Name: What is Fermentation and How Does it Work? @ZeleonScience
Uploaded: 2026-09-23T08:17:00-05:00
Duration: 8 min 17 s
Description: What is Fermentation and How Does it Work?

What is Fermentation and How Does it Work?

Zeleon Science 2026-09-23 | What is Fermentation and How Does it Work?

How Does Caffeine Wake Us Up?

Zeleon Science 2025-09-30 | A short video explaining why we fall asleep naturally, what caffeine does to our bodies, and why we get caffeine crashes. I hope that you guys all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:29 How we fall asleep naturally
01:16 What caffeine does to us
02:06 Why we get caffeine crashes
3:12 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9541543
newsinhealth.nih.gov/2020/10/tired-or-wired
https://medicine.yale.edu/internal-medicine/pulmonary/news/national-sleep-week/good-sleep-recipe/
madeinca.ca/coffee-consumption-statistics-canada
sleepeducation.org/sleep-caffeine

Transcript:
Coffee is one of the most popular drinks in the world, as it is baked into so many of our morning routines. Whenever we are feeling drowsy, we can just drink a cup of coffee to instantly get an energy boost, at least for a few hours before completely crashing us out. However, the caffeine inside our favourite drinks doesn’t actually give us energy, it tricks our brains into being more awake. So in this video, we will explore how our brains naturally make us feel tired, how caffeine interferes with that process, and what happens when we crash.

So how does our brain make us feel sleepy naturally? Our sleepiness comes from a molecule called adenosine, which is produced as our body consumes ATP, a form of energy that we get from eating foods. As our body uses more energy from ATP, more and more adenosine is produced as a byproduct throughout the day. Think of adenosine as a “sleepiness meter,” at the end of our day, we have a lot of adenosine floating around our body. When the adenosine receptors in our brain detect more and more adenosine, our brain tells our body that we should start sleeping soon. As we sleep, the amount of adenosine, or our sleepiness meter, drops. And when the adenosine drops low enough, we become awake again, resetting the sleepiness meter for the next day.

So now, let’s drink some coffee and see what happens. Coffee contains the molecule caffeine, which is a type of chemical that speeds up our nervous system and alertness. These molecules actually look quite similar to adenosine, which is exactly why they can be problematic. As caffeine floods into our body, it binds to the adenosine receptors, preventing adenosine to be detected. Since our brain doesn’t detect any adenosine, it just assumes that we don’t need sleep yet, so we can stay awake. This means that caffeine doesn’t give us more energy, it tricks our brain into thinking that we aren’t tired yet. And because caffeine is a stimulant, it also makes our brain pump out more adrenaline, which is the molecule that triggers our “fight or flight” response. As a result, our heart beat increases, our muscles tense up, and our washroom breaks increase.

These effects are quite helpful when we are starting our day, but after a few hours, we feel a sudden crash. As the caffeine molecules block out the adenosine, more and more adenosine is still building up in the background. So as the caffeine molecules dissipate, the now increased adenosine floods back into our receptors, causing a sudden energy crash. Instead of increasing our sleepiness meter gradually throughout the day, shooting the meter from 0 to 100 instantly. Of course, our body has a way to counter this, by making more adenosine receptors. If there are more receptors, then we can detect more adenosine despite the caffeine, ensuring a gradual sleepiness again. However, this means that we would need to drink more caffeine in order to feel awake again, since there are now more receptors for the caffeine to block out to lock in again. This cycle continues as long as we drink more and more coffee, causing a higher caffeine tolerance, and eventually develop into an addiction. Of course, some coffee everyday isn’t a big deal, but chronic coffee drinking can disrupt our sleep and develop health risks related to high blood pressure.

And there we have it! Our body naturally produces adenosine as we use up energy throughout the day, which builds up our sleepiness meter to help us fall asleep at night. However, caffeine is shaped exactly like adenosine, which blocks out the actual adenosine in our body, tricking our brain into thinking that we aren’t tired. This is useful in moderation, but excessive drinking of caffeine can make it less effective and harder for us to fall asleep. Here in Canada, more people drink coffee regularly than water. I personally don’t like the taste of coffee, but my consumption of bubble tea probably fits into that statistic also. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#health #caffeine #explained

What is Junk DNA? Do We Need Them?

Zeleon Science 2025-09-16 | A short video explaining a history of junk DNA, what they are, and what they do in our bodies! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:31 A brief history of junk DNA
01:26 What are the different types of junk DNA?
02:37 Summary and what junk DNA might do

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
doi.org/10.1007/s10620-017-4506-1
doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evac055
doi.org/10.1016/j.arr.2021.101425
https://news.cuanschutz.edu/dbmi/what-is-junk-dna
https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/10/18/so-called-junk-dna-plays-critical-role-in-mammalian-development/
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2023/09/junk-dna-diseases.html

Transcript:
DNA is the genetic data that dictates what we look like and how our body functions. However, only 2% of our DNA is actually responsible for coding the proteins that keep us alive. The remaining 98% of our DNA doesn’t code for anything, which leads us to believe that they are just junk taking up space in our bodies. Though in the last few years, we found that these seemingly useless DNA are often underappreciated. So in this video, we will go over a brief history of junk DNA, what they are, and what we think they do in our bodies.

Following the discovery of DNA in the 1950s, we have been slowly figuring out what it actually does. We found that it codes for amino acids, which is a crucial component for proteins. But we also found that amongst the DNA that code for those amino acids, they are long stretches of DNA that don't code for anything. Think of it like charms on a very long bracelet. The charms are the bits of DNA used in protein production, while the empty string is the non-coding DNA that doesn’t make any proteins, which we refer to as “junk DNA.” Then, in 1990, we started the Human Genome Project to map out our entire genome and figure out what each part of DNA does. When we finally finished up the project in 2004, we found that only around 1.5 - 2% of our entire genome is responsible for coding protein, the rest are just sitting there doing nothing.

So now, what even are those non-coding bits of DNA? Think of our genome as a library, where the coding DNA is the books, while the non-coding DNA is the shelves, the catalog, librarians, and everything else that keeps the library in check. A big chunk of our junk DNA is made of repetitive sequences that can move around, called transposons. These chunks of genes will move around our DNA, causing mutations and ensuring a good genetic diversity. We also have introns, which are inserted in between the parts of our coding DNA that regulates how often a specific protein gets encoded. Satellite DNA is another noncoding DNA that makes up the main structure of centromeres and telomeres. During cell division, centromeres play an important part in pulling the cells apart after their DNA is replicated. Meanwhile, telomeres are at the tip of our DNA, protecting it from becoming tangled, like the aglets on our shoelaces. Lastly, non-coding DNA can also be transcribed to make non-coding RNA, such as rRNA. These RNA molecules are used to make ribosomes, which are the protein factories of a cell, but the rRNA strands don’t make the proteins themselves.

And there we have it! Despite being commonly referred to as “junk DNA,” we need all 98% of them for our body to function properly. We are very lucky that only 2% of our DNA is responsible for encoding proteins, since when we get random mutations, it is far more likely for them to occur on non-coding DNA that doesn’t affect us too much. These non-coding DNA help us regulate protein production, create more genetic diversity, and ensure that DNA replication goes smoothly. So in the end, they aren’t really junk DNA, they are more so the hidden files in our massive catalog of DNA data. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#biology #science #steam

How Do Satellites Work?

Zeleon Science 2025-09-04 | A short video explaining what satellites are, how they stay in orbit, and what space junk is! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Going back to Krita as my drawing software, instead of ProCreate. Hopefully the quality is better!

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:28 How do satellites stay in orbit?
01:26 What are the different satellite orbits?
02:41 Summary and space junk

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
spacecentre.nz/resources/faq/spaceflight/rocket-speed.html
gsoasatellite.com/topics/the-fundamentals-of-satellite
nasa.gov/headquarters/library/find/bibliographies/space-debris
nesdis.noaa.gov/news/why-dont-satellites-fall-out-of-the-sky
spaceplace.nasa.gov/satellite/en

Transcript:
Did you know our moon and even our Earth are considered satellites? Satellites are objects that orbit around a planet, star, or moon. So since the moon orbits around the Earth, and the Earth orbits around the sun, these objects are considered satellites as well. But how do human-made artificial satellites work? How do they orbit around the Earth and communicate with us? In this video, we will go over how they stay in orbit around the Earth, the different orbits that they stay in, and what space junk is.

The physics behind all satellites, natural or not, is the same. For example, let’s launch a satellite from Earth. It is first strapped to a rocket, which will travel above 28,000 kmh (17,400 mph) to escape our atmosphere. Then, it will detach from the rocket and maintain that speed, while expanding its solar panels to provide it with energy. As the satellite starts to fall back into the Earth, it travels fast enough horizontally that it will fall past the curve of the Earth. And as the satellite keeps travelling this direction, it is pulled back into the Earth, causing it to start orbiting. These satellites are in a constant state of freefall, as they are falling into the Earth and sideways at the same time. If they travel too slow, then they will fall back into Earth, but if they travel too fast, they will escape the orbit and fly out into space. Most satellites are equipped with thrusters, filled with fuel or compressed gas, which can do micro-adjustments to make sure that the satellite is flying at a specific orbit at a specific altitude.

Depending on the speed of the rocket, satellites are launched into different orbits depending on what they need to do. At the low earth orbit (LEO), which is between 300 to 1,500 km above the Earth, the satellites here travel very fast, often orbiting around the Earth more than once everyday. Because this orbit is so close to the Earth, the satellites here are great for taking images and spying for military purposes. However, since they are so close, they experience very small amounts of air resistance from our atmosphere, which eventually slows them down enough to drop back into Earth. The International Space Station is also here, and it needs to be maintained regularly because it falls around 100 metres everyday towards Earth due to this drag. Next, at the medium earth orbit (MEO), which is between 7,000 to 20,000 km above the Earth, many of the GPS navigation and communication satellites orbit here. And if we go higher, we will reach the geostationary orbit (GEO), which is at around 35,786 km above the Earth. The satellites here match the rotation of the Earth and orbit around the Earth exactly once per day, so from our point of view, they are always right above our heads. This means that satellites here are perfect for communication and observing the weather, since they stay in the same spot in the sky to us.

And there we have it! Satellites are able to orbit around the Earth by constantly falling. They fall away from the Earth as they fall towards it, allowing them to travel around the Earth in the same orbit for decades. Depending on the altitude of the satellites, they can do different things, from communication to predicting the weather. Space organizations around the world keep track of all the satellites to make sure that new satellites will be launched into unoccupied orbits, so they don’t collide with each other. We already have hundreds of millions of debris orbiting around Earth, each travelling up to 30,000 kmh (18,000 mph), as a result of collisions or used rockets. We refer to those as space junk, and we are starting to find ways to get rid of them, from capturing them with nets to melting them with lasers. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#physics #satellite #steam

Where Do Rocks Come From?

Zeleon Science 2025-08-19 | A short video explaining the different rocks, the rock cycle, and how the rock cycle is important. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:25 What are the different types of rocks?
00:14 What is the rock cycle?
02:05 Why is the rock cycle important?
02:51 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
letstalkscience.ca/educational-resources/stem-explained/rock-cycle-in-canada
https://ugc.berkeley.edu/background-content/rock-cycle/
education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/rock-cycle
amnh.org/explore/ology/earth/if-rocks-could-talk2/three-types-of-rock
courses.lumenlearning.com/geo/chapter/why-it-matters-rocks-and-the-rock-cycle

Transcript:
From the massive mountain ranges of the Himalayas to the sidewalks in our cities, rocks are all over the place. Though interestingly, just like the water cycle, there exists a rock cycle that determines how rocks change over time as well. Different types of rocks are formed during different stages, which explains why we have so many different rocks out there. So in this video, we will go over the three main types of rocks, the rock cycle, and why the rock cycle matters.

Starting with igneous rocks, which are formed from magma underneath the Earth’s crust. If the magma cools inside the Earth, intrusive igneous rocks, such as granite and diorite, are formed. If the magma cools after reaching the Earth surface as lava, extrusive igneous rocks, such as basalt and obsidian, are formed. This means that most volcanoes and mountains are made of igneous rocks. Next we have sedimentary rocks, which are formed from bits and pieces of other rocks, which we refer to as sediments. Over time, these sediments get compressed into solid rocks, such as sandstones and chalk. Lastly, we have metamorphic rocks, which are igneous and sedimentary rocks that were transformed by the immense pressure and temperature inside the Earth. Marbles and soapstones are examples of metamorphic rocks, as those intense changes can completely alter a rock’s colour and texture.

So now, how are all those rocks connected? Starting with rocks exposed on the surface, such as extrusive igneous rocks, they eventually get weathered by the natural elements, such as wind and water. This breaks down the surface rocks into sediments, which eventually gets buried deep underground. Under this pressure, a process of cementation takes place, where minerals grow in between the cracks of sediment, which bonds these small pieces together into solid sedimentary rocks. As those rocks get buried deeper to become the Earth’s crust, they turn into metamorphic rocks from the high pressure and temperature. Lastly, all of these rocks melt into magma, which will cool into igneous rocks to start the cycle all over again. This means that no matter where the rocks end up, including the ones that sunk into a lake when we tried to skip pebbles, they eventually end up as sediment and form into new igneous rocks thanks to the rock cycle.

We went over the rock cycle within just a few minutes, but the cycle itself usually takes millions of years. It is way longer than the water cycle, but it is just as important as this cycle tells us about the rich history of Earth. For example, by looking at the layers of rocks surrounding a fossil, we can figure out how the dead organism from millions of years ago ended up there. Due to the constant yet slow movement of rocks, mountains are formed for us to explore, while soil and minerals are formed for us to farm crops and extract valuable gems. We also rely on sedimentary rocks in construction, since they are sturdy yet easy to cut. So even though they take millions of years to cycle, we need different rocks at different stages.

And there we have it! Igneous rocks are cooled from magma, sedimentary rocks are formed from pieces of sediments, and metamorphic rocks are formed from immense pressures and temperatures. These rocks transform through a global cycle of weathering, compressing, and melting beneath our feet over millions of years. Not only are rocks useful to us in buildings, we also rely on them as time capsules to figure out what has happened millions of years ago without a time machine. No matter what humans do to this planet, rocks will always be there to shape the environment to their will. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#nature #earthscience #explained

How Does Pollination Work?

Zeleon Science 2025-08-05 | A short video explaining how plants use pollinators, how they do the pollinating, and why they are endangered! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:28 What is pollination?
01:04 What do pollinators do?
01:54 The current state of pollinators
02:44 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
https://naturalhistory.si.edu/events/festivals-and-event-series/pollinators-plants
fs.usda.gov/managing-land/wildflowers/pollinators/what-is-pollination
usda.gov/about-usda/general-information/initiatives-and-highlighted-programs/peoples-garden/importance-pollinators
ourworldindata.org/pollinator-dependence
https://gardens.si.edu/gardens/pollinator-garden/why-what-when-where-who-how-pollination/
pollinator.org/pollination

Transcript:
Around 75% of plants in the world and 33% of our crops depend on pollinators to reproduce. We often hear about how important bees are to us, and why we should try to save them, but there are many other animals that pollinate as well. Nature has relied on them long before humans have, and there exists a beautiful mutualistic relationship between pollinators and plants. So in this video, we will learn about what pollination is, what pollinators do, and the current state of pollinators.

