CSB8: A Pressure Test

This project was made by Rahul and Thyne

After a day of playing soccer, a day full of exercise, your muscles ache, your eyes are blurry, and your body is begging for nourishment. However, your hands do not feel any different than before your exhaustion. In fact, you will be attending a piano recital in a couple hours and your performance will probably not be altered by the soccer game in any way. My partner Thyne and I tested this by asking if doing different activities, such as jogging in place, keeping a weight suspended in air, and typing rapidly, affects your ability to apply pressure? From our prior knowledge on body systems, Thyne and I know that this project utilizes the muscular system and its energy source, ATP. ATP is a molecule that helps muscles perform work, and it is formed from the contents of the food you eat. Once you perform work, the ATP molecule becomes an ADP molecule and is stored to be recycled back into an ATP molecule. The activities we are testing all use up the body’s ATP storage, however we want to observe their impact on the hand in particular. Does using ATP in some muscles affect the ability of the hand to perform work or do the muscles of the hand operate individually? We hypothesized the latter stating that all the activities will decrease the amount of pressure you can apply on the sensor but the activity that is most associated with the hand and uses it the most, or typing, will lower the maximum pressure by the most amount.

To test our experiment we used a dynamometer, which is basically a hand grip pressure sensor. After recording our originals, Thyne and I performed a particular activity and then applied pressure on the sensor. After recording our right hand, we recorded our left hand to increase the amount of data we possessed. The data we now provide is the average between the force that Thyne applied and the force that I applied and is measured in Newtons. Our original right hand force was 195 Newtons, our right hand force after jogging was 197, our right hand force after lifting a weight was 164, and our right hand force after typing was 147. Our original left hand force was 190, our left hand force after jogging was 200, our left hand force after lifting a weight was 163, and our left hand force after typing was 174. As you can see, the original was the highest, jogging provided little or no change, weights decreased substantially, and typing decreased even more so. The only data that doesn’t affirm was the 174 Newtons for the left hand but that must have been due to us pressing the dynamometer differently towards the end.

To analyze the data, jogging, which used various muscles but used the muscles in the hand the least, had no effect. Lifting a weight, which used the muscles in the hand more than jogging but less than typing, had effect. Typing, which used the muscles in the hand the most, had the most effect. Therefore, our hypothesis is partly supported. Typing had the most effect on the hand since even though it used only a few muscles, used the muscles in the hand the most. However, contrary to our hypothesis, jogging had no effect on our maximum pressure. According to these findings, you will be able to excel at your piano recital after your tiring soccer match.

CSV#7: Big Bang Not Really the First Birth of the Universe

U.K. scientist believes that the Big Bang was not the beginning of the universe, but rather a part of a series of "cosmic deaths and rebirths". Roger Penrose, theoretical physicist at the University of Oxford, thinks that circular patters in the universe "pervasive background" may show that the universe was actually formed before the Big Bang. It also suggests that the universe has had multiple cycles of creation in the past.

However, there is controversy over this theory that some scientists do not agree with this idea. The theory of Penrose and another scientist, Vahe Gurzadyan from Yerevan State University, contradicts the theory of inflation. The theory of inflation say that the infant cosmos underwent an enormous growth spurt in its first tiny fraction of a second. Therefore, scientists say that inflation would have erased the patterns that Penrose and Gurzadyan have claimed that they have found. In their paper, Penrose and Gurzadyan suggests that the circles that they found were created by collisions with large black holes that occured in the previous universe. This would then create sphere shaped gravity waves that may have entered this universe.

I was interested in this article since I always thought that there was only one beginning of the universe, and the idea that there could have been more seemed interesting. One question that I have is how were Penrose and Gurzadyan able to detect the gravitational circles in the universe. Also, if there were multiple beginnings of the universe, could another rebirth happen again, and what would cause the death and rebirth of the universe? If these findings are further supported by more evidence, we could be closer to understanding how everything came to be.

Citations:

"Scientist: Big Bang not the first birth." Science Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 8 May 2011. .

http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/gehall/images/explosion.jpg