Is it a meteor or a meteorite? And where do they come from?

A meteor is a small, solid object that burns up upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere. The bright streak it makes is commonly called a shooting star. If it makes it to the ground it’s called a meteorite. I don’t think that definition includes objects lost from the Space Station, like a wrench or tool bag.

Some meteors are the remnants of the early formation of the Solar System, bits and pieces that didn’t get incorporated into planets or moons. Since they burn up in our atmosphere or land on the ground you could say they are now being incorporated.

Comets, which are kind of like big dirty snowballs, since they are made up of ice and some dust, are the source of a few meteors. Comets orbit the sun out beyond the orbit of Pluto, which used to be our most distant planet, but is now called a planetoid---a really long story. Sometimes the gravity of big planets like Jupiter will disturb a comet’s orbit and it will pass close enough to the sun to warm up and shed a trail of debris. When the orbit of the Earth passes through this trail we get a meteor shower.

Most meteors come from the asteroid belt, that bunch of stuff making a ring of debris around the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Some are of interstellar origin, from outside our solar system, or even pieces of our moon and Mars, dislodged by an asteroid impact.

Most meteors are made of stony material. A few per cent are mostly iron and nickel. The majority of meteors range in size from specks of dust to sand-grains. Luckily only a rare few are much larger, such as the six miles in diameter meteor that gouged out the huge crater in Arizona. That left a mark, a crater three-quarters of a mile in diameter and six hundred feet deep.

Why doesn't the International Space Station fall back to Earth?

Funny you should ask, I was wondering the same thing, so I did a little research and this is what I learned.

The answer is it’s falling all the time. Huh, what??

Here’s what’s going on. Let’s say we have a cannon and we can put any amount of gunpowder in it and shoot a cannon ball as fast as we want. We take it to the top of an impossibly high mountain, to get away from the drag of the atmosphere, make sure it’s level and fire it. There are two forces acting on the cannon ball, the straight-out force given to it by the cannon and the downward force of gravity. The result of these two forces is a downward curve. If we use more powder and shoot the ball faster it will travel farther before hitting the ground. If we fired the cannon ball at the right velocity, it wouldn’t hit the ground at all because the result of its forward motion and downward motion is a curve that matches the curve of the Earth. Our cannon ball would fall around and around the Earth because the ground is falling away at the same rate as it is falling, so it just keeps missing the ground.

The International Space Station’s velocity is about 17,000 miles per hour at a height of about 200 miles. At that speed and altitude its path or orbit is a curve that matches the curve of the Earth, so it is falling and falling and falling around the Earth and so is everybody and everything inside, even those M&M’s they try to catch in their mouths.

Ant Plant

We all know that insects eat plants and some plants return the favor and eat them, like the Venus Fly Trap. Plants eat insects (actually absorb) in order to get nutrients that may be hard to come by where they live. But, there is a plant that gets extra nutrients by simply providing a home for insects --- in this case ants. It is known commonly as the Ant Plant (Dischidia pectinoides). This native of Western Asia and the Western Pacific, for instance the Philippines, grows not in the ground, but on tree trunks and limbs as do many orchids. Botanists call them epiphytes, which means in Greek, epi-upon, phyte-plant.

The home the Ant Plant provides is a bladder-like structure that is really a modified leaf (See Photo). The ants enter and leave through a small hole at the base of the bladder where it attaches to the stem. In return for a home, the ant provides the plant with the carbon dioxide plants use to make food, using sunlight, through a process known as photosynthesis (Greek again), photo-light, synthesis placing within.

It also gets nutrients from the detritus (a fancy name for ant poop and the other good stuff the ants track in) the ants bring into their bladder home. These nutritious tid-bits are absorbed through the walls of the bladder as is the carbon dioxide exhaled by the ants. The ants probably benefit somewhat from the oxygen exhaled by the plant and no doubt by the shelter provided. Organisms benefit when they don’t have to expend much energy to gain something they need for their survival. It gives them a nice advantage.

Now why in the world did this amazing plant evolve such a unique way of earning extra income? Kinda like renting out a spare room. Maybe it’s not extra. Maybe in a habitat that is crowded with plants there is a lot of competition for carbon dioxide, all the other plants are sucking it up too as well as nutrients. Maybe to make ends meet, the Ant Plant really needs that extra income provided by its renters-- the ants.

Any other ideas as to why the Ant Plant goes to all this trouble?

How Does Soap Work, Anyway?

Soap’s been around a long time, at least six thousand years, but how does it get that spot of gravy off your favorite shirt?

A molecule of soap is a long chain of carbon and hydrogen atoms with some oxygen atoms tacked on at one end. The end with the carbon and oxygen likes to attach to water molecules and the other end, which is just hydrogen and carbon, likes to attach itself to oils. This oil the carbon-hydrogen end likes so much is what can make dirt mixed with it so hard to remove because the oil likes to stick to the fibers of the material in your shirt.

When you dissolve soap in water the oil loving ends attach to the oil in the gravy stain and the water loving end (the end with the oxygen), attaches to a water molecule. Usually what happens is that a bunch of soap molecules surround the oil to form a glob of soap-oil-dirt with the dirt-oil in the middle of the glob and the water loving ends of the soap molecules sticking out hanging on to the water. Now when you stir things up, like when you slop your shirt around in the soapy water, the soap and oil glob is lifted from the shirt and suspended in the wash water.

When you rinse your shirt, the soap-oil-water combo is washed away and hopefully you have a clean shirt and no one will ever know you dripped gravy on it.