Kunkel,+Caitlyn

I read about how they are making synthetic skin to feel as human skin does. I knew that they were trying to create synthetic skin for conventional use. I also knew that they were trying to make robots to be more human like. I already knew that scientists are able to make things extremely small and sensitive. I did not know that the synthetic skin used air to sense pressure. I did not know that the largest area of this fake skin is only 7sq.cm. I also did not know that the process for creating this skin is actually quite simple. This article was very interesting and made me realize that, as cheesy as it sounds, we could be a few steps away from creating androids.

Caitlyn,

I'm glad the article made you think. Androids maybe something you see in your lifetime? Good post. 5 stars. MW

I didn't know that you can perform distillation without using a flame. I found this interesting because the demo we saw only showed the distillation process with a naked flame. This came as a surprise to me because I didn't realize you could use water for this process. Also, Industrial distillation is very relevant to our class because it gives us a better idea of how complicated this process can be. This was interesting to me because this kind of distillation is done on a massive scale and if it were to stop for some reason, that could be the end of this country as we know it.

Caitlyn, Good points! Water holds its heat very well and crude oil is of vital interest to our lifestyle. 5 stars! MW

Something I already knew was that a beam of light that, when it is broken, can trigger a response is a popular motion detection method. I also knew that vision is created by pulses of photons. I already knew that anything warmblooded gives off infrared radiation. Something I didn't know was that Einstein won the Nobel Prize for his work on the Photoelectric Effect in 1921. I also didn't know how valuable infrared radiation is in nature (the rattlesnake example). Something not pinpointed in the article that I just realized now is that all scientific breakthroughs and studies are based off of our observations in nature. If a bat didn't use echolocation, how would half of the stuff we have today even be created? It's mind blowing the way that humans have adapted to such miniscule yet important features of nature and to be able to manipulate these things? Crazy stuff.

Caitlyn, Good post! I like your reference to science imitating nature - a lot of things have come from those close observations. 5 stars! MW