Blog that Explains Science, Badly

Fission, okay? So fission is basically, well, it's a nuclear process. You're splitting the atom, which releases energy. Although don't think of it like splitting an egg, you know, if you've ever split an egg. Think of it more as 235 tightly bound...ideas. Because a neutron and a proton is really just a construct, it's not a well-defined thing, like a sphere. But anyway, have I mentioned the strong nuclear force? The strong nuclear force basically holds together the nucleus, kind of like glue holds together a bunch of balls that have been glued together. But don't think of the protons and neutrons as balls! Because if you do, this next part won't make any sense...

SCIENCE!

DNA is a complicated molecule. It's an acid (that's the A part), that is made up of bits of information. The information is the genetic material. Think of it like a computer that has a hard drive made up of two anti-parallel nucleotide polymers. But this computer doesn't run a typical operating system. Instead it copies parts of itself into RNA (kind of like a computer uses RAM as a brief copy of the OS to pull instructions from, but the actual instructions remain on the hard drive. These instructions are then accessed by the computer's CPU, which processes each command as it comes up. [kind of like uncovering a fossil. Each layer of rock strata must be uncovered in the opposite order that it was laid down. So first the paleontologist must dig carefully through the most recent layers, before he works his way farther and farther down. Each layer tells scientists something about that time. For instance, there is a point, called the K-T boundary, in which scientists have noticed a massive extinction event, and unusually large traces of iridium. Iridium is primarily found in meteorites, leading some to speculate that an asteroid must have hit the earth, depositing the iridium {kind of like how we have leftover bits of genetic material in our genetic code that appears to be from viruses. We have indicators of these viruses on our DNA, which is the set of instructions our body uses to create new cells...

SCIENCE!

Gravitation is interesting, sure, but without the background in calculus, there's no way to really, truly understand it. I can try to explain it, but unless you know how to find a Lagrangian, good fucking luck understanding it. Basically, an object tries to minimize its potential energy using the minimum kinetic path. Really? You don't understand that? Okay, well seriously, take some fucking calculus.

SCIENCE!