The goal of every living organism is to survive and reproduce, so they can pass their genes to their offsprings. Instead of trying to insert sperm into an egg like animals, plants want to insert their pollen into an ovule. Many plants need to transfer their pollen to a different plant of the same species, but they can’t leave the dirt and walk over to a mate they’ve been crushing on. This process of transferring pollen into the ovule is referred to as pollination, and the animals that help with the transfer process are referred to as pollinators. After a plant is successfully pollinated, seeds will be produced, ready to grow into a new plant.

So speaking of pollinators, how do they do it? Surprisingly, most of the pollination is done by accident. Flowers produce a sugar-rich liquid called nectar, which attracts pollinators to land on the flower to drink it. While the pollinator is busy drinking up the nectar, they will brush against the anther of the flower, which is the male reproductive organ that contains the pollen grains. Then, the pollinator will fly to different flowers to collect more nectar, unknowingly carrying the pollen grains with them. When they get to a new flower, they will brush against the stigma of the flower, which is the female reproductive organ that contains the ovule. This is how pollen from one flower gets deposited to another, which is a mutualistic relationship between the pollinators and the flowers. The flowers will produce sweet nectar for the pollinators to enjoy, while the pollinators unknowingly travel around to transfer pollen to different flowers.

This is the reason why pollinators are so important to us, they are the ones helping different plants, including many of our crops, grow. The most well-known pollinator is probably the honeybee, but there are many different pollinators, including bats, flies, and even some lizards. Unfortunately, many pollinators are facing the threat of extinction, just like many other animal species. Due to the loss of habitat, droughts from climate change, spread of disease, and the misuse of pesticides, many different pollinator species are getting wiped out. This is significant because the loss of pollinator species means that less plants get pollinated, which will lead to a loss of different plant species as well, including many of our crop plants. It is very important to maintain a diverse pool of pollinators, so that more unique species of plants will be able to keep reproducing and maintain a healthy ecosystem.

And there we have it! Pollination is the transfer of pollen between plants, from the anther of a plant to the stigma of another. This is an important part of plant reproduction, and most of the plants in the world require some input of pollinators. These animals will drink the nectar provided by the plant flowers, while transferring the pollen from that plant to another plant as they hop between flowers drinking nectar. We can prevent further decline of pollinators by planting native flowers and protecting the loss of habitat, which are all things that we can do. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#biology #science #steam

Why Does Ice Float on Water?

Zeleon Science 2025-07-22 | A short video explaining what the structures of ice and water are, what makes ice float in water, and why it matters. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:27 What makes something float?
01:14 What are the structures of ice and water?
02:08 Why is ice floating a big deal?
02:50 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/454697-why-does-ice-float
swc.nd.gov/arb/news/atmospheric_reservoir/pdfs/2016_12%20-%20Ice%20Vs%20Water%20--%20Density%20Matters.pdf
childrensmuseum.org/stories/why-does-ice-float
sciencefocus.com/science/why-does-ice-float-on-water

Transcript:
Something that we take for granted, especially in the summer, is ice cubes. They are just solid water, but somehow, they are able to float on liquid water. It is one of the only substances that does this, if you throw a solid chunk of silver into liquid molten silver, it will sink. More interestingly, most life wouldn’t even exist if ice sank in water. So in this video, we will go over what makes something float, the structure of water and ice, and why ice floating is such a big deal.

So how does something float? Density measures how much stuff is in an object relative to how big it is, or the mass of an object divided by its volume. This is why most solids are denser than liquids, since in a solid, the molecules are closer to each other. This means that there is less space in between the molecules, meaning a smaller volume, or a higher density. So for example, hot air is less dense than cold air because when air is heated, the air molecules start moving around faster. As the molecules move around more, there is more space in between the molecules, leading to a bigger volume, or a lower density. Denser substances sink while less dense substances float. Because the hotter air is less dense than the colder air, it tries to float above the colder air, which lifts the hot air balloon up in the process.

This means that in order for solid ice to float, it must be less dense than liquid water. A water molecule has 2 oxygen atoms and 1 hydrogen atom, which makes the molecule more negatively charged here and more positively charged here. Since opposite charges attract, a hydrogen bond is formed between the hydrogen of one molecule and the oxygen of another. In liquid water, the hydrogen bonds keep the water molecules somewhat close to each other. As we decrease the temperature of water, the water molecules will slow down and move closer, making it denser. At 4 degrees celsius, water becomes the densest, but when we lower the temperature past that, the hydrogen bonds between the molecules lock them into a crystal lattice structure. This will give the water molecules the rigidity of a solid, but plenty of space in between them. This increases the volume of solid water, making ice less dense than water, thus making it float.

So why is it such a big deal? Because ice floats, life is able to thrive in the ocean. Pockets of air are able to form in the empty spaces within the crystal structures of ice. Air is an excellent insulator, which means that it doesn’t transfer heat well. With a layer of ice floating on top of the oceans and lakes, it is able to keep the warmth below from escaping into the old harsh winter. Furthermore, if ice sank, then the ocean floor would be filled with ice, destroying an entire habitat for many different animals. We wouldn’t have icebergs either, so the Titanic wouldn’t have sank, but we wouldn’t have massive sheets of ice in the ocean reflecting sunlight back into the atmosphere. The Earth would be a lot warmer without ice floating around.

And there we have it! Ice is one of the only substances where its solid form is less dense than its liquid form. This is possible due to the structure of ice. As liquid water freezes, the hydrogen bonds between the water molecules rearrange themselves into a crystal structure. This leaves a lot of space in between the molecules, increasing the volume of ice and therefore decreasing its density. And thankfully, due to the empty spaces, air pockets form to insulate the oceans as massive ice sheets float above them. The existence of life may not even be possible if ice didn’t float in the first place. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#chemistry #science #steam

What are Fossil Fuels? Why are They Harmful?

Zeleon Science 2025-07-08 | A short video explaining what fossil fuels are, how they are formed, and their impacts on the environment. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:24 What are fossil fuels?
01:12 How are fossil fuels formed?
01:54 How do fossil fuels impact the environment?
02:51 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/02/25/carbon-dioxide-cause-global-warming/
https://www.gsi.ie/en-ie/education/earth-resources/Pages/Fossil-fuels.aspx
education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/fossil-fuels
https://ocean.si.edu/conservation/gulf-oil-spill/what-are-fossil-fuels
https://understand-energy.stanford.edu/energy-resources/fossil-fuel-energy/introduction-fossil-fuels

Transcript:
We hear about fossil fuels pretty often, from how bad they are to the environment to pictures of dinosaur skeletons in the media. However, those aren’t really fossil fuels! Many of the fossil fuels that we refer to come from prehistoric plants and microorganisms that were buried deep underground. So in this video, we will go over what fossil fuels are, how they are formed, and their impact on the environment.

So, what are they? Fossil fuels are rich in energy because they are mostly made of carbon and hydrogen, which can be easily burned to generate heat or electricity. Upon contact with oxygen, the energy stored in the bonds between carbon and hydrogen gets broken down and released as heat. In the case of electricity, we can heat up water using fossil fuels, which converts the water into steam, turning steam turbines to make electricity. These carbon sources are made from organic material that died millions of years ago, which is why we call them fossil fuels. The “fossil” part just refers to the prehistoric material that was made into the fuel source, not actual dinosaur fossils. So technically, they are renewable, since fossil fuels are just dead organisms, but because these take millions of years of form into an energy source, we consider fossil fuels to be non-renewable.

The main types of fossil fuels are coal, oil, and natural gas, and they are formed through millions of years of pressure and temperature underground. After organisms die, they get buried by layers of rocks and dirt, which adds more weight to squish them down over millions of years, increasing their pressure. And as they get squished towards the core of the earth, the temperature also increases, causing them to turn into fossil fuels as oxygen gets pushed out of their decaying layers. Coal is formed from decayed plants, while oil and gas, usually methane, is formed from microorganisms in the ocean. Depending on the different pressures and temperatures experienced by the buried organisms, they form into different qualities of fossil fuels.

So now, why is burning fossil fuels bad? As mentioned earlier, fossil fuels are rich in carbon and hydrogen, and they are burned in the presence of oxygen to provide energy. However, as we break the bonds between carbon and hydrogen, the carbon then combines with oxygen, forming carbon dioxide. This is a gas that isn’t harmful in small amounts, since plants need it to stay alive, but as we pump billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere from burning fossil fuel, things get a lot worse. Our atmosphere is made of mostly nitrogen and oxygen gas, which let infrared light, or heat, freely pass through them. However, carbon dioxide absorbs the infrared light instead, and emits some of the heat back onto Earth, which is why we refer to carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. Moreover, when we extract fossil fuels from deep underground, we end up destroying habitats, contaminating clean drinking water, and increasing chances of leaks into the environment.

And there we have it! Fossil fuels are just dead organisms from millions of years ago that are rich in carbon and hydrogen, which can be burned to release tons of energy. They are formed through the immense pressure and temperature underground, which are ready for us to dig back up to power around 80% of our energy uses. However, as we burn fossil fuels, we end up releasing carbon dioxide and contaminants in the process of using and extracting them. This is also a very political issue, filled with misinformation and imbalance of power and privilege, which is why it is always important to do our own research on topics like those. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#environment #pollution #explained

How Do Semiconductors Work?

Zeleon Science 2025-06-24 | A short video explaining what conductors and semiconductors are, and why all electronics use semiconductors. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:21 How do regular conductors work?
01:17 How do semiconductors work?
02:00 How do semiconductors make electronics run?
02:44 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
https://www.appstate.edu/~brian/tec-1023/misc/conductors
https://matse1.matse.illinois.edu/sc/prin.html
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2023/09/stanford-explainer-semiconductors
icdrex.com/the-brain-behind-the-machine-transistors-in-cpu-architecture
https://www.usf.edu/continuing-education/lifelong-learning/news/2023/what-is-semiconductor-technology-and-why-is-it-important.aspx

Transcript:
Semiconductors are one of the most influential materials in modern history, powering up not just smartphones, but fridges and electric toothbrushes as well. It is used in the vast majority of electronics that we use everyday, despite being such a simple material. So in this video, we will explore how regular conductors work, how semiconductors work, and their applications in technology.

Let’s start with atoms, which make up everything around us. An atom contains electrons around it, which exist in different energy levels, called shells. Electrons closer to the centre, or the nucleus, of the atom have less energy than the electrons farther away from it. This outermost energy level is called the valence shell, and the electrons that exist in the valence shell can easily break out of this energy level to become a free electron. Free electrons can easily pass electrical charges through them, making them great at conducting electricity. This is why many metals, such as copper and silver, are fantastic conductors, since they have plenty of free electrons. These materials also have very little resistance to interrupt the electricity flow, which means that electrons can easily move through them without bumping into anything. Of course, materials that don’t easily let go of their valence electrons, such as rubber, are insulators because they prevent the formation of free electrons.

So now, how about semiconductors? Here’s the fun part, they are sometimes conductors and sometimes insulators. These materials conduct better than insulators, but not as well as conductors. The most famous of the bunch is probably silicon, which is an insulator at room temperature. However, when we heat it up, it becomes a conductor, which means that we can control when it is insulating or conducting. When we add energy, or heat, we force many of its electrons in the valence shell to become free electrons, making it a conductor. When it cools back down, the free electrons will return to their appropriate energy levels, turning the silicon back into an insulator. This is a very simplified explanation without going into energy gaps and quantum mechanics, so please keep that in mind!

So why do electronics care about semiconductors? One of the most crucial parts of any electronic device is the transistor, which is a very small switch that controls the flow of electricity. By combining many of those switches together, computers are able to perform basic calculations or simulate the aerodynamics of a cow. By simply heating up specific transistors, which are mostly made of silicon, we can make them into conductors, switching them on and allowing them to carry electricity or store information. When we want those transistors to turn off, we just need to stop heating them and they will return to being an insulator. Modern electronics can range from having thousands of transistors to billions of them, and anything that connects to electricity will likely have some number of those semiconductors.

And there we have it! Conductors are able to allow electricity to flow through them by having plenty of free electrons. For semiconductors, we can manipulate them to be conducting or insulating by controlling how many free electrons they have. We use this technology to create complicated electronics through billions of transistors, making our world run the way it does today. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#chemistry #science #steam

Why Do We Sound Different in Recordings?

Zeleon Science 2025-06-10 | A short video explaining how our voice travels, how we make speech, and why we hear our own voices so differently! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:27 How does sound travel through the air?
01:11 How do we make sound and speech?
01:54 Why does our voice sound so different?
02:44 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207834
nidcd.nih.gov/news/multimedia/how-does-human-body-produce-voice-and-speech-text-version
scienceworld.ca/resource/sound
u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/features/z1304_00237.html
theguardian.com/science/2018/jul/12/the-real-reason-the-sound-of-your-own-voice-makes-you-cringe
scientificamerican.com/article/why-does-my-voice-sound-different

Transcript:
As someone who makes random science videos, I hear my own voice a lot when editing. But why does it sound like that? Whenever we hear recordings, why do we sound so different from what we hear when we talk? Almost everyone cringes at the sound of their own voices, so in this video, we will explore how our voice travels through the air, how we make sounds in the first place, why we hear them so differently in our head, and why we might cringe when we hear our own voices.

When we hear sound, we are just detecting the vibration of air molecules. When a sound is made, say a pot smashing apart, the air molecules around it vibrate. Those air molecules then make the air molecules around them vibrate as well, causing a chain reaction of vibrations. This is what a sound wave is. When this sound wave reaches our ears, a structure called the cochlea senses those vibrations. We have sensitive hair cells inside the cochlea that respond to vibrations, which then convert this physical motion into an electrical signal to send to our brain through the auditory nerve. Lastly, our brain will deduce that this specific vibration of air corresponds to a pot being smashed. So surprisingly, a simple solution to detect so many different sounds around us.

So what happens when we talk? As air rushes out of our lungs through the larynx, or the voice box, it passes through folded bands of muscles called vocal cords. Those folds vibrate the air, giving them sound. With the combination of our tongue and lips, we are able to make recognizable sounds, which we register as speech. And of course, the moment those vibrating air molecules leave our mouths, they will travel to the cochlea of the people around us for them to hear what we said. Interestingly, when the vocal cords vibrate the air, some vibrations also travel through our temporal bone directly to our cochlea. This bone-transmitted vibration will also vibrate the hair cells, which becomes the voice that we hear rather than air-transmitted vibration that other people hear.

So why does the bone vibration sound so different then? Turns out that when sound travels through our bones, the pitch becomes lower as the vibrations spread out more. So, by the time we hear our own voice, it is a combination of air vibrations and the bass-boosted bone vibrations. When we listen to our own voice through a recording, we are just listening to it through the air vibrations alone, which will sound higher pitched. The reason why we don’t like hearing our voice most likely boils down to how different it is. We’re used to our own voices our whole lives, but when we hear how different it actually sounds, we feel uncomfortable. There is also a disconnect between how we perceive ourselves versus how everybody else perceives us. Because we were evolved to fit in, this slight difference might make us feel isolated since this isn’t who we expected to be, or what we expected ourselves to sound like.

