point.

Joy, I'm back to finish off this nonsense.

Okay, so I'm just gonna write a brief summary and evaluation of Bowlby's theory -

Summary -
Bowlby theorized that all children formed a hierarchy of attachments, the primary being the most important  as it supplies a safe environment to learn and explore, ensures they have food and protection, and forms a basis for future relationships. Bowlby believes attachments are innate and are forms before two and a half years of age.

Evaluation -
Mothers may not be as important as Bowlby believes as infants form a wide range of attachments with people other than their mother. Bowlby didn't discount multiple attachments even though Shaffer and Emerson found that multiple attachments are the rule rather than exception.  Bowlby also believes that the father has no or very little emotional importance (this could be due to when and why the research was carried out), yet Shaffer and Emerson have proven that fathers are attachment figures in their own right.

Basically, Bowlby may have overestimated the importance of the mother, although he did accept that a 'mother-figure' could stand in and provide satisfactory attachment. In addition, Lamb's studies have shown that male infants show preference to their father over their mother.

And finally, we need to consider that Bowlby's theory may just be too simplistic to explain something as complex as attachment. Today, infants no longer need protection from predators but attachment still plays a crucial role - Bowlby fails to explain why this is and hence makes his theory reductionist (it ignores culture and technologies of the present day).



And I think that just might be Psychology done and dusted. We shall see how the test goes, I suppose.

A Rant About Cells.

No one warned me that A Level Biology was going to be this hard. I’m shocked and amazed that I managed to drag myself through my homework this morning. So here I am to revise. I’d like to think I’m on my blog, but my internets down so this is just in Word until it’s fixed and I can put it up. So there.

I’m gonna go over Cell Structure today because it’s what I’m struggling with the most; I’ll probably do Neucleic Acids another time.

Okay, so cells are the basic unit of life, and there are two types. Type one is Eukaryotic, which are cells that have a nucleus, such as plant and animal cells. Type two is Prokaryotic, which are cells with no nucleus, such as bacterium. There are two types of microscopes we can use to look at cells – light microscopes and electron microscopes. We can see in a much finer detail with an electron mircoscope because the wavelength of electrons is shorter than the wavelength of light. Electron microscopes revel the fine structure or the ultrastructure of a cell, which is what I’m going to be going into more detail about in a moment.

Okay, so a Eukaryotic cell is surrounded by a plasma membrane, and is filled with cytoplasm. I’m trying to think of a good anology for this, but all I can come up with at the moment is a blister or a water balloon. Oh, and there are structures inside the cell which are called organelles.

These organelles can be divided into two groups –

Structures composed of or surrounded by a membrane:

•          Nucleus
•          Chloroplast
•          Mitochondrion
•          Endoplasmic reticulum
•          Golgi apparatus
•         Lysosomes

And structures not composed or surrounded by a membrane:

•        Ribosomes
•          Centrioles

And now I need to go into detail about all the cell boundaries before I can go into detail about organelles.

So then. The most obvious cell boundary is probably the cell membrane, but for A Level it’s been renamed plasma membrane. Now, the term ‘unit membrane’ is a term used to describe all the following:

•          Plasma membrane
•          Membranes of the nucleus, mitochondrion, chloroplast, endoplasmic reticulum…etc
•          And to describe the structure (see section 1.3)

What’s important to remember is that membranes within the cell cordon off areas where this is no cytoplasm so other things can be stored such as harmful chemicals or enzymes. They’re kept within membranes so they can’t damage the rest of the cell, sort of like when they put someone in isolation at school, its so they can’t infect the rest of the student body.

Also, membranes within the cell provide a huuuuuuge surface area for various things such as the attachment of enzymes (eg. in the synthesis of ATP in mitochondrion membranes), and guess what, that’s not all they do. They also provide a transport system within the cell (eg. endoplasmic reticulum).

One final note on the plasma membrane – microvilli are infoldings of the membrane and are used to increase surface area (eg. in the digestive system).

Now then, the cell wall. It’s fully permeable, so pretty much anything can get through it. It’s like putting a wimp in charge of entrance to a nightclub, anyone’s gonna get in. But, really, that wimp is made of tough fibres embedded in the matrix of polysaccharides (and other sugars). But, despite letting anyone and anything in, the cell wall does keep the cell nice a strong and rigid. On the downside, there are a couple of gaps in the wall, AKA pores, which allow cytoplasmic channels called plasmodesmata to flow between cells.

Now those are all done with, I can get on with all the different organelles. These are the little bits and pieces you get floating around in the cytoplasm. Like the little bits you get in non-smooth orange juice.

So, most importantly is the nucleus. It’s so important because it regulates all the functions within the cell. Essentially it’s the brain of the cell, but I’m not allowed to say that in the exam. Like the huamn brain is housed inside the skull, the nucleus is housed in a a nuclear membrane or envelope. This membrane, like many others I’m going to mention, is a double membrane.

The outer membrane is joined up with the endoplasmic reticulum and possess ribosomes, wheras the inner membrane has nothing to do with the outside world. Both the membranes fuse every so often to make pores so things can get in and out.

Inside the nucleus is an interesting place – it’s filled with a material called nucleoplasm (gotta give it to those Biologists, they’re original with they’re naming of things). Anyway, there are some structures within this nucleoplasm. Joy, there are just structures within structures within structures. I can’t cope. But must plough on.

Right, so what does the nucleolus do? For one thing it makes RNA and assembles ribosomes. The nucleolus is also the home of all the little chromosomes, which contain hereditry DNA and are pretty much the instruction manuals for the cell.

And that’s pretty much it for the nucleus. Ready to move on? No? Too confusing? I’m gonna say tough, just like my teacher did….

So then, the mitochondrion provides the energy for the cell to do all its bits and pieces. They’re rod shaped and vary in size (0.5µm wide and 7µm long). You can find the mitochondrion doing the most work in active cells such as in the liver, muscles and kidney, because these cells require the most ATP (energy).

Again, this is a double membrane organelle. The outer membrane is smooooooooth, whereas the inner is folded to form cristae. This is needed for a large surface area for enzyme attachment. Cristae are also the home of Oxidative phosphorylation (a stage in aerobic respiration). Oh, and the cristae also have stalked particles where the enzymes for ATM synthesis are kept.

The inner membrane has just as much action as the outer – it contains ribosomes, a loop of DNA and enzymes.

And that’s a neat little way of finishing off the mitochondria.

