Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2014 June 7

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June 7

atomized

When something gets "atomized" does that mean it turned into atoms, or that it's atoms were destroyed? 186.95.11.138 (talk) 00:30, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

See atomization. The most common meaning, as applied to things like perfume, is that it's made into a fine mist. And no, those droplets are not individual atoms. However, you probably meant the other meaning, which is also explained at that link. StuRat (talk) 02:54, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

The concept of atomization precedes the modern Atomic theory and refers to the creation of minute particles, like mist, that cannot be further split, or it is thought that they cannot be further split. The concept of atoms is two thousand years older than the modern understanding of what are actually atoms. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:32, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Species ID

What's the specific name of the "West African dwarf buffalo"? The term appears in the Scott catalogue's description of a Liberian stamp of 1937 (scan of this stamp), but a Google search for the term isn't hugely helpful. It found me this old source, which identifies the animal as being one of two species, but neither of the names it gives are bluelinks. Nothing also on Syncerus nanus, given by this book. Nyttend (talk) 01:44, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

See African forest buffalo (Syncerus caffer nanus). Taxonomists apparently at some point reclassified Syncerus nanus as a subspecies of Syncerus caffer. According to this page, both Bos nanus (from your first source) and Syncerus nanus are synonyms of S. c. nanus. (Nanus, by the way, means "dwarf" in Latin.) Deor (talk) 14:01, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Hence the alternative name Nano-buffalo. Ghmyrtle (talk) 12:51, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Species ID part II

What's the specific name of the pepperbird? This species is Liberia's national bird, but the image on this stamp is substantially different from the images in Common bulbul, the bird listed for Liberia at List of national birds. Nyttend (talk) 02:33, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

This book, at least, specifies that Liberia's national bird is, in fact, Pycnonotus barbatus. Note that both images in our article Common bulbul are of the "dark-capped" subspecies P. b. tricolor, which may account for the difference from the engraving on the stamp. Deor (talk) 13:44, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

How are gas and electric meter readings estimated?

I was too slow in submitting my gas and electric meter readings so they were estimated. Curiously, the estimated were exceedingly accurate for both. How is this achieved? Location: Edinburgh, supplier: Scottish Hydro. ----Seans Potato Business 07:30, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

I would think they have several years worth of data on you, so they could make a pretty reasonable usage guess based on time of year and maybe other factors. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:43, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

They also know your address, so they know what the temperature was (which is the primary determinant of how much you ran the heating) and how much sunshine there was (which is the primary determinant of how much you had the lights on). In addition to your historical meter readings (for which again they know the prevailing temperatures and sunlight) they have those (and some real up to date readings) for some of your neighbours (who are also their customers) which they can use to validate their predictions. If there was some significant change in your domestic circumstances (particularly more or fewer people living there) or you made some marked change to the property (such as building an extension) that would throw off their estimates for a while. The predictive power of their model is such that if a property were to make a marked departure from the prediction that might indicate the premises were being used for other purposes. -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 17:59, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

They could do all those scientific things, but what they actually do is take the opportunity to overestimate your usage so they can get a free loan from you for the next period. SpinningSpark 21:15, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, not just that. It's a lot easier to overcharge, then give people money back than it is to get them to pay you more later. The world is full of TV adverts from financial institutions extolling the fact that you get cash back from credit card transactions (aka: They overcharged the merchant for their credit processing services so you're paying more for your goods than is really necessary) or you sing their jingle and an insurance agent pops up to tell you that they'll give you some of your money back (because they overcharged you in the first place!). You buy a car here in Texas and some car dealers will give you a thousand dollars as a "cash-back bonus"...in other words, they overcharged you by (at least) $1,000 and now you're getting it back (and paying more interest on the loan for the next five years). The world is full of organizations that take too much of your money and then extoll the fact that they give you some of it back! People evidently like this - or they'd look at these adverts with the same degree of horror as I do! The fact that so many companies do this - and brag about it - means that this is a practice that people actually LIKE !!?? SteveBaker (talk) 15:10, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Formation of the Moon

If the Giant impact hypothesis is correct, would the Earth have been in a different orbit (or in any stable orbit) at the time of impact? Or would the Earth have been roughly in the same orbit that we know today? Dismas|^(talk) 09:55, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

It would have been in stable orbit, yes. The size of the impact would have been enough to significantly change the Earth's orbit, tilt, and rotation, depending on the direction of the hit and how off-center it was. An off-center hit is more likely to have changed the Earth's rotation (controlling day length) and tilt (causing seasons), while an on-center hit would have changed the Earth's orbit around the Sun more. To me, the Earth's orbit being roughly circular about the Sun suggests that it was not changed all that much, if we assume it started out circular. The tilt of the Earth and it's relatively fast rotation, on the other hand, do suggest an off-center hit. StuRat (talk) 12:37, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