And there we have it! Sound travels through the air via a chain reaction of air molecule vibrations, which eventually hits the cochlea inside our ears for us to understand what the sound is. As we pass air through our vocal cords, vibrations are also sent through our bones to our ears. Those lower-pitched vibrations end up making us feel disconnected to what we actually sound like. Luckily, this feeling of cringe is something that we can get used to after hearing our actual voices over and over again. We just need to give our brain some time to catch up to reality. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#biology #science #steam

How Often Do We Need to Shower? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 18

Zeleon Science 2025-04-16 | A short video explaining how many times we need to shower every week and the science behind showering! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/showering-daily-is-it-necessary-2019062617193

Transcript:
Do we need to shower everyday? The short answer is no, but here’s why! Our skin is layered with oil to keep it moisturized, but if we shower too often, the oil gets washed away, and the skin dries up and cracks, giving room for pathogens to sneak in. Our skin is also home to billions of bacteria, many of which help us defend against pathogens. But when we rub our bodies with hot water, they get rinsed away, effectively resetting our bacterial biome on our skin. But if we sweat a lot, have oily skin, or work in a dirty environment, we should shower more regularly to keep the balance of our skin in check. Of course, there’s nothing harmful to showering everyday to feel refreshed or to smell good, but in terms of health, we just need to make sure to shower several times a week. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#physics #steam #explained

What Does Schrödingers Cat Tell Us?

Zeleon Science 2025-04-09 | A short video explaining what superposition is, what Schrödinger's Cat is, and the misconceptions that follow it! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:26 What is quantum mechanics and superposition?
01:22 What is Schrödinger's Cat?
02:17 How does superposition actually work?
02:48 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/07/30/what-did-schrodingers-cat-experiment-prove/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/
scienceworld.ca/stories/what-schrodingers-cat
techtarget.com/whatis/definition/Schrodingers-cat

Transcript:
Many pop culture references use the famous Schrödinger's Cat to explain some complicated quantum phenomenon, but the whole point of this thought experiment is to illustrate how absurd it actually is. Schrödinger’s intention was to show the flaws of quantum mechanics, yet, its meaning is completely misinterpreted nowadays. So in this video, we will go over what quantum mechanics and the superposition phenomenon is, what Schrödinger's Cat is, and how superposition actually works.

Starting with quantum mechanics, it is the study of things as small as atoms. Everything that we interact with follows classical mechanics, where we use laws and equations to predict motion. So when we flip a coin, if we know the air resistance, the strength of the flick, the weight of the coin, and everything else, we can predict exactly what side it would land on. However, in quantum mechanics, there are no exact measurements, everything is down to a probability. So when we flip a quantum coin, there might be a 70% chance to land on tails, it might disappear into thin air, I can make more things up, but we don’t know what will happen. This brings us to the idea of superposition, which states that a quantum particle can exist in two states at the same time, and it will collapse into one of the states when we observe it. So the quantum coin is both heads and tails at the same time, and it will instantly become heads or tails the moment we observe it.

Schrödinger, an Austrian physicist who pioneered quantum mechanics, thought it was an absurd idea, which it was. This idea was known as the Copenhagen interpretation at the time, so he proposed the famous Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment. If we put a cat in a box, and a quantum device that can either kill the cat, or leave the cat be, the cat is then both alive and dead. There is a 50% chance that the cat lives and a 50% chance that the cat dies, so it’s in a superposition of being alive and dead. But when we open the box, we can see whether the cat is alive or not, so the superposition collapses into either the cat being alive or the cat being dead once we observe it. Schrödinger used this example to illustrate how flawed the Copenhagen interpretation is, since this can apply to everything. Our friend can be in the superposition of drinking bubble tea or not drinking bubble tea. Following this logic, this state will collapse into them drinking it or not drinking it the moment we ask them.

So how does superposition actually work? It’s pretty close to the Schrödinger's Cat experiment. When we put the hypothetical cat in the box, it would’ve been killed or spared before we even checked the box. Quantum mechanics doesn't wait for us to check in on them, they have already done their interactions and collapsed the superposition state before we observed them. This means that the cat isn’t in the state of being alive or dead, it is already alive or dead. Our friend is already drinking bubble tea, or finally decided to save some money, we don’t need to ask them in order for them to decide the outcome.

And there we have it! As probably one of the most misunderstood experiments in physics, Schrödinger's Cat was made to argue against the theory of superposition, not support it. Quantum mechanics studies the world of atoms, which is governed by the rules of probability rather than Newton’s laws of motion. Superposition is still the state of being two different states at once, but the state will collapse into one of the two states regardless of us observing them or not. The cat doesn’t need to be observed for it to be dead or alive. So next time we explain superposition, let’s use a different analogy. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#physics #quantum #steam

How Does Earth Generate Its Magnetic Field? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 17

Zeleon Science 2025-04-02 | A short video explaining how the Earth is able to generate its magnetic field! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
science.nasa.gov/science-research/earth-science/earths-magnetosphere-protecting-our-planet-from-harmful-space-energy

Transcript:
Ever wondered why compasses always point north? It’s due to Earth’s invisible magnetic field, and here’s how it is generated! The earth is made of four layers, the crust, mantle, outer, and inner core. In the outer core, there is a slush of molten iron and nickel that moves around due to convection. Since hot fluids are less dense, the hotter metals float to the top of the outer core, while the colder metals sink back down to get heated up again, which keeps this layer in motion. Because molten iron is a great conductor, and combined with Earth’s rotation, this layer of moving liquid metal generates a magnetic field that stretches across thousands of kilometers. And thanks to this magnetic field, we are shielded from the deadly radiation from our sun, while helping us navigate with compasses. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#physics #steam #explained

What is Dark Matter and Dark Energy?

Zeleon Science 2025-03-26 | A short video explaining what dark matter is, what dark energy is, why we know they are there, and the expansion of the universe! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:27 What is dark matter?
01:33 What is dark energy?
02:26 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
science.nasa.gov/universe/dark-matter-dark-energy
science.nasa.gov/universe/the-universe-is-expanding-faster-these-days-and-dark-energy-is-responsible-so-what-is-dark-energy
https://home.cern/science/physics/dark-matter
energy.gov/science/doe-explainsdark-matter
space.com/20930-dark-matter.html
spaceplace.nasa.gov/dark-matter/en

Transcript:
Despite sounding like the evil version of regular matter and energy, dark matter and dark energy occupy 95% of our universe, leaving us with only 5% for stuff that we see everyday. They don’t seem to interact with us at all, but they are some of the most important things that make our universe work the way it does. So in this video, we will explore what dark matter is, what dark energy is, why we know they are there, and the accelerating expansion of our universe.

The idea of dark matter was first proposed when we found that gravity wasn’t behaving like it is supposed to. Gravitational force attracts objects together, which gets stronger the more massive those objects are. When we observed galaxies, we noticed that with the amount of matter that we predicted, including black holes, stars, and planets, there shouldn’t be enough gravitational force to hold everything together. Those space objects aren’t massive enough to be orbiting in a galaxy, they should have been spun out. Furthermore, stars at the edge of the galaxy should be orbiting slower than the ones closer to the centre, but they are all orbiting at the same speed. So, we concluded that there must be some matter in those galaxies that gives them more mass so that the gravitational force would be stronger to hold everything together. This is how dark matter came to be, it simply is just matter that we can’t detect. This form of matter doesn’t seem to interact with the electromagnetic force at all, which means that it doesn’t reflect, emit, or radiate light that we can see. Our best theory is that it exists as a web-like structure that stretches across the entire universe, attracting the 5% of regular matter together with gravity.

So if that’s what dark matter means, is dark energy just energy that we can’t see? Pretty much. Since gravitational force attracts objects together, then why isn’t every single star in the universe just in one big clump? There must be a force that pushes everything away from one another against gravity. As we looked into it, we have found that the universe is actually expanding faster than before, pulling us further from the other galaxies. We know this by looking at supernovae. When a massive star implodes, they emit a certain level of brightness that we can detect. However, the brightness of more recent supernovae appears to be dimmer, which means that they are further away than what we have predicted. The only explanation for this is an invisible energy that we cannot detect pushing against the gravitational force, forcing everything in our universe to move away from each other. And of course, since we can’t detect it, we have dubbed this mysterious energy the dark energy.

And there we have it! Despite only being able to detect 5% of our universe, we were still able to figure out the missing 95% of stuff that we can’t see. Dark matter adds mass to the galaxies so that they can stay in orbit, while dark energy is a force that is pushing us away from each other faster and faster. We have no idea what those things are made of, all we know is that they interact with gravity and don't react with anything else. But despite that, it is quite an impressive feat that us humans can discover something that we literally can’t see. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#physics #space #steam

How Do Our Knuckles Pop? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 16

Zeleon Science 2025-03-19 | A short video explaining how our knuckles pop and why we can't pop them again! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/knuckle-cracking-annoying-and-harmful-or-just-annoying-2018051413797

Transcript:
Ever cracked your knuckles and wondered why it pops? Here’s why! Our joints are surrounded by synovial fluid, which lubricates and cushions the joints so they don't rub against each other. It is also filled with gas bubbles from dissolved carbon dioxide in our bodies, and when we stretch or pull our fingers, we are letting those gas bubbles pop, which is the cracking sound that we hear. And of course, we can’t crackle them again because the gas bubbles need to build up before we can fire off another pop. Furthermore, it usually doesn’t cause any harm to pop, and it certainly won’t give you arthritis. But as soon as pain is felt, we should stop popping right away. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#biology #steam #explained

Why Do People Get Anxious Over Math?

Zeleon Science 2025-03-12 | A short video explaining why we feel anxious about math, and what we can do to overcome it! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:30 What is math anxiety?
01:17 What causes math anxiety?
02:17 What can we do about math anxiety?
03:06 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
doi.org/10.2147/PRBM.S141421
apa.org/monitor/2023/10/preventing-math-anxiety
oxfordlearning.com/what-is-math-anxiety
nationalnumeracy.org.uk/what-issue/about-maths-anxiety

Transcript:
Do you ever feel anxious while doing a math exam? It feels like everybody else understands math more than you do, and that you are not smart enough for math. Well, I can assure you that you are not alone. Around 60% of high school students throughout the world have reported that they worry about math, and 20-25% of kids experience high levels of math anxiety. In this video, we will explore what happens inside of our brain when we have math anxiety, where this anxiety stems from, and what we can do about it. And a disclaimer, I am a high school math teacher, so this is something that I want to understand as well!

According to the Attentional Control Theory, our brain relies on two major systems to process our thoughts. We have a goal-driven system that focuses on tasks at hand, and a stimulus-driven system that focuses on current threats. When we feel anxious, the stimulus-driven system takes over and causes us to lose focus on whatever we have in front of us. This messes with our working memory, which is our brain’s short-term memory that helps us solve current problems. It switches from solving problems to stressing about solving problems, which drives up our anxiety even more. This forms a loop where our brain convinces us that math is too stressful, making our stimulus-driven system treating it as more of a threat. This applies to people of all skill levels, some folks who have mastery of arithmetics may still feel anxious about a simple problem of 3 plus 4.

So now that we know what it is, what causes math anxiety? Evolutionarily speaking, math is very abstract, and we only started doing it a few thousand years ago. It is still very foreign to our primitive brains, which many of us may perceive as a threat. However, the biggest cause is how people around us have treated math. Many societies around the world associate math with academic achievement, so if someone isn’t good at math, then they are not good at school, which isn’t true at all. The most influential adults for a child are their parents and teachers, and since a lot of those adults grew up with math anxiety, a lot of children have picked up those anxiety as well. Many of us have probably heard someone say that “I’m not good at math,” or “math isn’t my thing,” despite most people in the world being quite proficient in this subject. Furthermore, math anxiety seems to be more common in biological female students due to harmful stereotypes, even though sex has shown to not be a factor when it comes to the understanding of math. Most math anxiety comes from a societal norm of some sort, which ends up holding back a lot of people’s pursuit in education.

So now, what can we do about it? Many techniques used for anxiety may work here, such as deep breathing during math-related tasks to refocus our working memory, writing down the thoughts that bother us, and exercise regularly, even a 10 minute walk around a park is better than nothing. Of course, there is also a lot of institutional change that is needed. More time needs to be allotted to students during math exams, extra practice material needs to be provided to boost student confidence, and the way math is taught also needs to be changed. Students need to focus on why something works, rather than memorizing specific formulas to get through an exam. Most importantly though, we need to adopt a growth mindset, which means seeing failure as an opportunity for improvement, and seeing math as something to conquer rather than to fear. Easier said than done, which is why it’s completely okay to take smaller steps!

And there we have it! Math anxiety is a real form of anxiety that is quite common. With the way society treats math as an indicator for intelligence, and the normalization of “being bad at math,” it’s no wonder why so many people see math as such an adversary. As a math teacher, there are plenty of things I need to keep in mind as well when I teach math, so it’s important for all of us to be aware of this hidden anxiety that makes us avoid numbers wherever we can. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#psychology #maths #steam

Why Do We Get Motion Sickness? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 15

Zeleon Science 2025-03-05 | A short video explaining how and why we get motion sick in a moving vehicle! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/page/motion-sickness

Transcript:
Around a third of us in the world have felt like throwing up while scrolling on our phones in a car, so why do we get motion sickness? Luckily, it’s relatively harmless, as motion sickness is just our brains getting confused. We have the vestibular system inside our inner ears that detect balance and head movements, while we have our eyes to detect whatever we see. However, if we are looking at our phone, which is stationary, on a moving car, which is bouncing up and down, our ears and eyes will send mixed signals to our brains, making us confused and dizzy. This causes us to feel nauseous and sometimes throw up, but we can prevent motion sickness from happening by sitting next to a window, lying down, or stare at the horizon. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#biology #psychology #explained

Why Can’t We Live Without Water?

Zeleon Science 2025-02-26 | A short video explaining some why we need water to survive and what water actually does to our bodies! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:23 What properties make water so special
01:05 The function of water in our bodies
01:53 What happens when we don't think water
02:38 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
doi.org/10.1016/S1470-8175(01)00017-0
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/how-much-water-should-you-drink
https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/water/
physiology.org/publications/news/the-physiologist-magazine/2021/july/the-science-of-hydration?SSO=Y
https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/water-a-vital-nutrient
youtube.com/watch?v=9iMGFqMmUFs

Transcript:
We are constantly being reminded to drink water and stay hydrated throughout the day, but why even is that? If we are already 60% water by weight, why do we need to drink even more? And what makes water so special that we need to drink 6 to 8 glasses of it every single day? So in this video, we will go over the properties of water that make it important to us, the function of water in our bodies, and what happens when we don’t drink enough of it.

Water is an universal solvent, meaning that it can dissolve a lot of substances, including nutrients and sugars that we need to survive. It is polar, meaning that it can be positively and negatively charged, which allows ions and electrons to be easily exchanged between our cells. And lastly, water has a high heat capacity, meaning that it can absorb a lot of heat, and slowly release heat as needed. This makes water a fantastic regulator of temperature, since it can help us cool down when it is hot, and lose our body heat slower when it is cold. Luckily, such an important molecule is non-toxic to living things, so it is safe to say that water makes life possible in the first place, hence why we love finding water on other planets.

