If the concert encounters artificial rainfall, can it be rescheduled? | Expo Daily

If the concert encounters artificial rainfall , can it be rescheduled?

On June 21, an artificial rainfall operation in Xuzhou alleviated the drought in most parts of the city, but this "timely rain" caused dissatisfaction among some netizens who were attending a concert that day. Some netizens believed that artificial rainfall brought inconvenience to the concert. So, is the timing of artificial rainfall completely decided by humans? People have always hoped to eliminate various bad weather conditions through technology, and even hope to control the weather, but this is not realistic.

Artificial rainfall is the process of adding large water droplets, large condensation nuclei or highly hygroscopic chemical particles into clouds to accelerate the growth of water droplets and thus increase the probability of precipitation formation.

However, artificial precipitation depends on certain meteorological conditions. When the climate is dry or cloudless all year round, artificial rainfall is difficult to implement. In other words, all we can do is intervene in certain links of the natural process by releasing a small amount of catalyst or energy. In short, we can only influence the weather, but we cannot "make the weather".

Take the high temperature drought in the summer of 2022 as an example. At that time, the drought area was continuously controlled by the subtropical high pressure. The control area was dominated by sinking airflow, and there were generally few or no clouds in the sky. In this case, it is difficult for us to "use clouds to make rain". We can only monitor the weather in the disaster area in real time and wait for the clouds to come!

So, facing nature, we humans are so insignificant and we need to always maintain a sense of awe.

Beer "alchemy" is here!

While enjoying a cold beer, we rarely think about the waste yeast produced during the brewing process. However, these discarded microorganisms have recently been found to have an unexpected new use - recovering metals from electronic waste. Research has shown that beer yeast can absorb and separate metals such as aluminum, copper, nickel and zinc from electronic waste.

Not only is this process environmentally friendly, but the yeast can be reused at least five times, providing a cleaner and more economical method of metal recovery than traditional pyrometallurgy. The research team controlled the charge of the sugar molecules on the surface of the yeast by adjusting the acidity and temperature of the solution to precisely attract and bind specific metal ions. The used yeast can be treated in an acid bath to strip off the metals in preparation for the next cycle. The importance of this discovery lies in that it not only provides a new way to utilize the large amount of discarded yeast produced, but also helps reduce the impact of electronic waste on the environment.

Although most current electronic scrap metal recycling focuses on precious metals, the recovery of cheaper metals such as aluminum, copper, nickel and zinc is equally important. The low cost and widespread availability of yeast would make this technology feasible for large-scale application, if electronic waste recyclers are willing to adopt this new approach.

Image source: pixabay

Technology is so advanced?

Can stainless steel products be put into the microwave?

It is common sense that metal objects cannot be put into microwave ovens. However, there is a carrier tool called "Microwave Kitchen Treasure" on the market. It is made of stainless steel + plastic and can be put into microwave ovens. Why is this?

In fact, the walls of a microwave oven are all made of metal, and some microwave ovens are even equipped with metal grids. The metal walls are to allow microwaves to reflect back and forth in the microwave oven without overflowing, and the energy is only used to heat food in the microwave oven. The metal grid does cause microwaves to concentrate in a certain direction, but because it reflects too little, it will not overheat or discharge at the tip to produce sparks. Therefore, as long as it is properly controlled, metal can be used in microwave ovens.

The principle of microwave heating food is to use microwaves to heat the water molecules in the food, and the water molecules will evaporate after heating, causing the heated food to lose water. Therefore, the microwave steamer uses the principle of metal shielding microwaves. The microwaves only penetrate the plastic base and are absorbed by the water in the base. The food in the steamer covered by the metal lid is always cooked in a pure steam heating environment without losing moisture. The steam circulates in the pot in three dimensions to evenly heat the food and prepare a satisfactory taste. The metal lid has a smaller curvature design and is smooth overall, so it has a higher safety factor.

Ferroelectric materials that never get tired are here, with unlimited reading and writing capabilities!

Ferroelectric materials play a vital role in modern electronic devices, but their service life is often limited by the problem of "ferroelectric fatigue". Now, a groundbreaking study led by the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has provided a solution to this problem.

Ferroelectric fatigue is caused by the attenuation of polarization performance of materials during use. Traditional ferroelectric materials, such as lead zirconate titanate, will experience performance degradation when the number of polarization reversals increases, eventually leading to device failure. However, scientists have created a new type of fatigue-free ferroelectric material based on the two-dimensional slip ferroelectric mechanism. This material achieves polarization reversal through interlayer slip and charge transfer, effectively avoiding the aggregation of charged defects, thereby solving the fatigue problem.

Taking the double-layer MoS2 two-dimensional material as an example, the research team prepared a ferroelectric device that showed excellent fatigue resistance after millions of cycles of electric field reversal. This achievement means that the memory using this new material can be read and written without restriction without loss of performance.

The application of new fatigue-free ferroelectric materials is expected to significantly improve the reliability and life of electronic equipment and reduce maintenance costs. It is especially beneficial for equipment in complex environments such as high temperature, high pressure, and high-frequency vibration.

A big guy who was born 200 million years earlier than the dinosaurs,

The blood is blue~

Horseshoe crab is an ancient creature that was born in the Devonian period of the Paleozoic era 400 million years ago, more than 200 million years earlier than the birth of dinosaurs. The blood of most creatures is red because the iron ions in the blood are red. In the blood of horseshoe crabs, the iron ions are replaced by copper ions, and the color of copper after oxidation is blue-green. Therefore, the blood of horseshoe crabs is not red, but blue.

The content is compiled from China Science Popularization Expo Weibo, Science Academy, Global Science, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Science Daily, CCTV Records

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