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    Wonderment: Science in Stories
    Wonderment: Science in Stories
    Wonderment: Science in Stories
    Ebook139 pages1 hour

    Wonderment: Science in Stories

    By Roger Alan Kenyon

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    About this ebook

    Deceptively simple, Wonderment makes postcards of big ideas. It visualizes through humour and examples, rather than burying big ideas under maths and charts. This might be how Hemingway would have taught science, in stories. Say as much as needed and leave the reader to fill in from experience.


    In all, Wonderment has a way of making connections that are only obvious once you know them. And it progresses this way from how the parts work to a speculative essay on the whole, from physics to a metaphysics, without losing its simple wonder of the way the world works.

    LanguageEnglish
    Publishercookiejar
    Release dateMar 27, 2023
    ISBN9798215450192
    Wonderment: Science in Stories

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      Book preview

      Wonderment - Roger Alan Kenyon

      BIG IDEAS

      Warm up to Winter: Heat and Energy

      heat expands most matter

      cold makes water expand

      cold is the absence of heat

      conduction can feel cool

      heat flow can be slowed

      liquids can reduce friction

      insulation reduces heat flow

      conduction is heat by touch

      compression warms; expansion cools

      Spring into Action: Matter and Motion

      objects are lazy by nature

      opposing contact creates friction

      more time means less impact

      solids have stability

      faster fluid, lower pressure

      smart bodies self-regulate

      reaction is equal and opposite

      soft bubbles and crunchy crystals

      liquid surfaces have tension

      Summer Sights and Sounds: Light and Sound

      sound is vibration heard

      speed affects sound perception

      frequency varies with volume

      frequency varies with motion

      radio waves are vibrating electrons

      colour varies with light frequency

      colour reflected is colour detected

      light and sound are forms of energy

      light and sound can be absorbed or reflected

      Eclectic Autumn: Electricity and Entropy

      static electricity is built-up charge

      like poles repel; opposites attract

      magnetic attraction has practical uses

      electricity flows through a conductor

      energy changes, becoming less usable

      an electric motor uses magnetism

      things wear down unless kept up

      resistance acts to oppose flow

      measurement affects what is measured

      Beyond the Year: Ideas on the Whole

      nature is never ending

      nature is ever emerging

      CAST

      Ajay and Jaya, neighbours

      Alex (nephew of Ajay) and Lexa, spouses

      Alan and Lana, children of Alex and Lexa

      Clay and Lacy, friends of Alan

      Mona (Clay’s mom) and Noam (Lacy’s dad), life partners

      Karl and Lark, neighbours of Noam and Mona

      PART 1: WARM UP TO WINTER

      Heat and Energy

      CHAPTER 1

      HEAT EXPANDS MOST MATTER

      Lightning Strikes, Wheel Washers, and Cup Cracks

      Yard work can be sweaty work, even in autumn. Ajay takes a short break and sits under an apple tree. When warm, we relax. We stretch out and matter does too. Heat makes matter stretch out as its bits move apart.

      Ajay sits in the shade, with an eye on clouds gathering over the horizon. Storm clouds could bring lightning. Rapid heat makes matter expand quickly, and a lightning stroke is both rapid and hot. Hotter than the surface of the sun. A bolt can blow your clothes off—or worse.

      Lightning sends a shockwave of thunder as heat expands air around the bolt. Rapidly heated air spreads out as a shockwave that rumbles, echoing off the ground and off clouds.

      Lightning striking a tree can travel through the sap, heating and expanding so fast it blows the bark off. People don't have sap, but we sweat. Doing yard work, Ajay has a layer of moisture over his skin. Lightning can heat and expand sweat like sap, turning it to steam so fast it blows off clothes.

      Let’s leave Ajay under the tree and step inside. Loosening a lid is like a lightning strike, but a lot safer. To loosen a stubborn metal lid, run the jar under hot water. Heat in the water works like lightning, at least in concept. It expands metal in the lid, creating a gap between the jar and the lid stuck on by friction. Increasing the gap decreases friction, so the lid is easier to remove.

      Pioneers attached wagon wheels this way, by heating a washer (a metal disc, like a coin). Unlike a coin, a washer has a hole in the centre. When heated, the metal expands and so does the hole.

      Picture it. First put the wagon wheel on its axle. Heat the washer to expand the hole. When the hole is wide enough, slide the washer onto the axle. As the washer cools, it contracts snugly onto the axle. No need to run to a hardware store, which were few and far between for pioneers.

      Apart from blowing off Ajay’s clothes, rapid heat expansion can crack cups. Tea cups are made of ceramic; so are coffee cups. Tea cups are thin; coffee mugs, thick. Let’s borrow Ajay’s thick ceramic mug, the one that says Hot Stuff. Heat moves slowing through ceramic. That’s another way of saying ceramic is a poor conductor of heat.

      Pouring hot water into Hot Stuff is again like lightning. The inside expands rapidly, but the mug conducts poorly and so is slow to warm. That creates stress between the hot interior and still cool exterior. Under stress, the mug will crack. Under stress, many crack.

      Rather than cracking Ajay’s favourite mug, we could use a tea cup. Thinner cups reduce the temperature difference, inside to outside. There is less ceramic in the cup wall, so less difference. Another options is to put a metal spoon in Hot Stuff before the hot water. The metal absorbs some of the heat, so there is less to cause stress.

      Under the tree, Ajay might wonder whether there is inverse lightning. Would quickly cooling the inside of Hot Stuff crack it from the outside-in? Dry ice is almost a hundred degrees below zero. A cool idea to think about on a hot summer’s day.

      CHAPTER 2

      COLD MAKES WATER EXPAND

      Earth Tilt, Pop cans, and 7th Inning Breeze

      Winters are cold in the Northern Hemisphere. Jaya, next-door, says that’s because Earth is farther from the sun.

      JAYA

      Earth wanders out even farther some years, so those years it is colder than usual.

      Ajay doesn’t see it that way. Sure, the Earth orbits old Sol. Not in a circle; more of an ellipse, like a watermelon. But Earth does not stand up straight to face the sun. It tilts a bit. It leans back from the sun in winter. Tilting away makes the sun lower in the sky.

      AJAY

      Lower sun makes for shorter days, less heat from the sun. Less heat from the sun is the cold of winter.

      Cold is the absence of heat, much as a shadow is the absence of light. Cold does not exist on its own; it’s a measure of what is missing. Less heat, more cold. So, Earth tilt makes winter cold.

      As they cool, most objects contract. Metal cans, for instance. Water and rubber are exceptions. They expand when chilled. Sometimes explosively.

      AJAY

      Grape windows, yes. I remember. Last winter, I put a couple cans of grape pop on the ledge outside to cool. I forgot about them and, in the morning, found a spray of frozen grape soda all over the window.

      Pop is water. Water expands. It was expanding as the can was contracting. Boom! Grape windows. That’s bad news for Ajay, who had to clean it up, but good news for fish. Good because ponds and lakes freeze from the surface first. If they froze bottom up, ice build-up would leave little room for fish.

      As water cools, it expands, spreads out. More volume, less density, like a chunk of styrofoam. Big, but light. Cooler, less dense water rises to the surface. Warmer, more dense water

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