So now, what does water even do in our bodies? As mentioned before, water makes up around 60% of our bodies by weight, but more importantly, it makes up around 90% of our blood plasma, 80% of our lungs, 75% of our heart and brain, and even 30% of our bones. Whenever our cells use up energy, a water molecule is required, and to keep a heart pumping or a brain thinking, a lot of water is used up for those vital organs. Using the properties mentioned earlier, water also helps our body to transport nutrients and wastes, produce sweat to regulate our internal temperature, and lubricate joints to help us move. Almost every single chemical reaction in our bodies involves water to some degree, including sending electrical signals, photosynthesize if you are a plant, and even breathing.

In those processes, we lose around 2 to 3 litres of water everyday, which is why it is so important to keep being hydrated. Of course, we will lose more water if we are overheating or exercising, so it depends on our age and environment. We need to make sure that we are always refilling all the water we have lost throughout the day, or else dehydration will quickly kick in. When we are dehydrated, our brain functions slower, we feel more tired, damage our cells from waste buildup, and even die if we lose around 20% of water. This is why we can’t live without water for more than 3 days, as our body needs water in every way possible. Luckily, aside from just drinking water, we also get around 20% of our daily water intake through the food we eat, and even more so if our diet is filled with fruits and vegetables.

And there we have it! As one of the most important molecules in life, water allows our body to regulate temperature, transport nutrients, get rid of waste, and overall keep us alive through all of the chemical reactions dependent on water. As a general rule of thumb, we don’t need 6 to 8 glasses of water everyday, we should be drinking water whenever we are thirsty, our body does a pretty good job of reminding us that. We lose a lot of water everyday by just being alive, so we need to replenish water whenever we need. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and importantly this time, stay hydrated!

#biology #science #steam

Why Does Helium Change Your Voice? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 14

Zeleon Science 2025-02-19 | A short video explaining why helium gas makes our voices higher pitched and sulfur hexafluoride gas deepens our voice! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
https://fi.edu/en/sparkofscience/change-your-voice-science

Transcript:
A fun party trick to do is to inhale some helium to make your voice sound higher pitch, but why does that work? When we talk, we produce sound waves that travel through the air. However, helium gas is much less dense than air, meaning that the helium molecules are more spread out, allowing the sound waves to travel a lot faster. And since faster sound waves mean higher frequencies, this is why our voice will sound higher pitched. Alternatively, if we inhale sulfur hexachloride, our voice will sound deeper since this gas is a lot denser, meaning that the sound waves will travel through it slower. Either way, make sure to not inhale too much of either gasses! I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#chemistry #physics #explained

How Did Life Form on Earth?

Zeleon Science 2025-02-12 | A short video explaining some leading theories behind the origin of life on Earth! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:22 What was Earth like in the beginning?
01:01 The primordial soup theory
02:05 Life-containing meteoroid theory
02:30 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
nationalgeographic.com/science/article/early-life-earth-theories
nhm.ac.uk/discover/what-is-a-species.html
https://news.uchicago.edu/explainer/formation-earth-and-moon-explained
https://news.uchicago.edu/explainer/origin-life-earth-explained
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26876
khanacademy.org/science/ap-biology/natural-selection/origins-of-life-on-earth/a/rna-world
new.nsf.gov/news/how-did-life-begin
https://naturalhistory.si.edu/education/teaching-resources/life-science/early-life-earth-animal-origins

Transcript:
With more than 2 million identified species on Earth, and many millions more to be discovered, where did they even come from? Or more importantly, where did the first one come from? How did a random rock in space become home to life in the first place? In this video, we will go over what Earth was like before life, the primordial soup, RNA World Theory, and life-containing meteoroids to find the origin of life.

Starting with the lore of Earth, which started over 4.6 billion years ago out of dust and gas around the sun. As gravity slowly pulled everything together, many asteroids and meteoroids smashed into this clump, adding more mass to it. At this point in time, the Earth was filled with volcanoes and methane gas, with no oxygen at all. This means that a sea of lava probably covered the surface of the Earth, from frequent volcanic eruptions and meteoroid bombardment. Furthermore, water in the form of ice was carried by comets that also slammed into Earth to form massive oceans, which complete all the ingredients we need for life!

To simulate this early environment, two scientists Miller and Urey injected ammonia, methane, and water vapour into a glass container. And with some electric sparks to simulate lightning, amino acids formed, which are the building blocks of protein. From this experiment, we found that the beginning of life most likely started in this hostile environment filled with those nutrients, which we refer to as the primordial soup. Sounds delicious, but I wouldn’t recommend drinking it yourself. Along with water, carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen, life also needs plenty of energy to exist. This means that those early life forms most likely began in hydrothermal vents or volcanoes, where there was plenty of chemical energy to feed off of. From here, the soup gave rise to RNA, or ribonucleic acids that lead to the RNA World Theory, which hypotheses that before all complex life formed, the world was dominated by RNA molecules that could replicate by themselves. After millions of years, those RNA molecules formed DNA, the blueprint of life, and proteins, which laid the foundations of life as we know it today before going through billions of years of evolution.

Though in contrast, we have another theory that seems plausible for the origin of life. We have found that amino acids could survive a meteorite impact, so it is also possible that instead of forming from the primordial soup, the amino acids responsible for early lifeforms came from a meteoroid from somewhere in outer space instead. So then, where did those amino acids come from? Are there other life forms and amino acids out there then? We have no idea, but it certainly is possible.

And there we have it! With the early Earth being a fireball of death filled with lava and unbreathable air, life was still able to form from the primordial soup of nutrients and water. We found evidence that those life forms existed on Earth around 3.7 billion years ago, which all evolved from a few strands of RNA. Or alternatively, some life forms hitchhiked rides from meteoroids and survived the impact to Earth, giving birth to the early life forms. We don’t really know for certain, but it’s certainly impressive that we are able to find so much about early Earth through fossil records. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#biology #science #steam

Why Are Triangles the Strongest Shape? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 13

Zeleon Science 2025-02-05 | A short video explaining why triangles are the strongest shape, as told by engineers! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
letstalkscience.ca/educational-resources/backgrounders/why-a-triangle-a-strong-shape

Transcript:
Something commonly heard amongst engineers is that triangles are the strongest shape, but why is that? Different shapes distribute weight and stress differently, but triangles do so quite efficiently because they evenly spread the weight out across all three sides. We can see here when a weight is applied, those parts of the triangle are squeezed, while this part of the triangle is stretched. And when we combine a bunch of those triangles together like this, we get a balance of stretching and squeezing, making this shape perfect for building, as we can see in bridges, roofs, and even the Eiffel Tower. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#engineering #technology #explained

What Makes Something Sticky?

Zeleon Science 2025-01-29 | A short video explaining what stickiness is, the forces behind this phenomenon, and why glue doesn't just stick to everything. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:18 The forces behind stickiness
01:23 The science of how things stick
02:33 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
explainthatstuff.com/adhesives.html
home.howstuffworks.com/adhesives-sticky.htm
tytan.com/us/advices/what-makes-adhesives-sticky
acs.org/education/celebrating-chemistry-editions/2020-ncw.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhesive#Mechanisms_of_adhesion

Transcript:
There are many sticky substances that we come across everyday, whether we like them or not, from tape holding up our posters, to a drink that we spilled sticking to our clothes. But then why doesn’t superglue stick to its container if it can glue pretty much everything together? In this video, we will explore the forces behind what makes things stick, and why they don’t just stick to everything!

Before we talk about why things stick, let’s go over some important forces at play. First, we have cohesion, which is the force that holds molecules of the same substance together, say the water molecules in a water droplet. Next, we have adhesion, which is the force that holds molecules of different substances together, say a water droplet sliding down a window. Those forces are able to form due to the polarity of different molecules, or positive and negative charges attracting each other. Take a water molecule for an example. It is made of two hydrogen and one oxygen atom, so the hydrogen end becomes slightly positively charged, and the oxygen end becomes slightly negatively charged. Similarly, a glass molecule is made of two oxygen and one silicon atom, so the silicon end becomes slightly positively charged and the oxygen end becomes slightly negatively charged. So then, as a water droplet flows down a glass pane, the water molecules in the droplet stick to each other through cohesion force, and the droplet sticks to the glass through adhesion force. This is why when we lift up a glass cup with water underneath, the coaster might stick to it as well.

This brings us to the science of stickiness. In order for an adhesive, say glue or tape, to stick something together, it must stick to both surfaces and make sure that it sticks to itself. If the adhesion force is too weak, then the surfaces won’t be stuck to the adhesive, and if the cohesion force is too weak, then the adhesive itself will rip apart, leaving sticky bits on both surfaces. In the case of sugary things, such as maple syrup, sugar contains a lot of hydroxides, which are slightly negatively charged, and combined with water, they stick to pretty much everything that has a charge, such as our clothes and skin. In the case of glue and tape, those adhesives are made from many different substances, but generally, they all have strong adhesion and cohesion forces. In the case of glue, to make sure that it doesn’t stick to the container, it is mixed with liquids that prevent it from sticking. Once the glue leaves the container, the liquid will evaporate, which will dry up and harden the sticky glue. So if we leave glue sticks or superglue without their caps, they will dry out and harden, because all of the liquid inside them would have evaporated away. Some glue can be hardened by air as well, so that’s why we keep those adhesives in a dry area and sealed off to maintain their stickiness.

And there we have it! Thanks to cohesion, which binds molecules of the same type together, and adhesion, which binds molecules of different types together, substances are able to become sticky even if they aren’t meant to be adhesives. By making sure that they stick to themselves and other things effectively, these sticky substances provide either a nuisance or a useful tool for us to use, all with some simple forces at play. At the end of the day, the polarity of molecules make sure that everything is stuck together, whether we like them or not. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#chemistry #science #steam

How Does Wireless Charging Work? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 12

Zeleon Science 2025-01-22 | A short video explaining the magic behind wireless charging! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_coil
belkin.com/products/product-resources/wireless-charging/how-it-works

Transcript:
Many devices are now able to be recharged without using a physical wire, so then, how do they work? When we plug in our wireless charger, electric current is sent through a coil inside. As described by Faraday’s Law of Electric Induction, when the electrons travel around this coil, an electromagnetic field is created. Then, when this field hits a receiving coil in a device, it will cause the resting electrons inside to move. This will then generate a current, which will charge the battery of said device. Starting from electric toothbrushes, this technology is becoming more and more popular, but it would only charge devices that also have a coil inside. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#physics #technology #explained

What Makes an Explosion Explosion?

Zeleon Science 2025-01-15 | A short video explaining what an explosion is, and the chemistry behind what makes an explosion explode. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Also switched to making those sketches on an iPad! Hopefully the quality of my videos will be better :D

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:23 What are mechanical explosions?
00:56 What are chemical explosions?
02:30 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
doi.org/10.1038/096440b0
hysafe.info/ichs2013/images/papers/105.pdf
britannica.com/technology/explosive
ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/mim/environmental/html/tnt.htm
https://www.chem.fsu.edu/chemlab/chm1020c/Lecture%207/04.php
nfpa.org/news-blogs-and-articles/blogs/2023/03/27/explosions-vs-deflagrations-vs-detonations
lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=b5e66ed7-e871-42ab-ac1e-97b34d440d89

Transcript:
From colourful New Years fireworks, to car engines, and to delicious popcorn in the microwave, explosions are a pretty common occurrence in our everyday lives. They are powerful rapid releases of energy, usually through an expansion of gas. So then, what makes them so powerful? In this video, we will go over the different types of explosions, the chemistry behind explosions, and the applications of explosions. And no, we won’t be making them.

Mechanical explosions are pretty straightforward, they are just high pressure gas overloading a container, causing the container to burst from the stress. So technically, popcorn popping is considered a mechanical explosion, since it’s caused by the expansion of water vapour trapped inside the kernel. A key distinction in mechanical explosions is that they don’t cause any combustion reactions, meaning that generally, no fire would be produced, making mechanical explosions useful in mining, since we wouldn’t want chemicals or fire to fill up mineshafts.

The more popular explosions are the chemical ones, which we see in pop culture and Hollywood movies. There are two different types, deflagration and detonation. Deflagration is when the flame speed is lower than the speed of sound (335 m/s or 750 mph), so they are less powerful and are usually confined in a container. This works because the chemicals used in deflagrations burn very quickly, producing a lot of high pressure gas that will burst the container it is housed in. For example, in a car engine, small deflagrating explosives are made from gasoline to move the pistons that spin the car wheels, and in fireworks, a small shell containing gunpowder is ignited, which bursts to create bright colours and shapes in the sky. Detonation is much more powerful, where the flames travel faster than the speed of sound and are the ones that we usually think of, such as TNT and dynamite. These are much more dangerous, but have some very interesting science behind them. Let’s take TNT as an example, which is made up of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and some other organic elements. Upon detonation, those molecules form stable gasses with strong bonds, such as carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), and nitrogen gas (N2). This means that huge amounts of energy would have to be released. Furthermore, the chemical structure of TNT itself is unstable, since the molecules are packed so closely to the point that they strain on each other. Typically, 1 gram of TNT can produce up to 1 litre of gas, which is 1000 times more volume before the explosion, making it quite a deadly reaction. Most of the more dangerous detonating explosions all contain some sort of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen molecules inside, just like TNT.

And there we have it! Despite the destructive impact left behind by explosions, there is still a lot of interesting science behind them. Mechanical explosions involve highly compressed gas physically bursting from its container, while chemical explosions produce their more destructive force by forming stable bonds. We have nuclear explosions through fusion and fission as well, which I also did a video on. But despite the dangers, explosions are very useful reactions in our day to day life, as long as they are controlled of course. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#chemistry #explosion #steam

How Do We Want to Pee More When It’s Cold? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 11

Zeleon Science 2024-11-13 | A short video explaining why we tend to pee more in the colder months! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:05 Soooo can they??
00:15 How fish breathes

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
arkansasurology.com/does-cold-weather-make-you-pee-more-often
aeroflowurology.com/blog/cold-weather-urinary-incontinence#

Transcript:
Now that we are approaching the colder months, why do we end up wanting to urinate more? Luckily, this is a normal natural body response called cold-induced diuresis. Our body will constrict blood vessels, increasing our blood pressure while reducing the amount of blood to our skin, retaining more body heat. However, this will make our kidneys filter out more fluids, causing us to urinate more. We also sweat less, since that will lose body heat as well, so all the fluid that would've been excreted in our sweat ends up in our bladders. But at the end of the day, because we are losing more fluid than usual, we need to make sure we are drinking more water to compensate for the extra fluids being filtered out. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#biology #humanbody #explained

Can Fish Drown? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 10

Zeleon Science 2024-10-30 | A short video explaining whether or not fish can drown, and how they "drown!" I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:05 Soooo can they??
00:15 How fish breathes

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/drowning
oceanconservancy.org/blog/2020/01/17/gills

Transcript:
Drowning is one of the leading causes of death worldwide for humans, so then, do fish drown as well? Short answer, no, but they can still suffocate. We drown when there is too much water in our lungs, which suffocates us because we can't get oxygen into our blood. For fish, they breathe through their gills to extract oxygen in the water. However, if there isn’t enough dissolved oxygen in the water, or if their gills are damaged, they would suffocate, just like us. This applies to all animals with gills, such as octopuses and crabs, as all of them need oxygen to live, just like all the land animals. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#biology #animals #explained

Where Does Wind Come From? What Makes Them Strong?

