iamencyclopedia

  How is Cocaine Made? Ever ask yourself “How is Cocaine made?” Its the most prevalent drug after marijuana, yet few people understand where it comes from.  As a Miami criminal defense attorney, I represent people accused of a variety of cocaine crimes ranging from possession of cocaine to trafficking cocaine. It is widely known that cocaine comes from the coca plant which is native to South America. Tropical plant grows many leaves that are similar in appearance to ficus plant leaves. To make one kilo of cocaine, coca farmers need to harvest 1000 kilos of coca leaves. Once the plant is harvested, the leaves are removed and spread out under the sun. Allowing the leaves to bake in the sun for about a half to a full day causes them to dry out somewhat.  This is where how cocaine is made gets interesting. Once the leaves are sufficiently dried, they are spread out on a tarp and minced up with a weed-whacker. After the leaves have been minced, a small amount of cement powder is sprinkled o

  Does sound travel faster in space? Sound does not travel at all in space. The vacuum of outer space has essentially zero air. Because sound is just vibrating air, space has no air to vibrate and therefore no sound. If you are sitting in a space ship and another space ship explodes, you would hear nothing. Exploding bombs, crashing asteroids, supernovas, and burning planets would similarly be silent in space. In a space ship, you could of course hear the other passengers because your ship is filled with air. Additionally, a living human will always be able to hear himself talk, breath, and circulate blood, because the air in his space suit which sustains his life also transmits sound. But two astronauts in space suits floating around in space will not be able to talk to each other directly no matter how hard they yell, even if they are only inches away. Their inability to talk directly is not caused by their helmets getting in the way, but is rather caused by the vacuum of space not c

  What Is a Gravitational Wave? A gravitational wave is an invisible (yet incredibly fast) ripple in space. Gravitational waves travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). These waves squeeze and stretch anything in their path as they pass by.   A  gravitational wave  is an invisible (yet incredibly fast) ripple in space. We’ve known about gravitational waves for a long time. More than 100 years ago, a great scientist named Albert Einstein came up with many ideas about  gravity  and space. Einstein predicted that something special happens when two bodies—such as planets or stars—orbit each other. He believed that this kind of movement could cause ripples in space. These ripples would spread out like the ripples in a pond when a stone is tossed in. Scientists call these ripples of space  gravitational waves . Gravitational waves are invisible. However, they are incredibly fast. They travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second). Gravitational waves squeeze and str

  Gorgias (483—375 B.C.E.) Gorgias was a Sicilian philosopher, orator, and rhetorician. He is considered by many scholars to be one of the founders of sophism, a movement traditionally associated with philosophy, that emphasizes the practical application of rhetoric toward civic and political life. The sophists were itinerant teachers who accepted fees in return for instruction in oratory and rhetoric, and many claimed they could teach anything and its opposite (thesis and antithesis). Another aspect of their method was the ability to make the weaker argument the stronger. The term  sophist  in classical Greek was a general appellation denoting a “wise man.” They were important figures in Greece in the 4th and 5th centuries, and their social success was great.  Plato  was the first to use the term  rhêtorikê , while the sophists termed their “art”  logos  . Nevertheless, Gorgias is commonly associated with the development of rhetoric in classical Greece. The democratic process in Athen

                          Can a star turn into a planet? Yes, a star can turn into a planet, but this transformation only happens for a very particular type of star known as a brown dwarf. Some scientists do not consider brown dwarfs to be true stars because they do not have enough mass to ignite the nuclear fusion of ordinary hydrogen. At the same time, some scientists do not consider brown dwarfs to be true planets either because they typically sit at the center of a solar system, just like a star. A brown dwarf is a strange object with a mass that is greater than the biggest regular planets (i.e. above 13 times the mass of Jupiter) and less than the smallest regular stars (i.e. below 80 times the mass of Jupiter). Although a brown dwarf does not have enough inward gravitational pressure to ignite the nuclear fusion of regular hydrogen, it does have enough to ignite the nuclear fusion of  heavy  hydrogen (deuterium). Early in the life of a brown dwarf, the nuclear fusion of its heavy

