Week 5- You can't win, You can't break even, and you can't get out of the game

http://www.google.com/url?q=http://popup.lala.com/popup/504684676488258962&ei=QlB4S8z5JJSwNpSFqJcP&sa=X&oi=music_play_track&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=2&ved=0CAoQ0wQoADAA&usg=AFQjCNEvLvu4GtwZmk9RIaLE_UX1bTyh2Q

The title expresses the 3 laws of thermodynamics.

You can't win.
The "can't win" law is that energy is neither create nor destroyed. This is the conservation of energy that we could initially and naively  be hopeful about. If someone did not  know about the second law, it would make them think that they could keep reusing the same energy. If someone tries to sell you a perpetual motion machine, keep your money in your pocket (even if that perpetual motion machine is a water fuel engine for your car.)

You can't break even
The big gotcha is the second law of "you can't break even". This is the law everyone would love to break. Here is where entropy steals your free lunch. Take the car example in the book. We take hydrocarbons that have energy in chemical bonds. We burn it causing little explosions in our engine. That explosion is coverting into kinetic energy.... the car moves. The burning has some waste heat. Heat is 2 things: radiant heat and the kinetic energy of molecules moving faster. Surrounding molecules are moving faster. As they move faster then bump into other molecules transmitting the heat (faster motion). It is sort of like a multi-dimensional billard game. The heat runs away in all directions never to be seen again. Radiant heat is also running away in all direction.  (Both are still energy but it is no longer useful, because it is randomized). One fast moving molecule distributed among millons of slow moving molecules cannot be harnessed. Ok but we still have the kinetic energy of the car, but on earth we lose that too. It is dissipated by friction of the tires on the surface and friction of the car body with air. Friction also turns into heat energy.

So what if we say this combustion is wasteful. It makes lots of heat. What if we could do something like our bodies, where we break chemical bonds in sugars to get energy without fast, hot combustion. Sorry; after useful chemical and mechanical energy is derived from the molecule, this energy is also eventually lost to heat energy . (otherwise you would not need to eat after you were full grown.)

Yes in machines, you can recycle a tiny percentage of this "waste" heat energy to derive some energy but only when the heat is concentrated. In that case, if you can move that concentrated heat from the hot area to a colder area or if you can use the heat to create expansion, you can extract some kinetic energy. HOWEVER, eventually the heat  will be dispersed and you can get no useful work from it. You cannot harvest random heat (1 hot molecule out of millions of colder one) to do work. You cannot derive work from disperse or random energy. And you cannot create non-random energy out of random energy without putting in more energy, which defeats the purpose of trying to get energy out of a system.


Physics for future presidents
For an excellent lecture on this topic, listen to lecture 2 of "Physics for Future Presidents"  http://webcast.berkeley.edu/media/common/media/ce0e2b00-c7c8-49de-bf13-15f4416a8674_opencast_audio_course_alldist.m4a

If you are interested in the entire series Physics for future Presidents lectures see
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details_new.php?seriesid=2009-B-51905|2009-B-69390&semesterid=2009-B
On this page you can choose if you want audio for your ipod or video (with exciting demos) on your video ipod or computer. (Hopefully you have high speed internet with no RUP.

Look at this 2009 version not the 2010 version. Prior to 2010 this course was given by Dr Muller. He is the original designer of the Physics for Future Presidents course. This was voted the best class on the UCB campus.  For more information see: http://muller.lbl.gov/

Week 4 - Cells and supplemental materials for learning bio

I lucked out and do not have to do the blog on pseudoscience this week.

But, I found a good website on cells:  http://publications.nigms.nih.gov/insidethecell/chapter1.html

I was looking for some extra material. I made the mistake of ordering my textbook from Amazon, so I don't have the cd that came with the book from the Sierra college bookstore.


Oh, and if you are looking for some good audiovisual aides for last week's chemistry stuff, look at http://www.learner.org/resources/series61.html?pop=yes&pid=798

If last week's lab has you wondering more about Michael Pollan, you can hear one of his lectures on your ipod (or pc). It can be found here:

http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.commonwealthclub.org/audio/podcast/cc_20100127_sv_pollan.mp3


And if you would like to hear some lectures from another beginning bio class, here is Bezerkly's (ready for your ipod listening or viewing).

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details_new.php?seriesid=2010-B-7703&semesterid=2010-B



Enjoy

Week 3 - The other evil empire

Before I start a rant about the food industrial complex, I guess I should re-read the actual assignment. First I should address trans-fats. Trans fats are associated with both cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and the inflammatory process. See http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/149/6/531 ,
http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/135/3/562 and
http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/115/16/2231 .

It seems like old news today when we hear of transfats being banned in restaurants in various place. It wasn't always so. It has been known for a long time that saturated fats increased heart disease. So from the 1950 through the 1980's, doctors were recommending that their patients forego the butter and eat margarine. Some of those indoctrinated generations are still holding tight to their margarine even today. Long before transfats became a household name, people were fooled by the earlier labeling that suggested that there might have been some healthy unsaturated oils in margarine even if it was partially hydrogenated. But looking at the picture in our book, I can see that the transfat molecule is similar in appearance to the saturated fat molecule. It is straight. Straight objects can stack and, therefore, straight molecules lying together can be denser than objects that cannot stack. Thus saturated fats and transfats can both be solid at room temperature. Oils have a bend in them and thus don't stack easily and are liquid at room temperature or, more to the point, body temperature.