Zeleon Science 2024-10-23 | A short video explaining what wind is, how wind is formed, and what even affects wind in the first place. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:23 What even is wind?
00:59 Global wind patterns
01:45 What environmental factors can affect wind?
02:51 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/wind
eia.gov/energyexplained/wind
weather.gov/source/zhu/ZHU_Training_Page/winds/Wx_Terms/Flight_Environment.htm
https://laulima.hawaii.edu/access/content/group/dbd544e4-dcdd-4631-b8ad-3304985e1be2/book/chapter_4/motion.htm
electrical-engineering-portal.com/geographical-variation-in-the-wind-resource

Transcript:
From powerful gusts on mountaintops to ocean breezes on beaches, our environment is filled with wind. However, due to temperature, pressure, geography, and many factors, wind can vary greatly in strength and patterns. So then, how are winds different in strength in different parts of the world? In this video, we will briefly go over what wind is, how wind is formed, how different landscapes affect wind.

Wind is surprisingly a form of solar energy, since it is a movement of air caused by the heat from the sun. When the air is warmed, it gains energy, making air molecules move faster. This will cause the air to expand, making it less dense, decrease in pressure, and start rising up. This will leave a low pressure area where the hot air once was, so the colder higher pressure air will rush in and fill in this gap. This rush of air is what we feel as wind! Due to the elevation, surface texture, and many other factors, the sun heats up the Earth unevenly, causing many different pressure differences to create this air movement. In general, because the surface near the equator is heated more, air travels from the colder poles in both hemispheres to the warmer equator, while the warm air from the equator travels to the poles. And aside from the sun, since the Earth rotates about an axis, the land at the equator would have to move a lot more than the land closer to the poles, this is called the Coriolis effect. This causes the wind to blow from east to west near the equator and at the poles, and west to east in the middle here. With all of those factors combined, wind blows in a clockwise direction away from high pressure areas, and in a counterclockwise direction towards low pressure areas in the Northern Hemisphere. In contrast, wind blows in a counterclockwise direction away from high pressure areas, and in a clockwise direction into low pressure areas in the Southern Hemisphere.

Now, with all the complicated stuff out of the way, different environmental factors affect the wind in many ways. Travelling to the beachside, land warms up and cools down a lot faster than the ocean. During the day, the warmer land causes more air to rise from the coast and sink at the sea, forming a sea breeze. During the night, the cooler land causes more air to sink at the coast and rise from the sea, forming a land breeze. As we move higher up, winds get stronger with altitude. Since there is less friction, and that effect of gravity is weaker, wind is able to reach higher speeds. Furthermore, with the help of mountains, wind speeds can reach over 150 km/h (100 mph). As the wind accelerates over the mountains, it is squeezed by the air at the summit, causing it to go even faster. The narrow valleys are also perfect for accelerating winds, since the tight space squeezes on the air, air is forced out at very high speeds. In contrast, winds in cities are a lot weaker because there is a lot of friction and buildings preventing winds from picking up speed, as compared to plains, where winds get a lot stronger because there is little friction aside from the ground for the wind to slow down.

And there we have it! Wind is just a movement of air due to the pressure differences caused by the sun unevenly heating the Earth. And due to the rotation of the Earth, it causes winds to flow in chaotic yet predictable ways. Many different factors can affect wind patterns and strength, but when it comes down to it, the lack of friction is what causes wind to accelerate into unimaginable speeds. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#nature #earthscience #wind

Why Does Water Condense on Cold Cans? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 9

Zeleon Science 2024-10-16 | A short video explaining why we see water droplets on cold drinks when we take them out of a fridge! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:09 What is condensation?
00:23 How does condensation apply to this?

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/condensation/#
britannica.com/question/Why-do-cold-water-bottles-and-soft-drink-bottles-sweat

Transcript:
When we take a cold can out of the fridge, we often see tons of water droplets on the outside, but why is that? The key here, as many of us may have suspected, is condensation. It’s the process of a gas turning into a liquid, so in this case, water vapour into water droplets. Interestingly, this process is exothermic, meaning that it releases energy. Gas has more energy than liquid, since the molecules are moving around faster. So when the water vapour touches a cold surface, say an aluminium can of Cola, the energy from the hotter vapour gets released into the colder can. As this heat energy gets released, the vapour loses enough energy to turn into a droplet that stays on the can. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#physics #chemistry #explained

What is Plastic? Why is it Bad for the Environment?

Zeleon Science 2024-10-09 | A short video explaining what plastic is, how it is made, and why its biggest strength are its biggest downfall. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:20 What is plastic?
00:55 How is plastic made?
01:26 The nightmare of plastic
02:45 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/what-is-plastic
bpf.co.uk/plastipedia/how-is-plastic-made.aspx
https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2023/12/15/impact-plastic-climate-change
iucn.org/resources/issues-brief/plastic-pollution
nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/plastic-pollution
unep.org/plastic-pollution

Transcript:
One of the most used materials in our society is plastic, from our water bottles to our phones, and even inside of us. Ever since the 20th century, plastic has transformed our lives due to its versatility and low cost. So in this video, we will go over what plastic even is, how it is made, and of course, why it is both useful and problematic.

Interestingly, plastic isn’t actually a single material, it covers a wide range of synthetic materials that are made out of polymers. A polymer is any material that consists of long chains of smaller units called monomers, so examples of naturally occurring polymers include DNA and proteins. In terms of plastic, a common monomer is ethylene, which makes up polyethylene, the material used to create bottles and bags. Propylene is also widely used, as it makes up polypropylene, the material used to make bottle caps and machine parts. And unfortunately, to make those useful polymers, we need to use fossil fuels. First, they are refined to extract hydrocarbon molecules, which will be broken down into monomers that make plastic, such as ethane and propylene. Then, through a process called polymerization, those monomers are then assembled into their respective polymers to be cut into pellets called nurdles. At this point, the nurdles are shipped to manufacturers all over the world for them to make whatever they need. Most types of plastic melt at around 200 - 300 degrees (400 - 600 F), making them very easy to mold.

This process makes plastic very durable, lightweight, cheap, and flexible. However, the biggest downside of plastic, which most of us have probably heard about, is that plastic takes around 1,000 years to decompose. This means that every piece of plastic that has been made is still intact somewhere on Earth, from large to microscopic pieces. A lot of those plastic products can be reused, such as ziploc bags or lunch containers, but many types of plastic products are single-use, such as straws and cutlery. Since those products prioritize convenience over reusability, they are often thrown away, ending up in landfills and the ocean. From sunlight, currents, or even rubbing against wildlife, plastic trash gets broken down into smaller pieces called microplastics. They are littered all over the world, even in Antarctica, carried by the ocean currents. Despite being, well, microscopic in size, It is arguably more dangerous than a large piece of plastic bottle itself, since they can easily enter our and other animals’ digestive systems. They can puncture internal organs, disrupt hormones, and cause reproductive system damage. Moreover, the creation of plastic is also a big toll on the environment, since one of the biggest contributors to climate change is the extraction and use of fossil fuels, and these products end up killing billions of wildlife. So at the end of the day, despite the versatility and durability of plastic, it is also its biggest downfall.

And there we have it! Plastic is one of the most widely used materials currently, but it is also one of the biggest pollutants covering the entire Earth. Of course, using reusable containers and limiting our single-use plastics is something that we can all do, but more importantly, voting, if possible, for legislations that address plastic pollution is also a great step to help combat the plastic apocalypse. Our technology on combating plastic is also getting better, as we have manufactured biodegradable plastic and bacteria that can digest microplastic, so it’s not all doom and gloom. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#environment #pollution #explained

How Do Some Things Glow in the Dark? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 8

Zeleon Science 2024-10-02 | A short video explaining the science of glow in the dark objects and what materials they use to make themselves glow! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:05 What is phosphor?
00:20 What sorts of materials are used?

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
eia.gov/kids/for-teachers/lesson-plans/pdfs/GlowInTheDarkSecondary.pdf

Transcript:
From watches to shoes, many objects are manufactured to glow in the dark, but how do they work? All of those products contain a substance called phosphor, which absorbs light and then emits it slowly. So in order for a glow in the dark thing to glow, it would need to be in presence of some light first, say the sun, and then the phosphor inside would continue to emit light for a few hours. Zinc Sulfide is a cheap material commonly used as a phosphor, but for high end objects like a watch, they are combined with radioactive elements to continuously give phosphors the energy to keep glowing. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#light #physics #explained

What are the Different Types of Pollution?

Zeleon Science 2024-09-25 | A short video explaining what pollution is and how the different types of pollutions that can affect us. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:24 Air pollution
01:13 Water pollution
02:04 Land pollution
02:42 Noise pollution
03:10 Light pollution
03:31 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/pollution
byjus.com/biology/types-of-pollution
https://www.open.edu/openlearncreate/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=79946&printable=1
https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1
education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/noise-pollution
education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/light-pollution

Transcript:
Pollution is defined as the introduction of substances that are harmful to the environment, and unfortunately, us humans are quite good at doing that. Pollution can be natural, such as volcanic ash, but the majority of pollution today is caused by human activity. So in this video, we will go over very briefly what air, water, land, noise, and light pollution are, what their sources are, and how they affect us.

Starting with air pollution, which is the contamination of the natural atmosphere. Those pollutants, which are substances that cause the pollution, such as carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide, are commonly produced by volcanic eruptions and forest fires. However, the most deadly air pollution is produced by burning fossil fuels usually from vehicles and factories. They produce carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide, which are colourless and odourless. Not only do those gases cause acid rain, they can also cause permanent brain damage, leading to memory loss and decreased mental capability. The most pressing consequence of air pollution, however, is the greenhouse gases that come with the pollutants. These gases, such as methane and carbon dioxide, drift into the atmosphere and absorb sunlight instead of letting them reflect back into space, heating up the Earth in the process.

Next, we have water pollution, which can look clean and drinkable, but contain many pollutants that we can’t even smell. Naturally, oil can leak into oceans from lakes and underground sources, however, chemical residue and oil from factories and cars are often dumped into waterways, which we refer to as runoffs. These are rich nutrients for cyanobacteria, a type of algae, causing them to grow quickly into algal blooms, which are the mass patches of algae we see floating on some rivers. These blooms prevent sunlight from leaking to the plants below, and take up a lot of oxygen, suffocating the fish swimming beneath them. Some other runoffs include fertilizers from agriculture, sewage systems, and just straight up oil spills in the middle of the ocean, suffocating many marine creatures in the process. Ingesting those pollutants not only make the marine animals sick, they also make us sick as we eat them.

Now, moving onto something more visible, we have land pollution, which is just plain old trash on the streets. Litter, especially plastic, can’t really be digested, so they just take up space in landfills, or even worse, inside our stomachs. Pesticides and fertilizers are also considered pollutants, even though they are great for growing our food and keeping the insects away, these chemicals can cause many diseases and also cancer when ingested. Oftentimes, those chemicals seep into the soil, contaminating the area around them to be infertile for agriculture, and they may also seep into our drinking water supplies underground.

And lastly, some lesser known pollutions, noise and sound. Noise pollution is probably the most invisible of the bunch, being any sound that affects our well-being. Sounds above 85 decibels can be damaging to our ears, so rustling leaves start at 25 decibels, lawnmowers at 90 decibels, subway trains at 115 decibels, and sirens at 140 decibels. These noises not only impose noise induced hearing loss, they also increase stress levels and impair memories in us and in wildlife. Light pollution is probably the most visible pollution, as the excess artificial light in our cities is messing with our wellbeing also. The light disrupts our circadian rhythm, which causes us to lose quality sleep, leading to sleep deprivation and heightened anxiety. Many animals are affected too, as many birds rely on natural light for migration and wake-sleep cycles.

*Summary cut-off due to character limit :(*

#environment #pollution #explained

How Do Light Bulbs and LEDs Give Off Light? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 7

Zeleon Science 2024-09-18 | A short video explaining the science of lightbulbs and how they are able to give off light, both incandescent and LEDs! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:04 How do incandescent lightblubs work?
00:17 How do LED lightblubs work?

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
bbc.com/future/article/20131101-how-does-a-lightbulb-work
energystar.gov/products/light_bulbs/learn-about-led-lighting

Transcript:
Our society is powered by light, but ever wondered how those bulbs actually give off light? In a traditional incandescent light bulb, we have a filament usually made of tungsten surrounded by non-reactive gas to prevent rusting. Then, as current runs through it, it gets heated up, which makes it glow, giving off light. However, most modern lights use LEDs, or light emitting diodes, which are 90% more efficient and last way longer. Instead of burning filaments, LEDs contain a lot of semiconductors. As a current flows through them, light is emitted due to the movement of electrons within the semiconductors. This is much more efficient than incandescent bulbs since electricity is converted directly into light, instead of into heat first, and then light. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#light #physics #explained

Inside the Machine: How Do Toilets Work?

Zeleon Science 2024-09-12 | A short video explaining how a toilet works, the anatomy of a toilet, and how things get plugged. I hope that you guys all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:17 The anatomy of a toilet
00:46 How a toilet flushes
01:45 What happens when a toilet is clogged
02:15 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
familyhandyman.com/list/how-a-toilet-works
https://wpplumbing.com.au/blog/how-toilets-work
korky.com/toilet-repair-help/anatomy-of-a-toilet
youtube.com/watch?v=o3-Acl_5U30 (drawing reference)

Transcript:
Toilets are something that we use everyday and one of the most crucial components of human waste disposal. And despite not using any electricity, it is very good at doing what it is supposed to do. So in the video, we will explore the parts of a toilet, what happens inside the toilet when it’s flushed, and how water is able to refill the tank after a flush.

Starting with the anatomy of a toilet, we have the tank that contains the water for flushing, the bowl where the waste is deposited, the flush handle that activates the flush, the flush valve that controls the release of water into the bowl, the fill valve that refills the water after a flush, the bobber that tells the fill valve when to refill the water, anbd an u-shaped pipe with some water under the bowl to carry any waste out.

Alright, let’s start from the beginning. When the flush handle is first pushed, a chain attached to the handle lifts up the flush valve. This causes the water in the tank to rush into the bowl. And now, as the bowl fills up, the additional water weighs onto the water in the u-shaped pipe, which pushes the water up and around the pipe, directly into the sewer pipes. This is the result of the siphon effect, which creates a vacuum of sorts that sucks all the water out until the water level here is even again. This motion uses no electrical energy and is able to efficiently get rid of any waste and toilet paper, which is honestly a pretty impressive engineering feat! As more of the water gets flushed from the tank, the bobber moves down with the water level, eventually hitting the flush valve and closing it, stopping the water from going into the bowl. While the bobber is moving down, it also slowly opens the fill valve, which starts to fill up the tank with water in the meantime. This will slowly lift the bobber up again as the water level increases from the fill valve. Lastly, when the bobber is at its highest point, the fill valve is shut off, and the toilet is ready to be used again!

Whew, that was quite a lot! So then, what happens when a toilet is clogged? This usually happens at the u-shaped tube here, which is where plungers come in handy. By thrusting down onto the pipe, we are creating a very high pressure inside the pipe by pushing a lot of air into it. Water flows from high pressure, which is our pipe, to low pressure, which is the sewage pipe connected to the toilet, so all the water and waste is then pushed out of the toilet pipe. By doing this motion over and over again, we keep changing the pressure to hopefully push the last bit of obstructions out.