  The life of the Buddha The life story of the Buddha begins in Lumbini, near the border of Nepal and India, about 2,600 years ago, where the man Siddharta Gautama was born. Although born a prince, he realized that conditioned experiences could not provide lasting happiness or protection from suffering. After a long spiritual search he went into deep meditation, where he realized the nature of mind. He achieved the state of unconditional and lasting happiness: the state of enlightenment, of buddhahood. This state of mind is free from disturbing emotions and expresses itself through fearlessness, joy and active compassion. For the rest of his life, the Buddha taught anyone who asked how they could reach the same state. Buddha’s early life India at the time of the Buddha was very spiritually open. Every major philosophical view was present in society, and people expected spirituality to influence their daily lives in positive ways. At this time of great potential, Siddhartha Gautama, the

  Eudoxus of Cnidus   Lived c. 400 — c. 347 BC Eudoxus made momentous advances in mathematics; he was the world’s greatest mathematician before Archimedes. Eudoxus founded mathematical astronomy when he created the first mathematical model of the universe, expressing the movement of the heavens in the language of spherical geometry. In doing so he turned physical reality into something more abstract offering a new vantage point from which we could study the universe. Eudoxus was responsible for the far-reaching theory of proportion expounded in Book V of Euclid’s  Elements : Eudoxus gives the first rigorous definition of what today we call real numbers – the set that includes both rational and irrational numbers. Eudoxus developed the method of exhaustion, giving future mathematicians such as Archimedes a potent tool to calculate areas and volumes. A forerunner of integral calculus, the method of exhaustion allowed Eudoxus to prove the formulas for cone and pyramid volumes. It is the b

  EUCLID OF ALEXANDRIA – The Father of Geometry Who is Euclid The Greek mathematician Euclid lived and flourished in Alexandria in Egypt around 300 BCE, during the reign of Ptolemy I. Almost nothing is known of his life, and no likeness or first-hand description of his physical appearance has survived antiquity, and so depictions of him (with a long flowing beard and cloth cap) in works of art are necessarily the products of the artist’s imagination. He probably studied for a time at  Plato’ s Academy in Athens but, by Euclid’s time, Alexandria, under the patronage of the Ptolemies and with its prestigious and comprehensive Library, had already become a worthy rival to the great Academy. Euclid is often referred to as the “ Father of Geometry ”, and he wrote perhaps the most important and successful mathematical textbook of all time, the “ Stoicheion ” or “ Elements ”, which represents the culmination of the mathematical revolution which had taken place in Greece up to that time. He al

  Why do only humans "float" on the moon, not rocks or lunar rovers?   Humans don’t “float” on the Moon. When humans choose to jump on the Moon, because the Moon has only 1/6th of Earth normal gravity, they can jump higher than they can on Earth, and they take longer to come down than they would on Earth, so they have a slow-motion fall. They’re still falling, not floating.   Lunar rovers are cars, so they don’t jump, but if you pushed one off a high cliff on the Moon, it would also fall to the ground much more slowly than it would on Earth. Rocks don’t randomly jump on their own either, but if you tossed a rock up, it would take much longer to come down than you’re used to.   Have a look at this video of Apollo 15 astronau t David Scott, dropping a hammer and a feather on the Moon to prove that — without air resistance — they would fall at the same speed, which they do,   Watch him drop both objects and observe how much more slowly the hammer falls than it wo

  What is by far the safest planet besides Earth? Venus; specifically, a location within her atmosphere roughly 55km (34mi) above the hellish surface; the pressures, temperatures, radiation levels, and gravity are all Earthlike at this altitude: 27 °C (80 °F) at 0.5 bars (50 kPa) with radiation similar to “northern Canada” and 91% Earth gravity. The skies of Venus are the only place in the entire solar system besides Earth where a human being could venture outside without a space suit; a simple face mask would provide breathing air. Additionally, the proximity of Venus to Earth makes for a much shorter trip than a Mars mission, and her Earthlike gravity poses no health complications.   In the 1980s, the Soviet Union explored the Venusian atmosphere with balloon probes. And now NASA has released a proposal for floating bases, illustrated below. Since the atmosphere is mostly heavy carbon dioxide, plants would flourish, parachutes would effectively slow entering spacecraft, and ord