How to show your "scientific literacy" when others are playing in the snow? | Expo Daily

How to watch others play in the snow

Demonstrate your scientific literacy?

On February 20, Beijing welcomed the first snowfall of the Year of the Dragon. A heavy snowfall is very interesting. But if you can remember these little-known facts and tell them, wouldn’t it be even cooler?

Although both are snow, there is a difference between dry snow and wet snow. Some snow feels very firm when stepped on, while some snow feels very soft to the touch. Your feeling is not wrong, this is the difference between dry snow and wet snow.

Dry snow is generally distributed in Northeast China, Xinjiang and other places. There is only ice and air in the snow, no water. This kind of snow is dry snow. Wet snow is mostly produced in the south and refers to snow with a water content of more than 5%.

Snow can be divided into new snow and old snow! New snow is snow that has been there for 1-2 days and is very soft. Microwave measurements can penetrate more than 3 meters. Old snow is generally accumulated over 1-2 months and is more compacted. Microwave measurements can only penetrate about 1 meter.

The thickness of snow in China is generally less than 1 meter, so our satellite can measure the depth of snow in the whole of China. In addition, there are more than 2,000 stations in China that have the ability to observe snow.

Meteorologists are measuring snow accumulation (Photo credit: National Satellite Meteorological Center)

New nuclides, +3!

At the beginning of the Year of the Dragon, researchers from the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and its partner institutions synthesized three new nuclides - osmium-160, tungsten-156 and actinium-203!

The atomic nucleus is a quantum many-body system composed of protons and neutrons. Different numbers of protons and neutrons form atomic nuclei with different properties, which scientists call nuclides. The synthesis and study of new nuclides are not only of great significance for understanding the structure of matter, but also provide important information for understanding the evolution of the celestial environment. It is an important means to explore the mysteries of nature.

This study clearly gave for the first time the evolution of the neutron shell with a neutron number of 82 on the side of the neutron-deficient nuclide, and at the same time brought my country's new nuclide research into a new nuclear area.

This work was completed by the Superheavy Nuclei and Nuclear Structure Laboratory of the Institute of Modern Physics in collaboration with researchers from University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangdong Laboratory of Advanced Energy Science and Technology, Shandong University, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangxi Normal University, Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Tongji University.

Position of the new nuclides osmium-160 and tungsten-156 on the nuclide map

No kidding, move your home with soap!

In December 2023, a Canadian construction company was preparing to move a 200-ton building to make way for a new apartment building. During the relocation process, the project manager used more than 700 soaps to successfully move the building. How was this done? How could such a heavy building be moved so easily?

Just like putting an elephant into a refrigerator, it only takes three steps: open the refrigerator door, put the elephant in, and close the refrigerator door. Relocating a building can also be roughly divided into four steps: cut the building from its original foundation, lift the building in place with a jacking device, install movable equipment at the bottom of the building, and let the building "run" and move to the new location.

It is not difficult to understand the use of soap in the relocation of the building. The soap was placed on a dozen steel beams under the building. The weight of the building crushed the soap, making the steel beams smooth, making it easier to move the house.

With the help of two excavators and a trailer, the building was pulled to its new location as planned to make room for the new building. The person in charge of the construction said that he had used soap to move buildings dozens of times, and small buildings generally require 20 to 40 bars of soap, but this building in Halifax is the heaviest building he has moved in his five years of construction work, so more than 700 bars of soap were used.

Of course, this isn’t the first time people have used “weird stuff” to move buildings. In April 2023, Utah construction workers applied 16 gallons of Dawn brand dishwashing liquid to the low-friction pads under the steel beams to smoothly move a 2,400-ton bridge 33.5 meters. History has proven that most of the complex problems faced by engineers are solved through these ridiculous methods.

The size of sunspots is amazing

A medium-sized sunspot is about the size of the Earth! The largest sunspot groups trigger the strongest solar flares ever recorded. Such sunspots are usually so huge that one sunspot can accommodate about 10 or even 15 Earths. They represent huge magnetic fields, which may be about 1,000 times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. And the number of sunspots changes with a periodicity of about 11 years~

The content is compiled from China Science Popularization Expo Weibo, Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bring Science Home, CCTV Records

This article was first published in China Science Expo (kepubolan)

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