And there we have it! It’s fascinating how the toilet is able to work using just a few simple valves and no electricity. Despite it being in almost every living space, it is quite impressive that we are able to engineer something so crucial yet so simple. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#technology #engineering #explained

What Makes Popcorn Kernels Pop (And Some Don’t)? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 6

Zeleon Science 2024-08-28 | A short video explaining the science behind popping popcorn and the science behind why some don't pop! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:04 What makes a popcorn pop?
00:28 What stops a popcorn from popping?

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
nal.usda.gov/exhibits/speccoll/exhibits/show/popcorn/how-does-popcorn-pop-#

Transcript:
Many of us love the sound and smell of popping popcorn, but why do they pop? And why don’t all of them pop? Every kernel contains some moisture inside the hard outer shell, and when heated, they evaporate into steam. Because the kernel is surrounded by a shell, there is nowhere for the steam to go, so they start pushing against the shell to build up a lot of pressure. Until finally, as the heat softens up the shell, the steam bursts through the shell, flipping the soft starch inside out, giving us delicious popcorn! But not all kernels pop according to plan, since if the kernel doesn’t have enough moisture inside, or if there are small cracks on the shell for the steam to escape, a popcorn kernel wouldn’t pop at all. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#popcorn #chemistry #explained

What are Vestigial Organs?

Zeleon Science 2024-08-21 | A short video explaining what vestigial organs are, some examples, and why they are important in the context of studying evolution. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:18 What are vestigial organs?
01:23 Other vestigial organs in us
02:08 Vestigial organs in other animals
02:34 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_406-1
osmosis.org/answers/vestigial-structures
byjus.com/biology/vestigial-organs
amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/evolution-today/how-do-we-know-living-things-are-related/vestigial-organs

Transcript:
Many of us have probably experienced the pain of getting our wisdom teeth or appendix ganked out, but despite being mostly useless, those organs are evidence of evolution left behind from our ancestors millenia ago. So in the video, we will go over what vestigial organs are, why they are important, and some examples in us and other animals.

Vestigial organs are organs that remain in our bodies despite losing most of their functionality. These were a result of millions of years of evolution, after many changes in a species’s behaviour and the environment that they face. As a result, many organs and structures are no longer beneficial for survival, making them just sit there while doing nothing. One common example is the appendix in humans, which is a tube structure at the end of the large intestine. We don’t really know what it did, but the leading theory is that it houses gut bacteria that digests cellulose, the main component of plants, back when we were mainly herbivores. Nowadays, with our diet of meat and other non-plant based meals, there is less of a need for the appendix, since we don’t rely on digesting plant matter anymore, making it more or less a vestigial organ. As of right now, our appendix might serve as a reservoir for our gut microbes in case a disease wipes out our current gut microbes, but it’s still being researched. Unfortunately, the appendix needs to be surgically removed during appendicitis, where the appendix gets infected by viruses and bacteria, causing inflammation and a lot of pain.

There are a lot of other vestigial structures in humans too. Wisdom teeth are the third set of molar teeth responsible for grinding and chewing plant matter, but after we started to cook and soften up the food we eat, we don’t need those powerful molars anymore. We also have vestigial tail bones at the bottom of our spine, left from our ancestral primates. Once they start to walk upright, they don’t need the tail anymore for balance and mobility. But interestingly, it’s not completely degraded since the tailbone is still used as a site for some muscle tendons to attach to. And even more interestingly, we have vestigial reflexes as well. Many of us may get goosebumps and have our hairs stick up when we are stressed, which doesn’t really do anything. But for our ancestors, this is very useful to look bigger and scare off predators.

And of course, some animals have vestigial organs too! Since snakes evolved from lizards, many snakes, such as pythons, still have hind leg bones toward their tails. Similarly, since whales evolved from mammals, they also retain hind leg bones from when their ancestors still needed them to run from predators on land. A cave-dwelling fish in Mexico evolved heightened senses of smell and taste, and since these caves are pitch dark, their eyes started to degenerate, making them completely blind, which doesn’t matter anyways.

And there we have it! Vestigial organs are organs once useful to a species, but have lost most of their functions as the species doesn’t need them anymore. Organs, such as appendix in humans and hind leg bones in snakes, tell us the evolutionary history of such animals. For example, since we found those leg bones in snakes, we were able to conclude that snakes were once lizards, who then lost their legs over millions of years in favour of slithering towards their prey. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#evolution #biology #explained

Is Charging Our Phone Overnight Safe? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 5

Zeleon Science 2024-08-14 | A short video explaining whether it's safe to leave our devices charging overnight! I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:13 The myth of overcharging
00:25 Charge cycles

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
samsung.com/ca/support/mobile-devices/will-charging-your-galaxy-phone-overnight-damage-the-battery
consumer.huawei.com/ph/community/details/Battery-Myths-Does-charging-your-phone-overnight-will-damage-the-Battery/topicId_115832

Transcript:
Many of us leave our phones and laptops charging overnight, but is that safe for our phone batteries? Short answer, yeah, that’s completely fine. Most modern phones have chips that tell them to stop charging when their battery is full, the myth about overcharging stems from older phones that don’t have this technology. The main factor affecting battery life is temperature, as heat over 45 degrees (113 F) will degrade lithium-ion batteries commonly found in most smartphones. Battery life is also determined by the amount of charge cycles, which is your phone’s battery going from 0 to 100 percent. Most smartphone batteries can handle 400 cycles before degrading, so they should last us around a year and a half. So, as long as we don’t overheat our phones when we charge them overnight, such as putting them under pillows, charging our phones overnight doesn’t affect this battery health much. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#tech #chemistry #explained

The Brief History of the Universe in a Calendar

Zeleon Science 2024-08-07 | A short video explaining the brief history of the universe plotted onto a calendar of 434 years per second! I hope that you guys all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:20 January
00:58 January - October
01:37 October - December
02:28 December
03:18 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-sapiens
https://home.cern/science/physics/early-universe
webbtelescope.org/contents/articles/what-were-the-first-stars-like
cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/about/life_on_earth.html
history.com/news/humans-evolution-neanderthals-denisovans
http://palaeos.com/time/cosmic_calendar.html
visav.phys.uvic.ca/~babul/AstroCourses/P303/BB-slide.htm

Transcript:
Us humans have existed on Earth for quite a while, around 300,000 years ago in Africa, but in the grand scheme of the universe, that’s pretty much nothing. So in this video, we will put the entire timeline of the universe into a calendar of 365 days, with each second being 434 years, for a brief history of the universe.

Starting from the beginning, January 1st 0 o’clock marks the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. We don’t know what happened here, but we do know that the universe at this point was very hot and dense, and was rapidly expanding. Within minutes after the Big Bang, protons and neutrons formed and merged together to form nuclei. And after 380,000 years, electrons become trapped in the nucleus orbits, forming the first atoms at 00:14 am on our cosmic calendar. On January 5th, the first stars formed as gravity pulled debris and gas floating around 200-400 million years after the Big Bang. As more and more stars formed, the first galaxies followed in late-January as gravity pulled massive stars together around 1 billion years after the Big Bang.

With an uneventful February of just more stars and galaxies popping up, March is when our Milky Way formed. And with an uneventful April, May, June, and July, our solar system, including our Sun and Earth, formed some time in late-August or early-September, which is still 4.5 billion years ago as we approach that last third of the cosmic calendar. But we would have to wait until mid-September for the first life to form on Earth, which is around 3.5 billion years ago. How did life form on Earth? I will probably cover it in a different video eventually!

And now, the cosmic calendar really picks up, as photosynthesis began around early-October, meaning that oxygen took over our atmosphere by the end of October. This formed the ozone layer in early-November, giving rise to more complex eukaryotes in mid-November. Evolution quickly followed and branched out to multicellular organisms in our oceans around December 5th, which is around 1 billion years ago. On December 19th, life crawled out of the ocean, evolving into insects on the 21st, amphibians on the 22nd, and reptiles on the 23rd. Following the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction on the 24th, dinosaurs started to dominate Earth on the 25th. The first mammals started to emerge on the 26th, and birds on the 27th, and following flowers on the 28th, most of the dinosaurs became extinct on the 30th from the Cretaceous–Paleogene Mass Extinction. This leaves us December 31st, when the first apes appeared 15 million years ago at 6:05 am, the first humans at 10:24 pm, the discovery of fire at 11:44 pm, and the first homo sapiens, our species, at 11:48 pm. This leads to the very last second on the cosmic calendar, with the invention of agriculture at 11:59:32 pm, the invention of the alphabet at 11:59:51 pm, the Iron Age and Trojan War at 11:59:53 pm, the Roman Empire at 11:59:55 pm, the Crusades during the Middle Ages at 11:59:58 pm, the Renaissance at 11:59:59 pm, and lastly, everything that happened within the last 434 years in the last split-second, including the Industrial Revolution, the World Wars, and the existence of you.

And there we have it! First coined by Carl Sagen back in 1977, the cosmic calendar puts us into perspective of how recent we are to set foot into this universe. Our lifespans are just nanoseconds in the grand scheme of things, so let’s try to make the best of our time here on this rock that formed only 4 months ago. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#universe #physics #nature

Why Is It Colder the Higher We Go Despite Being Closer to the Sun? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 4

Zeleon Science 2024-06-05 | A short video explaining how air pressure affects temperature. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:11 Why it is warmer at sea level
00:22 Why it is colder at higher elevations

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
science.howstuffworks.com/nature/climate-weather/atmospheric/question186.htm

Transcript:
Ever wondered why it is colder the higher up we go, despite us being closer to the sun? Air is a pretty good insulator of heat, meaning that they retain heat well. At sea level, there is a lot of air above us, meaning that the air closer to the ground is more tightly packed from being squished by the air above. This means that we have more air molecules insulating the heat from the sun at lower altitudes. In contrast, as we go higher, the air is more spread apart since there is less air above it squishing it down. This means that we have less air insulating the heat the higher up we go. In other words, temperature follows air pressure, so since the air pressure is higher at sea level than at Mt. Everest, the temperature would also be much higher. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#earthscience #physics #explained

How Does Static Electricity Create Lightning?

Zeleon Science 2024-05-29 | A short video explaining how thunderclouds are generated, how static electricity is built up, and how lightning is created! I hope that you guys all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:21 Generation of thunderclouds
01:14 How is static electricity generated?
01:37 How does lightning strike?
02:33 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8938-7_5
https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/storms/how-thunderstorms-form
education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/lightning
https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/storms/thunder-and-lightning

Transcript:
Thunderstorms are pretty scary stuff, smiting down lightning of up to 28,000 degrees (50k F) from clouds onto the ground seemingly out of nowhere. So unsurprisingly, there is a lot of science between the buildup of those clouds to the sound of thunder we hear. In this video, we will go over how thunderclouds are formed, how static electricity is built up inside, and how lightning strikes.

Thunderclouds, also known as cumulonimbus clouds, are grown from small cumulus clouds, which are the common fluffy clouds we see with flat bottoms. In order for thunderclouds to form, we need tons of moisture, warmth, and air movement, hence why thunderstorms are common in the warmer summer and autumn months. As the sun heats up the moist air on the surface, the warmer air rises and starts to create an upwards flow of air, or an updraft. As the air rises high enough, water vapours inside start to condense as it is colder the higher up we go, and form tiny water droplets or ice crystals. And in contrast to an updraft, since colder air sinks, a strong downdraft is generated, which drags the water droplets down to start raining. This combination of air, water vapour, water droplets, and ice crystals creates clouds. Though at this point, we have a massive thundercloud with plenty of moisture, warmth, and air movements.

Zooming into the cloud now, since ice crystals are light and water is heavy, the crystals are carried to the top of the cloud by the updraft and water to the bottom of the cloud by the downdraft. This causes them to rub against each other, which is the recipe for generating static electricity. Just like rubbing a balloon against our hair, the charges in a cloud separate, with the positive charge on top with the ice crystals, and negative charge at the bottom with the water droplets. At this point, three types of lightning can occur, either between clouds, within clouds, or between clouds and the ground, which is surprisingly the least common type. If there is a strong enough separation between the charges, negative charges form a path in the air, called a stepped leader, towards positive charges. Similarly, positive charges can also form a path, called an upward streamer, towards negative charges. The moment these two paths meet, a circuit is completed and an electrical discharge is released, forming lightning. This is why lightning is considered a static electricity, since it’s caused by a difference of charges, instead of moving electrons. In terms of cloud-to-ground lightning, since all the negative charges are at the bottom of clouds, positive charges from the ground below get attracted to the surface, and start forming upward streamers to connect with the clouds’ stepped leaders. The simple reason why taller structures get hit by lightning more is just because there is a shorter path for the upward streamers to reach a complete circuit.

And there we have it! From the accumulation of moist warm air, updrafts and downdrafts are created, forming massive thunderclouds containing tons of ice crystals and water droplets. As they rub against each other, static electricity is built up to release electrical discharges within microseconds as lightning. And because lightning is 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun, the air it struck very rapidly expands and contracts, creating a crisp boom sound we perceive as thunder. Every 5 seconds between a lightning and thunder equates to around 1 mile, so if we hear thunder only 10 seconds after seeing lightning, we should definitely head inside since the lightning is only 2 miles, or around 3 km, away from us. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#lightning #physics #nature

What’s the Difference Between Asteroids, Comets, Meteoroids, and Meteors? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 3

Zeleon Science 2024-05-22 | A short video explaining what the difference between asteroids, comets, meteoroids, meteors, and meteorites are. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:07 Asteroids
00:13 Comets
00:24 Meteoroids
00:31 Meteors
00:42 Meteorites

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
spaceplace.nasa.gov/asteroid-or-meteor/en

Transcript:
Ever wondered what the difference between asteroids, comets, meteoroids, meteors, and meteorites is? Asteroids are huge chunks of rock, which comes from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. They are likely leftovers from the formation of our solar system. Next, we have comets, big chunks of ice and dust coming from the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, which is outside the orbit of Pluto. Sometimes, small chunks of rock or ice break off from asteroids and comets, which we call meteoroids. If those smaller chunks enter the Earth’s atmosphere, then they are considered meteors. As they fly through the air, they start to vapourize, leaving a trail behind and giving them the shooting star illusion despite not actually being stars. And lastly, if they’re lucky enough to survive the impact, a meteor that lands on the Earth’s surface is called a meteorite. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#space #geology #explained

How Does Nuclear Energy Work?

Zeleon Science 2024-05-15 | A short video explaining nuclear fission and fusion, and how we can we use nuclear energy to generate electricity. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:19 Nuclear fission
01:41 Nuclear fusion
02:37 Nuclear power into electricity
03:11 Summary

CORRECTION:
01:35 I wrote 2x instead of 2,000,000x

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/nuclear-energy
chem.libretexts.org/Courses/University_of_Kentucky/UK%3A_CHE_103_-_Chemistry_for_Allied_Health_(Soult)/Chapters/Chapter_10%3A_Nuclear_and_Chemical_Reactions/10.2%3A_Fission_and_Fusion
nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/radwaste.html
www2.lbl.gov/abc/wallchart/chapters/14/1.html
energy.gov/science/doe-explainsnuclear-fusion-reactions
euronuclear.org/glossary/fuel-comparison

Transcript:
Everything is made of atoms, but how are these tiny things able to generate enough energy to power up entire cities? And how are we able to control this energy from blowing up our nuclear plants? In this video, we will go over what nuclear fission is, what nuclear fusion is, and how we harness nuclear energy as electricity.

