All About Coal

How is coal produced? Coal comes from peat, made from partly decayed plant and mineral matter. This gets compressed and otherwise transformed to form coal - a process known as "coalification".

The Most Interesting House in London

The most interesting house in London was, according to the mathematically educated novelist Sir Walter Besant (who studied at Christ's College Cambridge, and published several books on London), a medieval palace called Baynard's Castle. The house became the London base of the House of York during the Wars of the Roses. It was reconstructed by Henry VII as a royal palace.

James Webb Space Telescope Historic Launch

Not since Hubble has a space telescope created so much excitement. The James Webb space telescope went up into space on 25 December 2021 carried by an Ariane 5 rocket in Kourou, French Guiana (a land almost 99% covered in rainforest. and at 83.534 square kilometres, is the largest outermost region of the EU). The strategy to build a space base in French Guiana was the idea of Charles de Gaulle, President of France from 1959 to 1969, partly to stimulate economic growth in the region.

What is a dichroic material?

 A dichroic material causes visible light to be split up into different wavelengths, that manifest as colours.

Bill Gilbert on Magnetism (De Magnete)

William Gilbert was an English physicist and physician (for a few years he was the physician of Elizabeth I) and also a natural philosopher.  In 1600 he published a book on magnets called De Magnete. He was born in the historic English market town of Colchester in Essex and studied medicine at St John's College, Cambridge.  His experiments concluded that the Earth is magnetic and this was the reason compasses point North and he further argued that iron was at the centre of the Earth. Francis Bacon, philosopher and former Lord Chancellor, attacked Gilbert's conclusions on magnets arguing he had "built a ship out of a shell".

What is RTPCR?

RTPCR stands for Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction. 

The RT part which refers to "reverse transcription" of RNA to DNA is used to quantify viral RNA in research and clinical settings.

The PCR technique is all about "amplifying" a DNA sample (using an enzyme called DNA polymerase) so as to create a large enough quantity to study it in detail. It was invented in 1983 by an American biochemist called Kary Mullis, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993.

"Amplifying" DNA samples is also of use in forensics and study of ancient DNA (aDNA) samples.

Mount Kilimanjaro

Mount Kilimanjaro (henceforth MK) is a dormant volcano in Tanzania. It is the tallest mountain in Africa at a height of 5,895m above sea level. At one point it was part of German East Africa (Deutsch Ostafrika). MK lies in Kilimanjaro National Park. The name Tanzania came from the two states that formed it, Tanganyika and Zanzibar. It is geographically south of Uganda.