Next in the assignment, I am supposed to take something from my cabinet. Ok, I have been pretty religious about checking labels for corn syrup and hydrogenated vegetable oil. I don't buy anything hydrogenated. I don't buy anything with diet artificial sweeteners. I very rarely buy anything with corn syrup. BUT now I see a corn syrup product has snuck into my kitchen when I wasn't looking...

Boboli Pizza Sauce: water, tomato paste, high fructose corn syrup, salt, garlic powder, modified food starch, onion powder, citric acid, spices. How did that get in the house? I was trying to be corn syrup free. Oh well.

Do I want to be healthy? sure. Michael Pollan's prescription for diet is the best. Other rules might be 1) Try to avoid all the middle aisles of the grocery store where the packaged foods are. 2) hang out at farmer's markets and learn the seasons of when things are fresh and have not been waxed and placed in cold storage for months. 3) Don't buy peaches and grapes in February. They are only going to taste like wet cardboard anyway. Let the Chilean's eat their own fruit.

For more on food, read all of Michael Pollan's books.
http://www.michaelpollan.com/
 Read Fast Food Nation (the book not the movie, although the kill floor in the movie is interesting.)
http://www.amazon.com/Fast-Food-Nation-Dark-All-American/dp/0060938455
See the movie Food Inc.
http://www.amazon.com/Fast-Food-Nation-Dark-All-American/dp/0060938455
 For a real gross out see Our daily bread
http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Our_Daily_Bread/70064385?trkid=496751
The movie King Corn is mildly amusing, but you will read all you need to know about corn in the book "Omnivores Dilemma".
http://www.kingcorn.net/
For inspiration, read "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle"
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/
Lastly, for an indepth view of the agribusiness control of your life, listen to "Deconstructing Dinner" on your ipod
http://www.cjly.net/deconstructingdinner/ .
Ok Rant off.

PS. I haven't seen it yet, but the movie Dirt looks good:
http://www.dirtthemovie.org/pages/about-the-film

Week 2 - life as we know it or don't know it

Our book gives 7 properties "associated" with life. But this is not a list that can be used to decide if an individual is alive.

Particularly evolution is an emergent property of life. A living individual does not evolve. You need time and a population for that. Ok if you want to reduce this to its smallest unit, a single individual that can reproduce asexual and whose offspring may eventually be different that it, could be said to "evolve". In this case, I would call the offspring over time a population. That is really a stretch.

Likewise, reproduction is not required to define life in an individual. Not all individuals reproduce. Some hybrids cannot reproduce, yet they are alive. Likewise, some social insect colonies depend on sterile workers. I suppose in the case of the sterile individuals, we could make the excuse that they are the product of reproduction.

The growth, energy utilization and response to environment may be difficult to determine in a dormant seed. If the seed is still alive, these properties are potential as opposed to being currently demonstrated. We need to distinguish between dormancy and death and thus need to know how to bring the individual out of dormancy.

On the other hand, viruses give us pause. Some people say they are not alive. Others say they are on the edge of living objects. They do evolve. They reproduce but only with help from the hosts they invade. They do not "grow" or respond to their environment.

And how would we recognize life in exobiology? We would probably try to use the same rules that we are developing for earth-based biology, but life elsewhere may be different molecularly from earth-based life.

Ok... these are just a few thoughts of mine on the subject.

Week1 a - Possible Rules

I see from reading other's Blogs, that I forgot part of week 1's blog assignment. We were supposed to suggest 2 rules for blog responses. I see most people have suggested that we should not use foul language. Ok I agree with that, but I would expand that rule a bit. There are distructive ways to interact with other students without using foul language. There may be disagreements from time to time, but those disagreements do not need to be personal.

Week 1 - who am I, why am I here?

There is a poem by David Whyte, that talks about a woman who told him "ten years ago I turned my head for a moment and it became my life" . In my case, it was more than 10 years. I turned my head and took a path that led me to a career that paid well but did not make me happy.

I am trying to recover and work toward a path that gives me more personal fulfillment. I am almost done with the Watershed Ecology Technician Certificate. So, yes, I am taking Bio 11 because it is required. It is one of the core requirements. But that is not what it sounds like. I will enjoy the class.

I am only taking 7 units this semester. I had planned much more and had signed up for much more. However, a miracle happened and I found a job. Not just a job, but a calling. I have the great fortune to work with CABY - Cosumunes, American, Bear and Yuba Integrated Regional Water management Plan. So far I am just the gofor, jack of all trades, IT, whatever. However, the great thing is that I can bring talents from my past careers and my present WETS education.

Outside of work and school, I am a trail mapper for wikiloc, geocacher and hiker. This April I am going on a trip to the Grand Escalente. July I am going on a women's backpack to the Ansel Adams wilderness. I am toying with going to the California water modeling conference in Asilomar in Feb.