Let’s go over the method nuclear plants use first, nuclear fission, which is splitting heavier elements into lighter ones. Each atom has a core called the nucleus at its centre, containing protons and neutrons. bonded by a force called the Strong Force. This is where uranium-235 comes in, which is a metal that can be easily split apart. To start nuclear fission, a neutron is fired into the uranium, which then splits into lighter elements, such as krypton-92 and barium-141, along with 3 neutrons and high amounts of heat energy from breaking the Strong Force. Then, the neutrons go on to smash into more uranium atoms to create a chain reaction of neutrons and energy. In order to prevent the chain reaction from turning into a nuclear bomb, nuclear plants have control rods that constantly absorb neutrons out of the reactions, making nuclear energy quite a controlled process. Lastly, the uranium that didn’t undergo fission, and the leftover atoms are disposed of as nuclear waste, as they are very radioactive. They are first cooled in a pool, and then encased in concrete and lead deep underground. And of course, this means that nuclear fission is non-renewable, but it is a clean energy since it doesn’t release carbon in the process. Despite that, it’s a ridiculously powerful source of energy, as 1 kg of uranium can generate 24,000,000 kilowatt hours of heat, which is around 2 million times more than 1 kg of oil or coal!

On the other hand, we can also combine lighter atoms together into heavier ones through nuclear fusion. The fuel used for fusion is deuterium and tritium, hydrogen atoms with one and two extra neutrons. When those two isotopes combine, a helium atom is produced, along with a neutron and a tremendous amount of heat energy. Energy is produced since the new helium atom has less mass than the two starting hydrogen isotopes, so the excess weight is converted into energy as described by Einstein’s famous equation. This reaction generates 4 times more energy than fission reactions, and around 4 million times more energy than burning coal. It is also both renewable and clean, making it the ideal energy source. However, the main downside to fusion reactions is that they need temperatures of around 10,000,000 degrees, which is only possible in stars such as our sun, but we are getting pretty close to figuring out fusion reactors!

So now, how do we get electricity out of the heat energy? We talk more about how electricity is generated in this video, but in short, in order to generate an electrical current, we need to spin a magnet inside a metal coil. As the heat generated by nuclear reactors heats up water around the fission reaction, a huge amount of steam is generated, which is the white smoke coming out of nuclear plants. Then, the steam turns the turbine blades, which spin magnets to produce enough electricity to supply 10% of the world’s energy consumption. Fortunately, the steam is harmless and recycled back into the atmosphere as just water vapour.

And there we have it! Fission is used to split atoms apart to release the energy that holds them together, while fusion is used to combine atoms to release energy as the product has a lower mass. Either way, the heat generated is used to convert water into steam, turning turbines to generate electricity without releasing greenhouse gasses. Despite the popularity of using other sources of clean energy, nuclear energy is able to provide us more energy than we will ever imagine.

#chemistry #nuclear #explained

How Do Disinfectants Kill Bacteria? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 2

Zeleon Science 2024-05-08 | A short video explaining how disinfectant sprays are able to kill pathogens when we clean. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:04 How does biocides kill pathogens?
00:21 Why do we need soap?
00:37 Cycle of "cleaning"

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
doi.org/10.1128%2Fcmr.12.1.147
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK574540

Transcript:
Ever wondered how a cleaning spray gets rid of bacteria and viruses? Here’s how! Disinfectants are composed of chemicals called biocides, which includes alcohol and chlorine. Those chemicals break down the outer layers of pathogens, as well as destroy protein spikes on viruses. When the outer layers are destroyed, the insides of the pathogen leaks out, rendering them inactive. However, disinfectants don’t outright kill the pathogens, nor do they keep rid of them, so soap is needed to envelop the inactive pathogens to be rinsed away. Though before applying disinfectants, a surface should also be cleaned with soap to get rid of dirt sheltering the pathogen from the chemicals. This forms a cycle as the next time we clean, the dead pathogens are rinsed away with soap, allowing us to get rid of the newly formed pathogens with disinfectant. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#biology #cleaning #explained

How do Plants Talk to Each Other?

Zeleon Science 2024-05-02 | A short video explaining how plants communicate each other via chemicals, roots, and sound. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:16 How do plants communicate using chemicals?
01:16 How do plants communicate using roots?
02:07 How do plants communicate using sound?
02:49 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41589-9
doi.org/10.3390/ijms140917781
nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/the-rhizosphere-roots-soil-and-67500617
kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2022.658692
prairieecologist.com/tag/plant-defense

Transcript:
Part of the reason why we are able to grow crops to feed the entire world is thanks to fertilizers, which are essentially just food for the plants. But how do they work? And are they even good for the environment? In this video, we will go over why plants need fertilizers, different types of fertilizers, and their environmental impacts.

Plants, like all living organisms, need a few crucial elements to survive, which are hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and potassium. Hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen are readily available from water and air, but plants can’t produce nitrogen, phosphorus, nor potassium by themselves, hence why almost all fertilizers contain those three crucial elements. Nitrogen is needed in chlorophyll, which is responsible for photosynthesis, phosphorus makes up the backbone of DNA, and potassium is needed in metabolism and root growth. Plants can survive without fertilizers because there are many microorganisms in the soil that fix those elements into a form that plants can absorb using their roots. However, in order to keep up with feeding the human population, we need fertilizers to supply the sheer amount of those elements needed that the bacteria can’t supply. Without them, we would only be able to produce enough food for half the world’s population.

Through a technique called the Haber-Bosch process, we are able to convert the nitrogen gas into a product called urea ammonium nitrate, which is the basis for nitrogen-based fertilizers. This synthetic fertilizer can be absorbed quickly by plants, but can chemically burn the plant roots if applied improperly. On the other hand, organic fertilizers are more expensive and made from dead carbon matter such as compost and poop, which gets taken up slowly by plants. However, organic fertilizers are crucial for soil health, since they make sure that the microorganisms in the soil are well fed. A healthy microbiome in the soil leads to a healthier plant, so providing organic fertilizers is just as important.

So now, here’s the bigger question, are fertilizers bad for the environment? Short answer, yes, but it’s getting a lot better. While organic fertilizers aren’t harmful to the environment, 1-2% of global CO2 emissions are produced from the energy needed to make synthetic fertilizers. Crops only take up about half the fertilizer supplied, meaning that the rest of it is either taken up by microorganisms and converted into nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, or ends up as runoff into rivers. As the excess nitrate gets washed into the river and ocean, it causes algae blooms, which block out sunlight and take up a lot of oxygen, suffocating many marine species. Furthermore, the runoff is toxic, killing many fishes and contaminating our drinking water. However, on the bright side, we are getting better at using fertilizers. More factories are switching to renewable energy sources to produce fertilizers, and new techniques of applying them are being developed. This includes using fertilizers that apply slowly, adjusting when they are applied, and using monitoring systems to detect when crops actually need those nutrients. This will help make farms more sustainable while not cutting into crop yields.

And there we have it! Fertilizers are essentially just mixes of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium that serve as food for the plants. By either converting nitrogen gas or using organic compost, we are able to feed a lot more people in the world. Despite the toxicity of nitrogen in synthetic fertilizers, we are getting a lot better at using them sustainably without threatening our food supplies. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#environment #biology #explained

Why Do Golf Balls Have Dimples? || Zeleon Answers Ep. 1

Zeleon Science 2024-04-16 | A short video explaining why golf balls have dimples, including different kinds of drag and what effects dimples have. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:07 Different types of drag
00:25 Drag of a smooth ball
00:30 Drag of a dimpled ball

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
My lecture notes from BIOL 325 at the University of British Columbia lol

Transcript:
Ever wondered why golf balls have dimples? Here’s why! As an object flies through the air, there are two forces slowing it down, friction drag and pressure drag. Friction drag is the air pushing the object back as it flies against it, the drag that many of us are thinking of. Pressure drag is the low pressure created by the air flowing behind the object, which creates a small vacuum, sucking the object back and slowing it down. In a smooth ball, there’s some friction drag, but lots of pressure drag. In a dimpled ball, there’s more friction drag due to a higher surface area, but way less pressure drag, as the air flows closer around the ball, creating a smaller area of lower pressure. Turns out that despite the higher friction drag, a dimpled ball is able to travel twice as far, which is perfect for golfing! Thank you for your time and stay hydrated!

#physics #golf #explained

How Do Fertilizers Work? Why Are They Harmful?

Zeleon Science 2024-04-11 | A short video explaining what fertilizers are, why they are needed, the different types of fertilizers, and whether or nor they are bad for the environment. I hope that you guys all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:19 Why do plants need fertilizers?
01:12 The different types of fertilizers
01:53 Are fertilizers bad for the environment?
02:59 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
https://climate.mit.edu/explainers/fertilizer-and-climate-change
https://www.ndsu.edu/agriculture/sites/default/files/2022-08/nm1281_0.pdf
https://extension.oregonstate.edu/news/heres-scoop-chemical-organic-fertilizers
kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2020.00063
home.howstuffworks.com/question181.htm
https://extension.umn.edu/yard-and-garden-news/ask-extension-do-fertilizers-help-or-hurt-plants

Transcript:
Part of the reason why we are able to grow crops to feed the entire world is thanks to fertilizers, which are essentially just food for the plants. But how do they work? And are they even good for the environment? In this video, we will go over why plants need fertilizers, different types of fertilizers, and their environmental impacts.

Plants, like all living organisms, need a few crucial elements to survive, which are hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and potassium. Hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen are readily available from water and air, but plants can’t produce nitrogen, phosphorus, nor potassium by themselves, hence why almost all fertilizers contain those three crucial elements. Nitrogen is needed in chlorophyll, which is responsible for photosynthesis, phosphorus makes up the backbone of DNA, and potassium is needed in metabolism and root growth. Plants can survive without fertilizers because there are many microorganisms in the soil that fix those elements into a form that plants can absorb using their roots. However, in order to keep up with feeding the human population, we need fertilizers to supply the sheer amount of those elements needed that the bacteria can’t supply. Without them, we would only be able to produce enough food for half the world’s population.

Through a technique called the Haber-Bosch process, we are able to convert the nitrogen gas into a product called urea ammonium nitrate, which is the basis for nitrogen-based fertilizers. This synthetic fertilizer can be absorbed quickly by plants, but can chemically burn the plant roots if applied improperly. On the other hand, organic fertilizers are more expensive and made from dead carbon matter such as compost and poop, which gets taken up slowly by plants. However, organic fertilizers are crucial for soil health, since they make sure that the microorganisms in the soil are well fed. A healthy microbiome in the soil leads to a healthier plant, so providing organic fertilizers is just as important.

So now, here’s the bigger question, are fertilizers bad for the environment? Short answer, yes, but it’s getting a lot better. While organic fertilizers aren’t harmful to the environment, 1-2% of global CO2 emissions are produced from the energy needed to make synthetic fertilizers. Crops only take up about half the fertilizer supplied, meaning that the rest of it is either taken up by microorganisms and converted into nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, or ends up as runoff into rivers. As the excess nitrate gets washed into the river and ocean, it causes algae blooms, which block out sunlight and take up a lot of oxygen, suffocating many marine species. Furthermore, the runoff is toxic, killing many fishes and contaminating our drinking water. However, on the bright side, we are getting better at using fertilizers. More factories are switching to renewable energy sources to produce fertilizers, and new techniques of applying them are being developed. This includes using fertilizers that apply slowly, adjusting when they are applied, and using monitoring systems to detect when crops actually need those nutrients. This will help make farms more sustainable while not cutting into crop yields.

And there we have it! Fertilizers are essentially just mixes of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium that serve as food for the plants. By either converting nitrogen gas or using organic compost, we are able to feed a lot more people in the world. Despite the toxicity of nitrogen in synthetic fertilizers, we are getting a lot better at using them sustainably without threatening our food supplies. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#environment #biology #explained

What is Glass Made of?

Zeleon Science 2024-03-20 | A short video explaining what glass is, including its chemical structure, why it is transparent, and its properties. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:19 Chemical structure of glass
01:03 Transparency of glass
01:42 Properties of glass
02:51 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
livescience.com/chemistry/is-glass-a-liquid-or-a-solid
explainthatstuff.com/glass.html
scienceabc.com/innovation/how-is-glass-made.html
glazingrefurbishments.co.uk/blog/why-does-glass-break
gharpedia.com/blog/characteristics-properties-glass-building-material
youtube.com/watch?v=VwRLIt6jgdM

Transcript:
From the screen you are watching this from, to the display shelves of jewelry stores, glass is used everywhere. So then, how does something as ordinary as sand transform into one of the most widely used materials for us humans? In this video, we will go over the chemical structure of glass, why it is transparent, and the interesting properties that glass has.

Despite being see-through, the state of matter of glass isn’t exactly clear. Heh. Glass is actually somewhere between a liquid and solid, called an amorphous solid. It is made from heating sand up to 1,500 degrees (2,700 F), which is made of mainly quartz, or silicon dioxide, and then cooled into different shapes as part of the glassmaking process. As the silicon dioxide melts into a liquid, those molecules become flow-y, but when they are cooled again, instead of becoming orderly and rigid like in a regular solid, they actually connect at random angles in an irregular pattern. This weird arrangement is what makes glass an amorphous solid, it is definitely solid, but its molecules aren’t exactly orderly.

As we might imagine, this arrangement of silicon dioxide is what makes glass transparent. To understand why that is, let’s talk about why everything else isn’t transparent. Every atom has electrons orbiting its nucleus, and instead of orbiting in a neat line, the electrons orbit at different energy levels. When these electrons are hit by light, or photons, they will jump to the next energy level, absorbing the photon in the process. This is why most objects are not transparent, since their electrons prevent the light from passing through the atoms. However, in the case of glass molecules, because of their specific arrangement, the electron energy levels are very spread out. Meaning that the electrons need a lot more energy from the photons to jump levels, making the photons pass right through them instead, and therefore making glass transparent.

Aside from being transparent, there are many properties that make glass an excellent building material. Glass is an excellent insulator, meaning that it retains heat well, making it an ideal material for windows to keep the heat in. It’s also inert, meaning that it doesn’t react with anything because of how stable silicon dioxide is. This makes glass great as a packing material since there wouldn’t be harmful chemicals getting into the food, and great as equipment for science, since glass beakers are able to contain many dangerous chemicals. By altering the glassmaking process, we can make different types of glass as well. Annealed glass is cheap to make and versatile, making it great for glass tables or cabinet doors. Tempered glass is much tougher and more heat resistant, making it great for glass doors and car windows where safety is a bigger concern. And by integrating plastic vinyl layers, we have laminated glass, which is even stronger and safer than tempered glass at the cost of less transparency, making it great for windshields or skylights, which are glass roofs.

And there we have it! Glass is essentially an irregular arrangement of silicon dioxide, making them a unique amphorous solid. Because of this pattern, it is transparent since light isn’t able to interact with the electrons in glass molecules, giving them quite an impressive array of properties. Through countless applications in architecture, vehicles, and day-to-day life, glass is one of the most important materials that we have manufactured. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#chemistry #glass #explained

Does Lightning Create Antimatter?