Next up are chloroplasts, which everyone knows are involved in photosynthesis in plants. They convert light energy into chemical energy which is stored in food molecules for the plant to gobble up. Chloroplasts are disc shaped and are like tinnnnnny, I’m talking 1-4µm in diametre and 1µm thick. Oh, and they’re green because of the presence of chlorophyl, so there’s no need to stain the cell if you want to see them with a light microscope.

This is another organelle with a double membrane, but unlike the mitochondrion, both membranes are smooooooth and have no folds. Inside the inner membrane is the stroma, where DNA, ribosomes and starch grains are stored. Like the nucleus, this is an organelle with bits and bobs all inside of each other. Inside the choroplast there are internal membranes called thylakoids (when you stack them together you have to call them a granum). These thylakoid thingies increase surface area for the attachment of chlorophyll pigments.

Oh, and chloroplasts also have enzymes for the light-independent reaction of photosynthesis.

As you might have noticed, chloroplasts and mitochondria were quite similar, but what’s next are rather different.

Ribosomes are these tiny little dots that seem o just float about a bit. They’re actually very small particles of RNA and are made in the nucleolus. They’re made of two sub units, the light unit and the heavy unit (if I look back in my notes I can see the measurements because I can’t be bothered to figure out how to type that little symbol for microns again. Anyway, ribosomes are found floating free in the cytoplasm and boung to membranes such as the rough endoplasmic reticulum. These guys are kinda like that person you can always see wandering your local shopping centre. They’re always there, just bopping around with not much to do. BUT! Ribosomes do have something to do. They make protein. Dun dun dunnnnnnnn.

And that’s all I have to say on ribosomes.

Endoplasmic reticulum however, is going to take a long time. Basically, the ER is a network or membranes running through the cytoplasm of every cell. The places between the membranes are called cisternae. There are two types of ER, rough ER and smooth ER, so to save myself the bother of witty prose, I’m gonna bullet point on each type.

Rough ER:

·         Ribosomes (which make it rough)

·         Involved in making and transporting proteins

·         Very prominent in enzyme secreting cells, such as the pancreas

Smooth ER:

·         No ribosomes

·         Involved in making and transporting lipids (fats) and steroids

·         Detoxifies poison

·         Extensive in steroid hormone-secreting cells, such as the testes

Magically, that’s the endoplasmic reticulum all done and dusted.

Now, lets tackle the golgi body/apparatus/complex. This is an organelle made of membranes, they’re all curved and stacked one on top of the other. The spaces between these membranes are called the cisternae. And basically, what the golgi body does is act like a post office, in that it receives, sorts and delivers loads of different molecules.

The two main functions of the golgi body are; sectretion, when it produces secretory vesicles, and ; intracellular digestion, when it produces lysosomes.  How does it do these things? At this point I should be flicking forward a few pages in my file to find Figure 5, 6 and 7 because they talk me through the whole thing in laymans terms. Well, ish.

Now, in the whole golgi body process thingy, something called vesicles are mentioned. These are small membrane bound structures and they come in two types – secretory vesicles and lysosomes (funny, where have I heard those terms before? *Note: in a sarcastic tone*)

Lets talk about these two different types of vesicles. The secretory vesicles contain (for example) mucin and are produced by cells lining the gut, reproductive and respiritory systems, or (for example) digestive enzymes which are produced by pancreatic cells. The contents of the secretory vesicles is determained by the type of cell.

Lysosomes on the other hand, are not usually released from the cell and contain digestive enzymes.

Woo, only two more organelles which I haven’t covered yet, but I’ll get back to those as soon as we’ve done then in class J

I’m back, finally, because we’ve finished Eukaryotic cells in class, so I’m just gonna go over vacuoles and centrioles.

Vacuoles are different in plants and animals so I’ll just list them.

Plants;

·         Biggggg permenant vacuole

·         Single membrane called a tonoplast

·         Contains a fluid called cell sap which contains chemicals like glucose

·         It provides support of young tissues

Animals;

·         Large numbers of small tempory vacuoles/vesicles

·         Functions: taking up food and removing waste

NB – Vacuoles are larger than vesicles, but otherwise there’s no structural difference.

Now, finally centrioles. They’re only found in animal cells and are basically hollow cylinders and come in pairs. The separate from each other during the early stages of mitosis and are associated with the separation of chromosomes during cell division.

And that’s all I need to know on Eukaryotic cells. I’m dreading Prokaryotic, if I’m honest. Now this is being posted to the blog.

Wowwww, this is long.

There's A Law For Everything Nowadays.

Okay, so this is gonna be super quick but super long ICT run through in prep for my exam tomro.

Okay, so in the CPU, there are 3 main parts -

The control unit, which controls all the operations going on.

The ALU (Arithmetic and Logic Unit), which does all the calculations and logical opperations.

And finally, the Immediate Access Store (main memory), which holds current programs or the ones waiting to happen.

There are a couple of typed of computer and I know all the details of them all, but here's the list anyway -

Mainframe

Microcomputer

Laptop

Palmtop

Embedded computer

Again, another thing I know all about are bits and bytes. One bit is either a 0 or a 1, and one character is equal to a byte, or 8 bits. There are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes in a megabyte, and 1024 megabytes in a gigabyte.

There are two types of memory in a computer - RAM and ROM, which again, I know all about.

But, there's a bunch of different types of backing storage, listed below...

Magnetic Tape -- used for backup and archiving

Magnetic Hard Tape -- fast storage + access to data, not portable, more data than a floppy and robust.

Floppy Disk -- portable, easily damaged

ZIP -- portable, special ZIP drive needed, up to 250Mb on disc

Disk Cache -- temporary, fast

Optical Disks -- laser technology used to read data

CD-ROM/DVD/CDRW -- stores more data, portable, expensive.

Then there's a huge amount of input and output devices, and different types of software which I know all about, so I'm moving straight on to types of operating system.

There are loads in my booklet, but I'm just gonna go over the main 3 for GCSE level. They are -

Batch Processing System -- which collects and groups data, then processes it at a later stage. This is used for payroll, stock control and billing systems.

Realtime Systems -- when inputs immediate affect the outputs and timing is critical. This is used for the control of nuclear power plants, oil refining, chemical processing and air traffic control.

Realtime Transaction -- when inputs immediately affect outputs but timing isn't critical. This is used for not so dangerous things, like airline booking systems.

Now, on to HCI (human-computer interfaces). Most modern computers operate though GUI's, and have added features like on screen help, customized user environments, on screen assistants and tutorials.

