ScienceIQ.com

The Devil's In The Details

Did you ever make a mistake converting English numbers to metric numbers? Let's hope that your mistake didn't cost anyone $125 million dollars. That's what happened to NASA. The Mars Climate Orbiter's mission to study Martian weather and climate was a part of NASA's faster-better-cheaper philosophy of the 1990s. On September 23, 1999, after firing ...

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TheDevilsInTheDetails
Astronomy

Catch A Shooting Star

A meteor, sometimes called a 'shooting star,' can be the brightest object in the night sky, yet meteoroids are the smallest bodies in the solar system that can be observed by eye. Wandering through ... Continue reading

ShootingStar
Physics

Earth's Magnetism

Most ancient civilizations were aware of the magnetic phenomenon. Sailors in the late thirteenth century used magnetized needles floating in water as primitive compasses to find their way on the sea. ... Continue reading

EarthsMagnetism
Biology

Cloning and Ethics

Cloning technology today is far from perfect: it requires many attempts and only 1%, if any, of the cloned eggs become embryos and then survive. For example, the first cloned sheep, Dolly, was ... Continue reading

CloningandEthics
Biology

Who Moved My Moldy Cheese?

There are few things less appetizing than a fuzzy, moldy piece of cheese. However, one of the most popular cheeses, Blue Cheese and its varieties, the French Roquefort, the English Stilton and the ... Continue reading

MoldyCheese

How To Calculate The Volume Of A Right Cone

VolumeOfARight ConeCones are used every day for a variety of purposes. Perhaps the most useful application of the cone shape is as a funnel. For finding the volume, a cone is best viewed as a stack of circles, each one smaller than the one before, until the last is no more than a point on the line that passes through the center of each circle throughout the length of the cone. For a cylinder, the volume is given by a formula that multiplies the area of a circle by the height of the cylinder. A cone is just a cylinder that tapers, and the averaging formula applies to it just as well because of its regular shape. In a cylinder, the average of the area at both ends and at the center of the cylinder, multiplied by the height of the cylinder provides the volume of the cylinder. When the same calculation has been carried out for a right cone, the volume is given by the general equation V = (1/3)pr2h, where r is the radius of the base, and h is the vertical height of the cone.

As an example of how to use this equation, suppose you wish to construct a feed hopper in your chicken barn. You need it to be 2 feet in diameter and it must hold an entire bag of chicken feed, 3 cubic feet. So you need to know how long the cone-shaped hopper must be. The radius is 1 foot, and the volume is 3 cubic feet. To find the height of the cone, rearrange the volume equation and substitute these known values (use p = 3.14)

V = (1/3)pr2h, = (1/3) X 3.14 X 1 X 1 X h, therefore, h = (3 X V) / (3.14 X 1 X 1), = (3 X 3) / 3.14, = 9 / 3.14, = 2.86. So if you make the hopper 3 feet high, it will be more than big enough.