Wanderers - a short film by Erik Wernquist

These places actually exist in our solar system and some have featured in my blog posts!
Can you pick out any of them?

Chocolate Helps you do Mental Maths! 

Display formula of Theobromine

If you're revising maths and using mental arithmetic to do so, eat some chocolate! It's has actually been proven to help your mental maths. 

There are many brilliant chemicals in chocolate; tryptophan which makes the neurotransmitter serotonin which produces feelings of happiness. Phenylethylalanine (what a name) which is associated with the initial euphoria of falling in love and is an antidepressant when combined with dopamine (a naturally occurring chemical in the brain). And last but not least, theobromine which, when combined with caffeine, gives you the kick that you love when you eat chocolate. 

Imagine eating 25 of these at once...
(Starting to feel sick?)

Scientists at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego have suggested that chocolate contains substances which produce a cannabis-like effect on the brain. While you may think you've just found a cheaper way to get high, don't get too excited, you would have to eat more than 25 pounds of chocolate all in one go to get high the same way. 

So chocolate makes us all happy campers. But it, apparently, also helps you solve your simultaneous equations. 

Chocolate, especially dark chocolate, contains a group of compounds called flavanols, which increase the flow of blood to the brain. Volunteers were given flavanols in a 'cocoa drink' (read: scientific hot chocolate), they were then asked to count backwards in group of three from a random number between 800 and 999. Volunteers given the 'cocoa drink' were able to do the maths more quickly and accurately, and felt less tired and less mentally drained while practicing their arithmetic skills. They could continue to do the same maths for a longer period of time than volunteers who were not given flavanols found in chocolate. 

While this is looking great for us chocolate lovers in terms of having an excuse for a nibble here and there, flavanols are also found in fruits such as apples, pomegranates, blackberries and red grapes. Much healthier alternatives which also contain vitamins and fibre we all need. 

A double hit of flavanols in
blackberries and chocolate.
Surds here I come! 

Maybe for the ultimate flavanols kick (as well as your happy kick, your euphoric feeling of falling in love and your very weak cannabis hit) with your mental maths try dipping apple, blackberries and red grapes into a bowl of chocolate? (I may try that when revising for mocks!) 

Importance of Appearance for Work Experience. 

So you walk into the office for the first day. You've been excited about this experience for weeks, ever since you found out you got this placement. You knew from the second you saw the placement online that it was perfect for you and it's all you ever wanted for Christmas. 

That is how an awesome week of work experience should start (in my opinion at least. You may have had work experience placements which you hated but they payed you fifty pounds to eat biscuits, as apparently happened to a friend of mine once). But just as much as the work experience placement made a good impression on you when you first saw it, if you want people to take you seriously, to want to work with you again and to be a reference for you then you need to make just as good a first impression on your supervisor. 

Best way to immediately make a good first impression? Dress smartly.

You probably look awesome in your crop top and jeans or in your old, well loved (read: tattered) converse but turn up to a work experience placement wearing them and it is most likely that you will not be taken seriously. Sorry guys, just cause the tenth Doctor could pull it off doesn't mean you'll be able to.

It seems unfair for people to judge you for what they're wearing but it happens every day. I know I've judged people on what they wear and I know people have judged me and that doesn't change in the work place.

I don't think it matters if its a placement at a bank or at a university, better to be safe than sorry and to dress formally the first day. If it turns out that everyone normally wears jeans and a t-shirt, then great! You know exactly what you're wearing tomorrow! It is better to be overdressed that underdressed. When I did work experience at UCL, I came in wearing a smart dress the first day and dressed down after that.

After exams I was planning on dip dying the bottom of my hair blue for a change, I wanted to do it before I went on holiday so that if I hated it I would have time to get it changed. As soon as my parents heard about this they basically said it was a horrible idea to do it after exams and that I should wait until my work experience at The Lancet was finished.

Why? Because apparently in the work place you can get judged for having your hair coloured. It seemed that even if I was smartly dressed in a suit with sensible make up they would have judged me on the fact that the end of my pony tail was blue.

In conclusion, you will get judged for your appearance in the work place and it is better to initially dress well and then dress down than to come in the first day and give the people you're working with a bad first impression of who you are.

Hey, monkey suits really aren't all that bad! (... you get used to them)

Had any interesting experiences at work experience to do with dress sense or otherwise? Tell me about them in the comments!

Astrophotography: Making Astronomy and Astrophysics accesible to the public. 

As I was going through my email I found that Royal Museums Greenwich had sent me a link to see the winners of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year. I got so excited! 