Advantages -

- user friendly

-minimum training

- run more than one piece of software at once (so easy to transfer data)

Disadvantages -

- take up more RAM

- makes the PC run slower

Okay, and now I've lost my patience with this. Ah well.

...It Builds Character

Hellooo.

Crash course on freewill and evil and all that jazz coming up...

Okay, so the freewill defence is the Christian excuse for pretty much everything. While an atheist might question why God lets evil things happen to us, Christians just dismiss the whole thing by saying that God has to let these things happen because he granted us freewill.

The basic idea is that, if God stopped a man stabbing another man, it would remove the mans freewill to commit moral evil. If evil didn't exist, people wouldn't have the choice between good and evil and hence no freewill.

And this magnificent argument covers Christians backs for natural evil too - if there was no threat of natural evil and everything was predictable, people wouldn't be able to learn from the consequences of natural evil. Freedom not only means choice, but also the consequences of choice. Things being to predictable would remove the value from life. The unexpected gives us the chance of total disaster and total triumph.

Now then, Karma. It's usually a philosophy found in Eastern religions like Buddhism, Sikhism and Hinduism. Karma's basically the law of consequences - if you do something bad, then you have to deal with the consequences, and if you do something good, then you get to reap the benefits. These consequences might come tomorrow, next week or in your next reincarnation. If you're especially good, you might get a reward or get to develop certain qualities of your soul.

The idea of Karma and evil is different for the 3 main Eastern religions, so here they are below;

• Hinduism - the challenge is for everyone to achieve moksha and escape the cycle of reincarnation. This is done by not building up any karma, and your soul isn't reborn anymore, so suffering and evil don't matter to you.
• Sikhism - this is super simple... doing good deeds leads to good rewards and doing bad things leads to bad consequences.
• Buddhism - the whole point of being a faithful Buddhist is trying to live a life free of desire, hate and delusion and reach true enlightenment so karma can be left behind.

Now, as I mentioned in my previous post, sometimes we need evil in our lives to help us learn and become better people. We can also become better people through evil by helping others. There's loads of examples of this, like Mother Theresa, the Buddhist monks trying to get rid of oppressive rules in Tibet, Gandhi getting rid of social inequalities in India, fighting discrimination like Mandela did in SA and loads more, like the Salvation Army, Muslim Aid and caring for the needy in the locality of the gurdwara like Sikhs.

Basically, evil brings out the best in people because it gives us all opportunities to over come it and help others in need.

I'm really bored of typing right now, so I'm just going to bullet point all the arguments for the need of evil and suffering -

• People would be selfish if there wasn't people suffering and in need
• Suffering brings home to well-off people how lucky they are and inspires them to help
• Buddhists see suffering as part of life that has to be dealt with
• Jesus experienced all the pain and suffering that humans experience, so God understands suffering
• Muslims have zakat (when they give a percentage of their annual salary).

Wow, thank goodness for that.

Fingers crossed for a good result in RS like last year!

You've Been A Very Bad Boy.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

That quote was written by Epicurus, who lived from 341 to 270 bc and this guy seems to have hit the nail on the head when it comes to the problem of evil.

There always has been and always will be evil things or people on earth, and in my opinion, that's the one thing that can fully disprove the existence of God, thanks to that philosophy of Epicurus'.

The above philosophy helps us question the existence of God in relation to the extent of his power and the extent of his love. For example, if God is all-powerful, why doesn't he stop bad things happening to humans, his ultimate creation? Has he just decided not to protect us and use his power, or is he not powerful enough? Not being powerful enough is basically saying that evil is more powerful than God, so God cannot be called all-powerful and hence is not God.

We can apply the same thing to God being all-knowing and all-loving. Does he not know that evil things happen? Does he not love us enough to care about evil things happening? If the answer is no, then why doesn't he stop evil things happening?

Which brings us about to the ultimate question - should God interfere in human life? It's the same principle as a mother interfering in her child. Should she protect her child from everything and cause the child to suffer as soon as she's not around? Or should she allow the child to suffer in moderation so the child can learn and grow?

But then, maybe God should only prevent certain types of evil. We can divide evil into two camps. Natural evil and Moral evil.

Natural evil is exactly that; natural. It's caused by the structure of the Earth and the universe - think of tectonic plates causing earthquakes and volcanoes. These things cause hardship and suffering for humans, so should God get rid of them? But if God removed all of these hazards, earth and the universe wouldn't be able to support life, and therefore we wouldn't exist so God wouldn't have anything to protect.

Moral evil is more complex. It comes from humans and their sin, apparently. Moral evil can range from jealousy to murder. Can God protect us from all these things? The simple answer is no - things used to commit moral evil can also be used for good, such as a surgeons scalpel. But another question can be asked - what is the root cause of moral evil? Guns don't fire themselves and bombs don't appear from thin air, all of these things come from humans. So why do we create and use them in the ways we do?

Which brings us nicely along to the origins of all evil. We can look at the story of Adam and Eve. They were told not to eat from the tree, and the serpent encouraged them and they did. God gave Adam and Eve freewill to choose whether or not to eat from the forbidden tree, and they did so despite his warnings. Because of this, God punished Adam and Eve - he made humans and serpents enemies, gave women the pain of childbirth, made men dominant over women, and he made it hard to harvest the land. Then God cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, but he couldn't take away their knowledge of good and evil, which they'd gained from the forbidden tree.

Another origin of evil might be the story of Ibilis. In short Ibilis was an angel who refused to bow down to God's greatest creation - mankind. So God banished Ibilis from paradise, so Ibilis vowed to persude humanity not to follow God. So God said that he'd fill hell with Ibilis and all his followers. It's then apparently Ibilis who leads Adam and Eve astray.

Overall, religious stories of the origin of evil very rarely put the blame on God, and evil is considered to have come from the misuse of freewill and goes against God's will. The main idea is that God allows evil to go ahead, but doesn't will it.

The next question I'm going to look at is whether or not we need evil and suffering.

A central answer to this question would be that was need evil and suffering as a contrast to help us appreciate good things. If all things were good, we wouldn't be able to appreciate them, so by having evil too, we can appreciate the good and bad things in life in relation to each other.

Another argument would be that God only created good, and evil came from the misuse of freewill and denial of God. God couldn't have created evil as it's apparently not in his nature, so evil must have come from elsewhere and spoilt God's image.

We can also look at evil and suffering as important learning experiences in this life, as this life can be regarded as a preparation for our next life. This is called soul-making, and evil can be looked upon as a learning tool for this life. It can also be a learning tool for this life, as we can learn from mistakes made by ourselves and others to improve this life.