Zeleon Science 2024-03-11 | A short video explaining how lightning and antimatter work, and how lightning is able to create antimatter on Earth! I hope that you guys all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:16 What is lightning?
01:02 What is antimatter?
01:58 How does lightning create antimatter?
02:38 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
doi.org/10.1038/s42005-019-0168-y
doi.org/10.1038/nature24630
canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/lightning/science/how-lightning-works.html
https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/storms/thunder-and-lightning
https://home.cern/science/physics/matter-antimatter-asymmetry-problem
energy.gov/science/doe-explainsantimatter
science.nasa.gov/universe/whats-made-in-a-thunderstorm-and-faster-than-lightning-gamma-rays

Transcript:
Antimatter sounds like works of fiction, but surprisingly, the Earth has the right tools to make them using something as common as lightning! In this video, we will briefly go over what lightning is, what antimatter is, and how it is possible to create antimatter using lightning.

As water evaporates, the water vapour rises into the sky, which then cools into water droplets or ice crystals at high altitudes, forming clouds. Within the clouds, dust, ice crystals, and water droplets rub against each other from the strong winds, separating the positive and negative charges. The negative charges are usually at the bottom of clouds, while positive charges stay near the up. Since opposite charges attract, as the two charges build up, an electrical discharge may leap between them. This is what lightning is, pretty much static electricity at a very large scale. Most lightning occurs within or in between clouds, but as the negative charges at the bottom build up, the positive charges in the ground below also get attracted, causing a cloud-ground lightning strike that we often see.

And now, on a very unrelated note, let’s talk about antimatter. Antiparticles have the same mass as regular particles, but just an opposite charge. So the antiparticle of a proton has a negative charge, while the antiparticle of an electron, or positron, has a positive charge. A neutral particle like the neutron still has no charge, an antineutron just has opposite charges in its composition. These combined together form antimatter just like regular matter, so two antiprotons, two antineutrons, and two positrons form an antihelium. When regular matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate each other, or get rid of each other, as they convert into energy in the forms of gamma radiation. And vice versa, we can just convert enough energy into antimatter by smashing particles very fast in a particle accelerator. We are able to convert between energy and mass as described by the famous E = MC squared.

And finally, how does lightning create antimatter? Because lightning carries so much energy, it can rush electrons near the speed of light, creating a natural particle accelerator. As this accelerated electron smashes into an air molecule, they emit quick bursts of gamma rays called terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. This intense flash of gamma rays is able to force nitrogen molecules to release positrons, which then immediately annihilates to create more gamma rays. Those rays are only known to be emitted under extreme conditions, such as in black holes and supernovae, so not only can lightning create antimatter, it is mind-boggling to how nature can just create gamma rays on Earth too..

And there we have it! As the charges in a thundercloud separate, electrical discharges are formed between them, causing lightning. As nature’s original particle accelerator, antimatter is created by the gamma rays produced by the sheer amount of energy present in those thunderclouds. Antimatter is theorized to behave just like regular matter with the opposite charges, and they will annihilate regular matter upon contact, releasing gamma rays in the process. The explanations for lightning and antimatter are kept quite brief, and I left out a lot of the nuisances associated with those topics, so I will most likely do separate videos on each of them. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#lightning #physics #nature

Do Plants Have Senses Like We Do?

Zeleon Science 2024-03-05 | A short video explaining how plants are able to sense light, gravity, touch, and temperature. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:21 How do plants sense light?
01:06 How do plants sense gravity?
01:33 How do plants sense touch?
02:05 How do plants sense temperature?
02:31 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
doi.org/10.3390%2Fs18124365
doi.org/10.1038/s41526-020-00130-8
khanacademy.org/science/biology/plant-biology/plant-responses-to-light-cues/a/phototropism-photoperiodism
https://pressbooks-dev.oer.hawaii.edu/biology/chapter/plant-sensory-systems-and-responses/

Transcript:
Us humans have five main senses that help us navigate through the world and survive, with some other animals having more or less. Interestingly, this extends to plants too, who need senses as well to understand everything around them. So in this video, we will go over some of the senses that plants have including light, gravity, touch, and temperature.

Starting with phototropins, which are photoreceptors that detect light. Upon sensing a light source, the phototropins trigger a process called phototropism, which allows plants to grow towards or away from light. They achieve this by activating growth hormones called auxins, which promotes cell elongation to control the direction the plant grows and bends in. On top of light intensity, some plants also rely on the duration of light to determine when they flower. For example, rice is a short-day plant, meaning that it will only flower when the day is short, while spinach is a long-day plant, meaning that it will only flower when the day is long. This process is called photoperiodism, and it also regulates a plant’s circadian rhythm.

Aside from light, plants need to detect gravity to know which direction to grow upwards in. At the tips of plant roots, they contain organelles called amyloplasts, which contain a rich amount of starch. As the amyloplasts settle to the bottom of the roots due to gravity, they trigger auxin to move to the opposite direction, which is against gravity and direct the plant to grow upwards. This is especially useful for seeds buried in the soil to know exactly where up is despite having no source of light.

Some plants can sense touch too, with the use of mechanoreceptors often in the form of fine hairs. Once enough pressure has been felt, they will trigger a response in the plant. A classic example is the venus flytrap, once an insect triggers enough of the mechanoreceptors inside the plant’s mouth, it’ll quickly shut close, trapping the meal. Mechanoreceptors in the form of tendrils are crucial for vines and other creeping plants too, as once a branch is felt, the pressure sensors in the tendrils are triggered, directing auxins to make the plant grow around the branch.

Lastly, plants need to sense temperature in order to figure out whether it is summer or winter, so a gene called Phytochrome B does just that. This gene makes proteins to detect red light through a pretty complicated process, which then allows the plant to respond to different temperatures. This is quite important since temperature determines when a plant flowers, the shape of its leaves, when to prevent heat shocks, and much more.

And there we have it! Despite lacking a brain, plants are still able to sense the world through their, well, senses. Using phototropins for light, amyloplasts for gravity, sensory hairs or tendrils for pressure, or phytochrome B for temperature, plants are able to navigate through the world just like we do. However, one crucial sense I glossed over is their chemical sense, which is how they primarily communicate, but plant communication is a whole different video I plan to cover in the future. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#plants #biology #nature

What are Prion Diseases?

Zeleon Science 2024-02-26 | A short video explaining what prions are, how they work, and should we be worried about them. I hope that y'all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:18 What are prions?
01:04 How do prions work?
02:02 Should we be worried about prions?
02:27 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
doi.org/10.1186%2Fs40249-016-0143-8
doi.org/10.1038%2Fnrm3007
doi.org/10.1042%2Fbse0560181
niaid.nih.gov/diseases-conditions/prion-diseases
canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/prion-diseases.html
mcgill.ca/oss/article/health-you-asked/what-are-prions

Transcript:
Prions are one of the most deadly and fascinating pathogens that we know of, capable of a 100% fatality rate while defying our understanding of what a protein is. In this video, we will go over what proteins and prions are, how are prions so deadly, and whether or not we should worry about them.

The word prion derives from “proteinaceous infectious particle,” which as the term suggests, is an infectious protein. Proteins are molecules in our bodies that make us function, from helping us digest food to fighting off pathogens. The way these molecules fold determines their shape, and their shape determines their function, so for example, a protein responsible for contracting our muscles may look like this, while a protein responsible for breaking down sugar may look like this. However, in the case of prions, they are completely misfolded, sort of like a rogue protein with a weird shape. Prions are infectious agents that cause diseases mostly in mammals, usually in the brain and nervous system. These diseases are transmissible, untreatable, and more or less 100% fatal, so pretty scary stuff.

So then, how do they work? Unlike other pathogens such as bacteria and viruses, prions do not contain any genetic information, since they are just misfolded proteins. Hence why we don’t really have a cure, as antibiotics and medicine that targets DNA wouldn’t really work. Furthermore, prions are very resistant to high temperatures and ultraviolet radiation, which would usually break apart proteins. According to the prion hypothesis, these proteins are able to reproduce by converting normal proteins into their misfolded shape, causing a domino effect that eventually takes over the entire brain. This transformation is called “spongiosis,” where the brain tissue starts to resemble a sponge, with many tiny holes. One common disease associated with prions is the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which leads to a rapid loss in brain function and mental capability, which eventually leads to death. A more recognizable disease is the Mad Cow Diseases, an outbreak in the 1990s caused by prions in cows.

Alright, that’s enough fearmongering, should we worry about prions? No, not really. It is transmitted mainly through eating contaminated meat, but also sometimes inherited. But, it is not spread through social interactions nor is it airborne, unlike many of the viruses that we are used to. Despite the lack of a cure, prion diseases only affect 1 to 2 people per million globally every year. So we honestly have a higher chance to get struck by lightning than to contract a prion disease.

And there we have it, prion diseases are extremely rare, where misfolded proteins get into our brains and cause other healthy proteins to misfold as well. Despite being a fatal disease, studying prions is helping us understand the structure of proteins, and with a bit more research, a cure wouldn’t be too far fetched either. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#magnet #biology #animals

How Do We Turn Food into Renewable Energy?

Zeleon Science 2024-02-16 | A short video explaining what biofuel is, how it is made, and some of its shortcomings. I hope that you guys all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:21 What is biofuel made from?
01:17 How is biofuel made and where do we use it?
02:14 Shortcomings of biofuels
02:53 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
mdpi.com/2227-9717/10/7/1358#
doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2020.00359
doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2013.10.071
nap.nationalacademies.org/read/2131/chapter/5
nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/phytoremediation-17359669

Transcript:
Us humans have been using biofuel for millenia, as we have burned wood to cook food ever since we’ve discovered how to make fire. So now in the modern times, how have we been using this valuable renewable energy to power up our civilizations? In this video, we will go over what biofuel is made from, how and where to use it, and its drawbacks.

Biofuel is fuel produced from organic sources, or biomass, and those fuel sources are called feedstocks. Since it is a fuel source, wouldn’t it still produce carbon dioxide when we burn it? Yes, but biofuel is carbon neutral. Since the feedstock we use soaks in carbon dioxide to grow, we don’t end up producing any more carbon dioxide when we burn biofuel, unlike fossil fuels. Furthermore, this energy source is renewable, unlike fossil fuel, which cannot be replenished once used up. Food-related resources with high amounts of sugar and starch, such as corn, wheat, and sugarcane, are all great feedstocks. We can also use non food-related resources, such as leftovers from harvesting crops, cooking oil, fat, and animal wastes. Lastly, algae is a major player in biofuel as well, since they soak up a lot of carbon dioxide to grow and don't need a lot of farmland, and they contain pockets of fat used to keep them afloat.

With all those different feedstocks, we can generate biofuel in different ways for different purposes. Feedstock high in sugar is usually converted into ethanol through fermentation with the help of yeast, which is then mixed with gasoline as a transportation fuel. And speaking of transportation, we can make biodiesel from oils and fats through a process called transesterification, where they are mixed with an alcohol and catalysts to speed up the reaction. The biodiesel is then mixed into petroleum diesel to power diesel engines, which are mostly found in trucks and farming equipment. Furthermore, with the help of microbes, we can convert food scraps and other waste into biogas in a controlled environment, which is a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide. We then put them in biogas engines, powering generators to create electricity. This is a great source since by converting waste materials into biofuel, we also get rid of pathogens existing in those materials, as well as the odour that comes with it.

However, biofuel has quite a lot of shortcomings as well. Since we are using many plants as feedstock, we would need to increase land, water, and fertilizer use to keep up with biofuel production, which is strenuous on our environment. This agriculture activity may also increase greenhouse emissions if we are not careful. In addition, despite being such a prospective renewable energy source, only 4% of the fuel used in transportation is biofuel, as they are mainly used in mixtures of petroleum, instead of by themselves. New and more efficient technology is still needed to push this energy source into commercial production to make this renewable energy source more viable.

And there we have it! By using the waste products and inedible parts of plants, we are able to convert this renewable source of carbon into biofuel to generate energy. By mixing this fuel with preexisting gasoline and turning biofuel generators to produce electricity, biofuel is making a great impression as another replacement for fossil fuel. However, despite its many shortcomings of potentially more pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, newer technologies are being developed to make biofuel a much more viable source of renewable energy. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#environment #biology #explained

What are Superconductors?

Zeleon Science 2024-02-08 | A short video explaining what superconductors are, how they work, and their applications. I hope that you guys all learned something new from this video :)

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:17 What are superconductors?
00:50 How do superconductors work?
01:42 Applications of superconductors
02:37 Summary

Music: youtube.com/watch?v=Wc72E1j9RRY
Song title: K/DA Beats for Lo-fi Legends
Artist: Legends of Runeterra
Courtesy of Riot Games: leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/community/riot-music-creator-safe-guidelines

Sources:
physicsclassroom.com/class/circuits/Lesson-3/Resistance
energy.gov/science/doe-explainssuperconductivity
livescience.com/superconductor
doitpoms.ac.uk/tlplib/superconductivity/cooper.php
science.org/content/article/spectacular-superconductor-claim-making-news-here-s-why-experts-are-doubtful (Image)

Transcript:
From metal to sea water, nature is filled with electrical conductors. However, we are able to push their limits to the extreme to defy physics, making fascinating materials known as superconductors. In this video, we will go over what they are, how they work, and some of their applications.

In a plain old conductor, say a copper wire at room temperature, there is plenty of resistance that hinders the flow of electrons, or electricity. As the electrons wiz through the wire, they climb from atom to atom, bumping into their nuclei in the process. As they collide, electrical energy is lost and heat is generated, which is essentially what resistance is. But in the case of superconductors, an electric current has no resistance, so no energy is lost. If we send a current through a superconductor, and disconnect the power source, this current would circulate there forever.

So then, how do we make a superconductor? So far, the most reliable way is to cool a metallic material down to an extremely low temperature, say 4 kelvins (-269 C -452 F), that’s literally 4 degrees above absolute zero. For example, to make mercury into a superconductor, we need to cool it to 4.19 kelvins, but if its temperature reaches 4.2 kelvins, it becomes a regular conductor. This temperature where superconducting materials transition is called the critical temperature (T_c), and as they transition, they expel the magnetic fields inside it, causing the entire material to repel other magnetic fields through a process called the Meissner Effect. Zooming into the material, Cooper pairs form between electrons pairs, connecting them together despite being opposite charges. Under this state, the electrons are able to flow through the superconductor perfectly without bumping into any other atoms, effectively nullifying resistance.

Those materials sound neat and all, but where would we even use them? Going back to the Meissner Effect, since superconductors can repel magnetic fields, it is able to make other metals levitate, hence why we often see pictures like this when we search up superconductors. This is practical for maglev trains that levitate above their tracks or particle accelerators to ignore friction. Another use for superconductors is in machines, such as MRI machines that perform brain scans, that need to generate strong magnetic fields without melting the equipment, since this process can easily create a lot of resistance and heat. Though all of this may sound impractical since superconductors can only be made in very low temperatures, copper-oxide materials have been created that exhibit superconductivity in temperatures as high as 77 kelvins (-196 C -321 F), which can easily be chilled by liquid nitrogen. We called those materials the creatively named high-temperature superconductors.

And there we have it! Superconductors are special materials that allow electricity to flow with zero resistance as they pair up electrons in super low temperatures, forcing them to not bump into any atoms on their way through the material. And with the ability to repel magnetic fields, superconductors find themselves in many different applications, which are still being expanded on today. I hope that y’all have learned something interesting today, thank you for your time, and stay hydrated!

#conductor #physics #explained