Overall and Earth and Space winner 2014,
 Aurora over a Glacier Lagoon by James Woodend, UK

This is an annual competition held by the Royal Observatory Greenwich. They receive submissions from all over the world from passionate astrophotographers and there is even some prize money to be won.
The Astronomy Photographer of the Year is a competition which gets me so excited because it makes astronomy and astrophysics accessible. 

Everything that astronomers try to convey through books, articles and their research; their passion, wonder and drive to learn more about the universe around us, can be summarised in these photos. They show people what it is that entrances us to stare at the sky.... and stare... and stare. 

Deep Space winner,
Horsehead Nebula (IC 434),
by Bill Synder, USA

Pictures can be easier for people, who are not inclined to the sciences and maths, to understand than graphs, equations or research papers. They can evoke a passion for space and the need to learn more about what there is out there which is not always provoked by reading a news article about the discovery of a new planet, for example.

Astrophotography, in my opinion, is advertising for what it is that astronomers and astrophysicists do. It shows the public what we study without all of the numbers, lines and long words which may otherwise put people off of astronomy. It can make people understand why astrophysicists study aurora and galaxies and nebulae in the first place.

This may be a romanticised view of astrophotography (in fact I'm pretty sure it is) but it's honestly what I think.

And who wouldn't get a little romantic with all of these wonderful photos to look at?

Have I missed any amazing photos taken of space recently? If I have let me know and I'll add them to the article!

Winner of the Sir Patrick Moore Prize for Best Newcomer,
Coastal Stairways, by Chris Murphy, New Zealand 

The Electron Mendacity

NOTE: THIS ARTICLE TAKES NO RESPONSIBILITY IF YOUR BRAIN EXPLODES DUE TO THE FEELING OF HORROR THAT EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW ABOUT CHEMISTRY WAS A LIE.

When girls in the Sixth Form told me that Chemistry A level was 'challenging' my reaction was 'pfft, I can handle it'. What the Sixth Formers forgot to inform me of was that our chemistry teachers lied to us.

If you did Edexcel IGCSE Chemistry (triple science or double science) you have been lied to. In fact if you were taught that electron configuration is as simple as two electrons in the first shell, eight in the second shell, eight in the third shell and that 'we don't really look beyond that 'cause it's not very relavent' you have been lied to. 

That's right. Your chemistry teachers, the people you trusted to set your hands on fire with methane bubbles and who tortured you with titrations, lied to you. The amount of betrayal I felt upon being told this was summarised by a lot of hand waving and shocked cries of 'How?!... Why?!... Was that really necessary?!?' 

So now, my dear friends, I will reveal to you what all of your Chemistry teachers lied about.  

Electrons are, as we all know, arranged in shells with n=1 closest to the nucleus. Each electron shell (except n=1) are divided into sub-shells. Each sub-shell consists of electron orbitals which is a region of space which can hold up to two electrons of opposite spin. Orbitals are the regions of space where electrons have a 95% probability of being found. 

Still with me? Recap: Electron shells made up of sub-shells, made up of electron orbitals, regions of space which can hold up to two electrons. 

There are (as far as I know) four different kinds of sub-shells: 

sub-shell:  number of orbitals in sub-shell:  shape of orbital: maximum number of electrons in shell:  

S                      ONE ORBITAL                                     CIRCULAR                                                                                2

P                     THREE ORBITALS                          EACH ORBITAL IS A FIGURE OF 8                                                   6

D                     FIVE ORBITALS                                 ... TOO COMPLICATED FOR MY TEACHER TO TELL ME                        10

F                     SEVEN ORBITALS                            ... IF SHE WOULDN'T EXPLAIN D WHY WOULD SHE EXPLAIN F?             14

Shapes of electron orbitals in the order of: s, p, d, f

Electron orbitals fill very simply. The lowest energy orbital is filled first and each sub-shell made out of orbitals must be completely filled before moving to the next sub-shell. 

Here's a run down of the order in which the shells fill (this may be overwhelming):

1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p, 4s, 3d, 4p... etc. 

When you're writing the electron configuration of an element to show how many electrons are in each sub-shell you put a little number (like an indice number) by the letter. 

e.g. Beryllium, which has four electrons in its shells, has an electron configuration of 1s²2s²

And that's the basics of it! Do you feel the The 'e tu, brute?' moment? The stab of betrayal at the devastating lies we naively believed for so long? (Ok so they weren't really lies, they were more like extreme simplifications... But it's still nice to understand how electrons are actually arranged right?!)

So A level Chemistry. Definitely a leap up from GCSE and definitely making me use my brain but, oh, how satisfying to finally uncover what I have dubbed The Electron Mendacity.

When it comes to Chemistry I do, however, still hold the opinion of 'pfft, I can handle it' ... We'll see how long that lasts.