And that's all I'm going to write on tonight, and my next post will hopefully be on the Free Will Defence, Karma, believer's responses to evil, and whether or not people need evil and suffering.

Boom, job done.

Pre-Exam Panic.

A quick run through of tests for just about everything I need to know.

Simple place to start is flame tests.

You grab a powdered substance and burn it and see what colour it turns - here's the list...

Sodium - Yellow/Orange

Potassium - Purple

Calcium - Red

Magnesium - Really really bright.

Now, how to test for metals in compounds dissolved in water....

Zinc - you need to add sodium hydroxide drops IN EXCESS - White precipitate (which goes away in excess sodium hydroxide solution).

Copper(II) - add sodium hydroxide drops - Light blue precipitate

Iron(II) - add sodium hydroxide drops - Green precipitate (that eventually turns reddish brown)

Iron(III) - add sodium hydroxide drops - Reddish brown precipitate

Magnesium - add sodium hydroxide drops IN EXCESS - White precipitate (that's here to stay, regardless of excess sodium hydroxide solution).

Here's the equation for those lot ---

eg. Copper Sulphate + Sodium Hydroxide ---> Sodium Sulphate + Copper Hydroxide

CuSO4 + 2NaOH ---> Na2SO4 + Cu(OH)2

Now then, here comes the hard bit. First of all, these are tests for halide ions in water. We're technically testing for anions (the negative bit that conducts electricity or something... basically, the Surname of the chemical).

Chloride - add dilute nitric acid and silver nitrate solution - White precipitate

Bromide - add dilute nitric acid and silver nitrate solution - Creamy white precipitate

Iodide - add dilute nitric acid and silver nitrate - Yellow precipitate

Sulphate - add dilute hydrochloric acid and barium chloride solution - White precipitate

Nitrate - add sodium hydroxide to solution and warm it up, then add aluminium powder and test the gas produced - Red litmus turns blue (Ammonium produced)

Now, to identify anions in solids, we need to add either dilute hydrochloric acid or sulphuric acid to the solid, then pass any gas produced through limewater. If the water goes milky/cloudy, the solid is a carbonate.

There are two solid carbonates, and we can identify them because Copper(II) carbonate is a green solid which when heated goes black and gives of CO2.

Meanwhile, Zinc Carbonate is a white solid and goes yellow when heated and gives of CO2.

And finally, the easy tests on how to identify gases.

We all know that oxygen relights a burning splint, hydrogen produces a squeaky pop and carbon dioxide turns limewater milky. But I also need to know that chlorine chlorine turns damp blue litmus paper red then white. And I need to know that ammonia turns damp red litmus paper blue :)

Lurrrrrvley, I'm done for this evening.

Ciao Ciao!

In The Limelight.

Today's post will be on limestone because I have my Chemistry exam on Wednesday and I've hardly looked at this topic. It's a small one, but I think it'll be worth quite a few marks, knowing my luck.

So, the syllabus says I need to know about the thermal decomposition "of the carbonates of calcium, copper and sodium", but today I'm just going to focus on calcium carbonate because it has the most to do with limestone.

Thermal decomposition is when something gets so hot that it's forced to break down into the chemicals it's composed of, so in the case of Calcium Carbonate, you'd get Calcium Oxide and Carbon Dioxide. To get that to happen though, you have to raise the temperature to about 1200 degrees Celsius, which is mighty high.

But, we do it anyway because broken down Calcium Carbonate is pretty useful. You see, this Calcium Oxide is also called quicklime. We make it put crushing some limestone, then chucking it in this rotating drum with some air. Then we burn some fuel to get lots of heat (1200 degrees) and out comes CO2 and quicklime (Ca0). And this quicklime can be used for all sorts of things - we can put it in soil to neutralise acidity, we can use it to make steel from iron and some industries use it as a drying agent.

Then, if you add some water to the quicklime, you get an exothermic (gives out heat) reaction that gives you slaked lime. Which is also pretty useful - it can be used to neutralise soil acidity, to make mortar for buildings, to make pottery, and in a solution makes limewater to test for CO2.

But, limestone on its own is also really useful -here's some stuff it can do;

-can be crushed and used for road building,

-can be added as a powder to lakes to neutralise acidity,

-can be mixed with clay to make cement,

-can be used to extract iron in the blast furnace,

-can be heated with soda and sand to make glass and,

-can be used to neutralise acid gases give off by power stations.

Which is all great, and the trade for limestone is great - the UK quarries over 65 million tonnes per year, and there's loads more in the rest of the world. But, Quarrying is a bit of an environmental issue because they're great big holes in the ground which look pretty ugly and dirty.

Now, for some equations.

Here's the one for the thermal decomposition of calcium carbonate (limestone) -

CaCO3 ------> Ca0 + CO2

And this is the one for turning quicklime into slaked lime -

CaO + H2O ------> Ca(OH)2

Tahdah, thats limestone covered :)

Kidneys,Yum.

This is gonna be a pretty short post coz it's like 9pm and I can't be bothered to cover much.

Okay, first of all, the Kidneys are found in your lower back and are given blood via the renal artery, and blood is taken away by the renal vein.

There are a couple of main parts I need to know for the Kidneys -

I don't really need to know about that Adrenal Gland, but that's the best diagram I can get.

Inside the Medula are these things called Nephrons, where all the bad stuff is filtered out of the blood.

It looks like....

As you can see in the diagram, the Renal artery feeds into the glomerulus, which is a ball of tiny capillaries. The capillaries allow the molecules in the blood to filter out, accept for blood cells and protein, which are too big. Those molecules that have been filtered out go into a cup-sorta-thing called the Bowmans Capsule, and then through a tube that leads to the Loop of Henle.

Coiled around the Loop of Henle are more capillaries which reabsorb the useful stuff in the blood. This blood is 'clean' and can continue its journey through the body. However, stuff that isn't useful, like excess water and urea go into the collecting duct, and then out of the body through the ureter.

The kidneys also help to control the amount of water in the body. There's a special sensor in the brain that detects if the water content is too low. If it is, it sends a message to another part of the brain to start producing ADH (anti-diuretic hormone), which tells the kidneys to reabsorb more water. This means we produce less urine, but what we do produce is very concentrated and dark in colour. This usually happens in warm weather, as we sweat out water.