There are quite some bodies which rotate faster than Earth, for example Jupiter (10h) and Saturn (11h), while Mars is quite similar to Earth (41 minutes slower). However, the closer the planet is to the star, the sooner tidal locking will occur. At some point in the future, Earth will rotate more slowly than Mars, and it used to rotate much faster in the past. The composition of the Moon is another hint at a glancing impact; the Moon is 40% less dense than Earth, so the core was not hit violently enough to knock a significant amount of it into space (or at least not into a stable orbit). - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 14:27, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

first scientist

Who is considered the "first" scientist, in the modern sense? Overone2 (talk) 12:46, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

There are other senses? I only know one sense. The first scientist would probable be some nameless homo erectus who learned how to control fire. Plasmic Physics (talk) 12:53, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Or, perhaps there is an earlier example of when phytotherapy was first discovered, that is the use of plant materials for their curative properties. Any animal can potentially make that discovery. Plasmic Physics (talk) 13:04, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

It depends what criteria you use and who you ask. Accoring to Jim Al-Khalili, the first person to use the modern scientific method of acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge, based on the gathering of data through observation and measurement, followed by the formulation and testing of hypotheses to explain the data, was Ali al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham, born in AD 965. [1]. Richerman (talk) 14:11, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

• I would say the earliest person we know by name who I would consider a scientist is Imhotep. Looie496 (talk) 14:13, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Thales was the first to explain natural phenomena as the result of inanimate substances, rather than essentially psychological forces like love and strife. μηδείς (talk) 17:19, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

The problem is that the first people whose names we know are the Egyptian Pharaohs - so they tend to capture a lot of the "First person to..." accolades simply because they are the first specific people that we know anything at all about. It's unlikely that if the answer to "Who was the first scientist who's name we know" turns out to be an ancient Egyptian, that this person also happens to be "The first scientist" - that would be an astounding coincidence, so it's almost certainly not true. Same deal for "who was the first historian" or "who was the first person to write their name". If Imhotep was a scientist, then it's astronomically unlikely that he was the first...just the first who was famous enough for his name to survive this long.

Best answer here is "We don't know" because it was just too long ago.

Sadly, "We don't know" isn't usually a very popular answer around here!

SteveBaker (talk) 14:56, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

If you are really looking for "in the modern sense" a scientist is someone who earns their living by doing scientific research. The Pharaohs wouldn't qualify under that criterion but some of the medieval Arabs might. Robert Hooke was paid as curator of experiments by the Royal Society but he did other things as well like designing churches for Christopher Wren, and inventing the sash window. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:50, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

The natural philosophy and scientist articles have some information about another point of view; the first person who was described in his own time as a scientist lived around 1833. Contemporary descriptions of Robert Hooke (1635 – 1703) and Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) never describe them as "scientist" but as "natural philosopher". --DavidCary (talk) 04:35, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

This is a little difficult because easily mixed up with some "first" or "outstanding" inventor, mathematician or engineer and alike. We dont know exactly how they worked befor Empiricism became the standard and core of Science. Science in in the modern sense is defined as based on Empiricism so you may want to read about Empiricism to get close to an answer. --Kharon (talk) 04:54, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Resulting chemical from hydrogen + oxygen

Once you have hydrogen and want to combine it with oxygen from the air to produce electricity in a real-life environment: does the resulting chemical have to be water, or could you produce H2O2 or H2O3? I imagine that doing that would result in a higher electricity production, although you won't simply be able to release it in the environment. OsmanRF34 (talk) 19:30, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

I should think it would produce less electricity, as water is a more stable form. Therefore, producing less stable forms would require more energy, because you're fighting against the natural tendency. StuRat (talk) 19:47, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

I wouldn't think those other two compounds could be made; higher (less negative) oxidation states for oxygen are precluded by the fact that oxygen is completely reduced in its cell half-reaction. Also, at room temperature, the peroxide ion (as well as the covalent hydrogen peroxide) disproportionates (slowly), while oxygen has never (as far as I can tell) formed a compound along the lines of H₂O₃.--Jasper Deng (talk) 06:15, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Isn't H2O3 a bluelink? DMacks (talk) 20:09, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Hence "as far as I can tell". And that article does seem to imply that it is stable enough to be created through electrolysis of water. I wouldn't count on it though; to me, oxygen is just too easily reduced to the -2 state for that to have any real practical meaning.--Jasper Deng (talk) 01:39, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Again, let's read the article's cited statements rather than gut feelings. It has "a half-life of ... only milliseconds in water" but it is apparently present "in biological systems [from] the reaction between singlet oxygen and water ... with the singlet oxygen being produced by immune cells". DMacks (talk) 02:49, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

It's not gut feel. You extract the most possible energy from a chemical reaction by reducing the ingredients to their lowest possible energy state. H2O is by far the lowest energy state of all hydrogen/oxygen compounds - which comes as no surprise because it's by far the most stable - which in turn is no surprise because it's by far the most prevalent. SteveBaker (talk) 15:00, 9 June 2014 (UTC)