Something similar happens if there's too much water in the body. The brain is instructed to produce less ADH, so the kidneys stop reabsorbing so much water. This means we produce more urine, which is less concentrated and pale. This happens in cooler weather because we don't sweat.

The end :)

Alcohol Doesn't Just Make You Drunk.

Before I get onto the delightful topic of alcohol, I need to clear up some stuff on Alkanes and Alkenes. If you're an unobservant person, you won't even have noticed the difference between those two words. If you are an observant, well, congratulations, but I have no prizes for you.

Basically, although they look pretty similar, they're different. Alkanes have single covalent bonds.

They're always made up of chains of carbon surrounded by hydrogen atoms (and sometimes some other stuff). Different alkanes have different lengths, but the four I need to know are Methane, Ethane, Propane and Butane. Careful with spelling - those 'ane's are important. Put an 'ene' by mistake and you've basically failed the exam.

All alkanes have the formula -

They're also all saturated, which means they've joined up to as many things as possible - there are no more bonds left to attach to. Which is why we can put alkanes into bromine water and see no reaction, which also allows us to tell the difference between alkanes and alkenes.

And speaking of alkenes - they're pretty much the opposite of alkanes. They have double covalent bonds, but once again are made up of mainly carbon and hydrogen atoms. This makes them unsaturated because the double bonds can open up to join with other things, hence making them into alkanes. So as a rule, alkanes are saturated, alkenes are not.

This also means that alkenes are much more reactive and react with bromine water to tell us what they are. The first three alkenes are ethene, propene and butene - remember what I said earlier about spelling?

All alkenes containing just one double bond have a formula like this -

So now that's all sorted, lets look at alcohol.

There's loads of different types of alcohol, but only one is safe to consume (well, ish). That's ethanol, which you get in wine and beer...etc. Where does ethanol come from? Sugar. The process of fermentation turns sugar into ethanol (and CO2, which is why alcoholic drinks have bubbles).

Here's the formula -

Tah dah, magical.

Anyways.

The whole reaction happens thanks to yeast which kinda acts like a catalyst. Yeast has enzymes in it that convert the suger into ethanol. Those enzymes are called 'zymase'.

As we all should know, enzymes have optimum temperatures, which explains why fermentation is very slow up until 30 degrees C, in which case it's pretty fast, and after which, doesn't really happen at all because the ezymes have denatured.

One of the most important factors in the fermentation is the lack of oxygen. Conditions need to be air tight, coz as soon as you get a bit of oxygen, bang, you get nothing.

Fermentation is actually turning out to be a bit of an annoying process, because when the alcohol percentage reaches between 10-20%, the reaction stops because the ethanol kills the zymase.

But there are good things about alcohol, like the fact we can use barley to make beer and fruit to make wine. We can then distil the alcohol to make it stronger (brandy is basically distilled wine, whiskey is distilled from fermented grain and vodka comes from fermented grain or potatoes. Yuk). Oh, and for those countries that don't have the resources to make petrol, ethanol is a great substitute, plus the ingredients are renewable!

There's more than one way of making ethanol though - we can react ethene with steam to make it too. For this to work it needs to be really hot (I'm talking 300 degrees) and have a pressure of 70 atmospheres AND a catalyst. Might sound tricky, but this is an easy process, mostly because ethene is cheap... but it comes from crude oil, which is an non-renewable resource.

But that's no where near all of alcohol covered. That's just the nice, safe-ish one. There are loads more, namely Methanol, Propanol and Butanol. They look like this...

Methanol. Propanol. Butanol

And Ethanol fits in the middle, right between methanol and propanol.

These alcohols are all clear, colourless and dangerous. They're flammable, evaporate easy, give off fumes and are all toxic. I'm serious, methanol will make you go blind if you drink it. So that's why all this stuff needs to be kept in safe environments - air tight bottles, away from flames and heat sources and preferably in a lab.

Alcohols can all dissolve into water, but are also used to dissolve stuff (they're solvents). They can dissolve everything that water can, plus hydrocarbons, oils and fats. Which makes them all very useful in industry. Eg. Ethanol is the solvent for perfume and aftershave. Methylated spirit (meths) is basically ethanol with other chemicals added to it. It's used to clean paint brushes (god knows why), and as a fuel. It's super dangerous though, so a purpley-blue dye is usually added to warn people.

Finally, ethanol can be dehydrated back into ethene. Industry involved in plastics and polymers use a lot of ethene, and countries with have no oil but lots of land to grow crops can make ethanol then turn it into ethene for whatever they need, But they have to use hot aluminium oxide as a catalyst - not so simple.

Tah dah, that's alcohol covereddddd :)

Bang. Energy. Tah-dahhh.

Physicsssssss. My most favourite subjects ever. Not. Why on Earth did I apply for Physics AS? I'd like to switch to Bio but I'm failing it at the moment.

So, this is my attempt at liking Physics more. As I listen to Friday by Rebecca Black. How sad my life is.

Okies, no more putting it off.

Lets review what I already know on Nuclear power.

Pros are -

• It's clean (and lets face it, no one likes a mess).
• It brings good things to an area like skilled jobs and a better infrastructure.
• It's cheap (and right now everyone's very poor... which I don't understand is where all this money has gone. Coz, if everyone's suddenly poor, the money must have gone somewhere. I can just imagine Africa suddenly becoming a new super power with all the squillions of pounds we've lot. Sorry, tangent).

Wow, that wasn't a lot of pro's at all.

Okay, lets look at Con's instead.

• It releases baddddd things into the atmosphere. CO2 causes global warming and Sulphur compounds cause acid rain. It seems whatever we humans do, we're just murdering the planet.
• The products are radioactive which is very very very bad for all living things.
• Those radioactive products are very hard to get rid of. We have to box them up and bury them in a hole.
• Those radioactive elements stay radioactive for hundreds of years. So we could kill our ancestors if we don't kill ourselves. Lovely.
• There's ALWAYS the risk of major accidents like Chernobyl. Not only do people die at the time, by babies are born with mutations and people die of cancer decades after.
• Even though nuclear reactors are cheap, the facilities and cleaning up the site afterwards is very expensive.

Okay. So the purpose of today's blog is nuclear Fission and Fusion.

Fission is what goes on in a Nuclear Power plant. How does it work? Well, its all in the name. The word 'fission' is when nuclei split. So, lots of Uranium or Plutonium is chucked into the reactor. A stray neutron will smash into one of these big atoms and cause it to split. These split atoms are radioactive and a couple of little neutrons are also released. Those extra neutrons might go off and hit some more Uranium or Plutonium.

Here's a picture;

So that's fission over and done with... all that's left is Nuclear Fusion.

As the name suggests, its when atoms fuse together. This only happens with small nuclei and can be seen in stars like the sun. Fusion whacks out a massive amount of energy (loads more that fission) and since we have loads of hydrogen knocking about, it would be awesome if we could use fusion to produce energy on earth. However, fusion only works in really high temperature.

BUT! There may be an answer to the problem. Some scientists have claimed to have proven a type of 'Cold Fusion', but these results are yet to be replicated.

And tah-dah, that's the ins and outs of Fission and Fusion.

Gahh, The Society For The Protection Of Plants Are Coming!

Today's post is on Biology, kids.

We all know that plants photosynthesise, which involved water, which we know is sucked up through the roots. We also know that plants need CO2 to photosynthesise, and that they release Oxygen as a product of photosynthesis. But, plants don't have mouths or lungs to breathe, and they don't have tongues and stomachs to suck up water as if through a straw.

So how do plants do it? Break them open and they're just leafy-green all the way through. The greatest puzzle of mankind? Of course not, it call all be explained with some other stuff we already know.

Take the process of diffusion. Here's the law, just in case;

Diffusion is the passive movement of particles from an area of higher concentration to an area of lower concentration (AKA, down a concentration gradient).

So, we know its possible for CO2 and Oxygen to diffuse. If only plants had cells that let that happen...

Oh, would you just look at that? That ^ is a cross section of a leaf. And see the thing labelled 'Stoma'? That's basically a tiny hole in the skin of the leaf. Conveniently, it's big enough to let Oxygen and CO2 pass in and out.

No prizes for guessing this is how gas exchange happens in a plant.

So lets make things nice and clear.

To start off, there is a high concentration of CO2 in the air, so it diffuses into the leaf. Its then used to photosynthesise and is turned into Oxygen. This means there's a higher concentration of Oxygen in the plant than outside it, so it diffuses out. This happens continuously.

So, if that's how plants get CO2 for photosynthesis, how do they get the water?

Yep, through the roots.

But, for the water to get from the roots to the leaves, it would pretty much have to defy gravity. How? By sucking. Yeah, I know plants don't have mouths or stomachs. But they can suck, because just the same as gases can be diffused out of the leaves, so can water. So water vapour left over from photosynthesising is diffused out, leaving a little gap for more water to fill. So all the water in the plant moves up a little bit, leading to a tiny bit being sucked up through the roots.

Lovely. That whole process of the water moving is known as Transpiration. A complex name for a pretty simple theory.

Now, there a few other little things I'll need to know.

And those are how the rate of transpiration is affected.

Light is a huge factor. Generally, the brighter the light, the greater the transpiration rate, because the plant is photosynthesising faster. But the plants do need to keep some water to keep them hydrated, which is why all the stomata are on the bottom of the leaf, where it's cooler and darker. The stomata also start to close in the dark, because photosynthesising can't happen in the dark.

Another factor is temperature. When it's hotter, the rate increases because the particles have more energy to move and diffuse.

Air movement also has a big role. Diffusion (and subsequently transpiration) happens more quickly when it's windy because the water vapour is blown away. But when it's not windy, all the water vapour stays around the plant, so there is a higher concentration of water outside the plant.

Finally, the humidity of the air around the plant affects transpiration. Think about it, if there's more water in the air, the concentration gradient will be less, to diffusion will be slower.

Tah-dah, there's a perfectly adequate lesson on transfusion. And damn, my teacher could't explain it in a whole hour. Tut tut, I'm appalled.

Thank me later, people of the world.

I'm A Very Acidic Person.

During Chemistry today, I was appalled by how little I know about the very foundations of Chemistry. I'm not talking ethics and morals and theories. I mean the common knowledge, like what reacts to make a salt, what a base is, what colour a certain substance turns in a certain indicator.

So, this post is going to be a little smidge of all that, plus some stuff on Acid-Base theories which I just didn't get today and need to clear up in my head.

Now then. What is an acid, boys and girls?

Something with a pH less than 7.

And what is an alkali, children?

Something with a pH greater than 7.

So who can tell me what neutral is?

Something with a pH of 7, like water, miss.

I think that ^ is a pretty good interpretation of how I felt today... five year old's could have out smarted me.

But oh well, it's never too late to learn.

Metal Oxides and Metal Hydroxides are all bases. And to complicate things further, all alkali's are bases, but not all bases are alkali. Like this...

Yay.

There's a couple of equations I need to learn...

acid + base --> salt + water

AKA:

That basically means that the Hydrogen in an Acid will react with the Hydroxide in an Alkali to produce water, which is neutral.

An example? Well, just think of Sulphuric Acid and Sodium Hydroxide forming Sodium Sulphate and Water.... the Sodium Sulphate is the salt.

Another formula:

acid + metal --> salt + hydrogen

Like Sulphuric Acid and Magnesium will form Magnesium Sulphate (the salt again) and Hydrogen. The more reactive the metal, the more hydrogen is produced and the quicker it happens. But there are some weakling-little metals, like Copper, that are less reactive than hydrogen, so they don't react at all.

Also, Acids and Carbonates will always produce Carbon Dioxide (and salt and water).

A note on reversible reactions: provided all the reactants and products are kept in a closed environment, they will eventually reach a dynamic equilibrium. This means that there will eventually come a time when the relative (%) quantities of the reactants and products will reach a balance and stay there. It's called a 'dynamic' equilibrium because the reaction is still going on. However, the reaction is happening at the same rate, so they cancel each other out.

Changing temperature or pressure can effect a reactions equilibrium, but a catalyst makes no difference.

I know I said I was going to talk about Acid-Base theories, but this post has gone on for too long and I'm past the point of caring :)

Oh Gee, You Think I'm Special?

More RS coming up, because I have a test on Friday.

So, following on from the stuff on Special revelation, I need to talk about prayer, worship, visions, dreams, enlightenment and then I need to discuss whether God is a reality or an illusion.

Lets crack on then.

Prayer is a big part of a lot of religions. Millions of people use it to contact God and as a symbol of their commitment. The way people pray is effected by the religion they belong to and personal preference too.

Some people pray in silence because they believe words get in the way of worship. They believe that prayer is about being still in the presence of God and being totally open to what he has to offer. Other people enjoy to meditate, particularly Buddhists. This can either be done in silence or by saying 'Om' in time with breathing. Meditation has a lot in common with silent prayer as it's about being open to God and (especially for Buddhism) enlightenment. Some people focus on religious books or God, others try to clear the mind to achieve enlightenment. The purpose of meditation is to become one with God.

Another popular type of prayer is communal prayer. This takes place in religious buildings or at formal ceremonies. A group of believers (of one religion) all come together to share a prayer, perhaps to help one person feel more integrated into the religion and accepted by God. Communal prayer is often done in a set format, which is known as Liturgical prayer. The people repeat standard prayers or words, usually in a formal setting, led by a priest (or other holy-person).

Some religions are a little more over the top and use their whole bodies to pray, such as Muslims who go through a series of bows...etc whilst chanting or praying.

Prayer is really interlinked with worship. Technically, prayer is a form of worship and worship goes wayyyyy beyond just prayer. So other types of worship can include going to a holy building, reading sacred texts or taking part in religious days. The point of all this is to show off to God and be like 'Hey, you up there! I love you, God!'. But yeah, anyway. Some religions require you to live by the rules of God at all times, but some people can't help but wonder at the validity of worship. It's not as if worshipping God is going to help him much. Added to the fact that God might not even exist, the whole idea of worship does make you consider the sanity of these worshippers. But hey, they say it gives them a better understanding of God, so I'll just leave them to it.

So, last post I talked about how God might reveal himself to humans through nature or whatever and I had to use that complicated Van Gogh anology. This method of revelation is much simpler - maybe God could just pop up and be like "Hey, I exist, spread the word!" And voila, job done. That's what I discussed the post before last with the whole Isaiah thing. But the thing is, who would really believe Isaiah if he came along and started going on about Serpahs and whatever else. Coz I sure wouldn't; I'd have him down as a whack job. Fact is, it's always gonna be hard to prove visions and dreams are real because they're hard to communicate to other people, and they'd be pretty hard to believe. Visions and dreams are almost always unique and personal, so really only the person in question can believe in it.

There's one final revelation that I have to talk about, and surprisingly, I'm not that pessimistic about it as the other ones. Enlightenment was first achieved by the Buddha on like 400BCE. He fasted and nearly died and tried all sorts of things to achieve enlightenment, but eventually he just meditated for 49 days and finally made it. Now the whole of Buddhism is dedicated to the Buddha and achieving enlightenment.

Finally, the difference between reality and illusion has already been revised on my poster. So, for the topic of Revelation and Enlightenment, I'm DONEEEEE XD

Abolish Religion So We Can Stop Fighting Over It.

I majorly freaked out in RS today. At this rate I'll scrape a C and then my hard earned A* (100%, by the way) from last year will be a total waste.

So here I am on Pancake Day revising RS. Oh well, at least I can write oh-so-sarcastically about Revelation and Enlightenment.

Lets hypothesize. If God did exist, and if he was the ultimate creator, how would we know? If God were as high-and-mighty as he's made out to be, it's pretty fair to say that humans wouldn't know about him unless God wanted us to. So religious people rely on revelation to know that God is up there somewhere. There are two types of revelation - special and general.

General revelation can be seen all around us. For example, if we want to find out about a dead painter like Van Gogh, we look at his paintings. From those paintings we can tell that he was a tormented man. But Van Gogh was probably more than just a tormented man. He might have enjoyed strawberry ice cream and watching America's Next Top Model, but we don't know that from his painting. Van Gogh can never create a painting greater than himself. Likewise, God can never create something greater than himself.

So when we look in awe at nature and all it's glory, I can see why these uber-Catholics might assume that God is all of nature and greater. Nature is a good way to look at God. Nature is intelligent, interlinked, beautiful. Maybe you could argue that those are some of the characteristics of God. But you could also argue that nature can be evil and dangerous... are those characteristics of God too? Maybe, maybe not.

But God can also reveal himself through his other creations, like people. Some people are compassionate and loving, like religious people claim God to be. Other people can be spiteful and evil... once again, shouldn't these be characteristics of God too?

-

Special revelation is a whole different subject all together. Rather than being able to look at what's around us to determine what God is like, we have to rely on direct messages from God.

A pretty obvious example are sacred texts. Most of them are apparently written by people who have had direct contact with God. Some religions obviously value their religious books more than others, like the Sikh Guru Granth Sahib is treated like God itself; it's fed, put to bed and carried above the head.

Here's a short note on the sacred texts of the six main world religions -

• Hinduism, The Vedas - these books have no human authors, as the stories in them were heard/seen in visions by priestly seers, who in turn wrote them down when it was feared the meaning of the tales was being changed.
• Judaism , The Torah - contains the laws given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Since these laws came directly from God, Jews follow the Torah very exactly.
• Buddhism, The Tripitaka and The Sutras - the Buddha taught many great lessons, which were gradually collected and written down. These books aren't so much worshipped, they just contain the teachings of an enlightened man.
• Christianity, The Bible - was written by prophets, gospels...etc who had direct contact with God, so it's followed very exactly.
• Islam, The Qur'an - is the word of Allah revealed to Muhammed, which means the book is treated with utmost respect.
• Sikhism, The Guru Granth Sahib - contains the teachings of the ten gurus (and some Hindu and Muslim teachings) and is treated like a human.

Although some religious books contain the direct words of God and some do not, there is a LOT of confusion over how the words should be interpreted.

Some people known as fundamentalists believe that every word in sacred texts should be taken literally, as the words come from God and God wouldn't mislead his people.

Others, known as liberals, believe that since the sacred texts were written so long ago, they're not very relevant to current times, so we must derive meaning from the texts and apply them to current day situations.

Finally, there are even some people who question the validity of scared texts. They question their validity because they believe sacred texts are just expressions of other people's beliefs that gained value because other people could relate to them. So, although the sacred texts might not be completely accurate, they do show us how people like to express their faith.

Wow, I'm tired after all that. I might post more on other ways of spiritual revelation tonight or maybe tomorrow :)

Oh, Hello God. You Exist After All!

Okies, hello again Blogger. I can't believe I'm back here already. This time for my actual GCSEs. Whoopie.

I'm here to waffle about Isaiah's Commission, which is some biblical text about some dude called Isaiah getting a vision and becoming a prophet.

The text I'm supposed to study is on page 68 of my textbook, but here's a link to a slightly different version because I can't find the exact one.

http://www.bibleinsong.com/Song_Pages/Isaiah/Isaiah6/Isaiah6.htm

Yeah, I know, what a loadddd of mumbo-jumbo. I can't believe I'm actually analysing the Bible on the internet. Oh the shame. Anyway, right.

Basically, the story starts off the same year some King called Uzziah died. God was sitting on a throne and the train of his robe was filling the whole temple (some people might argue that it was Solomon's Temple). Above God there were two Seraphs, which are these winged mythical creatures that appear in Hebrew and Christian texts. So these two Seraphs had six wings each, two covering their faces, two covering their feet and two they were using to fly.

These creatures are representative of praise and they were all "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, the whole earth was full of his glory". Basically, they were bigging up God's ego even more than it already was.

And when these Seraphs started speaking, the door posts started shaking and the room was full of smoke. There's also a quotation in Exodus, which goes "for no man shall see me and live". So naturally, Isaiah started freaking out big time. He goes on about having unclean lips and that he lives among other people who have unclean lips. No, all of Isaiah's household don't need a good wash, apparently this 'unclean lips' is a metaphor for having sin, which everyone has.

So after Isaiah started freaking out, one of the Seraphs wanted to chill him out. But rather than give him a good pat on the shoulder, the Seraph grabbed a burning coal from some alter and shoved it on Isaiah's lips. To be honest, that would have freaked me out more, but it chilled Isaiah out, so that's all that matters. So then the Seraph tells Isaiah that his sin and guilt is gone.

Then God starts asking for a prophet, so Isaiah offers himself up. God then tells him to go and tell everyone to "be ever hearing, but never understand; be ever seeing, but never perceiving". Then God talks about how this will effect people and says stuff about their hearts being calloused and their ears dull and their eyes closed. Which all basically means that even though Isaiah is apparently preaching the truth, many people won't listen. But there will be the handful of headcases who will listen. And Jesus will deal with the ones who don't wanna listen and make some of them into headcases too.

Sounds like I just analysed God's plan for world domination and some poor guy with too much on his mind as it is, without some high-and-mighty-supernatural-being telling him to go preach to people who won't listen.

What a fucked up religion Christianity is. No offence, ofc.

Oh, I almost forgot.

http://executableoutlines.com/isa/isa_04.htm

^ That's the site I used to get my head around the whole extract :)

Lets Electroplate This Tacky Watch In Gold And Flog It Quick.

I think I finally cracked Electrolysis today, which I'm landed about, because it's the only topic in Chem that I was totally clueless on. Thank god.

So yeah.

In electrolysis, a current is carried by both positive and negative charges. Here's what it looks like...

The negative electrode -

- is known as the cathode

- always attracts the positive molecules (which are always metals or hydrogen)

- allows the positive metals to gain a couple of electrons so they can go back to being a normal atom.

The positive electrode -

- is known as the anode

- always attracts negative molecules

- allows the negative part of a substance to loose a few electrons so it can go back to being a normal atom too.

Quite simply, opposites attract.

We use electrolysis for -

- electroplating

-on submarines so they don't rust

- and one space craft so they're light but aren't damaged on take off.

Electrolysis of aluminium is an important one I have to learn...

Bauxite is mined out of the ground and purified to make aluminium oxide. The aluminium oxide is then mixed with cryolite to bring down it's melting point, because the aluminium has to be molten to conduct the electricity. Then, the aluminium oxide and cryolite is chucked in a tank that looks like this...

The anode has to be replaced every few months, because when the oxygen is separated from the aluminium, it begins to react with the carbon in the anode and produce CO2.

At the cathode, this happens...

Al^3 + 3e > Al
In other words, the ion aluminium is given 3 extra electrons to make it normal.

At the anode, this happens...

2O^2- > O2 - 4e
Aka, the oxygen ion gets rid of four electrons.

Yay, electrolysis finished. Happy Gaby.

Stop Killing My Planet.

Another biology post here :) This one is going to be on the various way humans affect the environment. I'll probably be a bit harsh because I don't like what we're doing to our home.

Okay, so Eutrophication is when fertilisers accumulate in water and cause massive problems. Basically, some crappy farmer will fill his fields with fertilises, which we eventually run into nearby streams and ponds. The algae in these water sources simply love fertilisers, so they grow loads on the surface on the water. This means that the sun can't get through to the bottom of the stream or river or pond or whatever type of body of water it is. So the planets that live under the water can't photosynthesize without the sunlight, so they die. When the planets die, they're not oxygenating the water, so all this fishies living there have nothing to breathe. They die too, and before you know it, some idiot farmer has killed the whole pond. Not good.
Apart from killing loads of species, this makes the body of water in question look really ugly. The colour and smell of the water is disgusting and loads of animals die! Luckily, we can stop all that from happening by yelling at all farmers not to use external nutrients and by filtering the algae off the water every now and then :)

Another way humans effect the planet are our contributions to biodiversity. Biodiversity is when loads of different species live in one area together. But we're causing problems with that by over-hunting certain species and cutting down their habitats. And then lots of stuff starts to die and food chains get screwed up. And in fact, we're shooting our own feet by doing that, coz we need all those plants and stuff to make drugs and food and raw materials.
So the only ways we can fix those problems is by cloning species (imo, very silly), eating synthetic meat, regulating the use of land, protecting certain species by law, and breeding animals in captivity.

And of course, we're part of more problems. Namely, the hole in the ozone layer. Usually, the ozone layer protects us from the sun's UV rays. But not so much anymore thanks to all the water vapour we've created, the CFC's you get in deodorant and all the other pollution we get up to. And thats harming our own defences. But since that hole's been getting better, the icecaps have been melting, the global temperature has been rising and humans are more likely to get cancer.
To be honest, I don't particularly want cancer, so I think we should all do stuff to stop this hole getting any bigger. Like removing CFC's from sprays, minimising high-altitude flights and decouraging deforestation.

Another problem everyone's heard about is the greenhouse effect, or global warming. What that basically means, is that humans have been releasing too much CO2, methane, nitrogen oxide and fluorinated gases into the atmosphere. This, once again, causes tonnes of problems, like the icecaps melting, a global increase in temperature and loss of species. But, we can help solve this problem by reducing our use of fossil fuels, reducing pollutants and by saving energy.

And the final problem I have to know about is bioaccumulation. This is when a pesticide is eaten by an small animal and is then passed on up the food chain. Pesticides have really long half lives, so it's bad to have them in the food chain. Since pesticides have been in use, there's been a decrease in local bird populations and northern birds have been hugely effected because the pesticides end up in the fat they use to keep warm. The only way we can stop this happening is by cutting down on the amount of pesticides we use :)

The end, although I'll post again tonight for Chemistry :)