Massachusetts is rich with scientific activity, history, and education. You can find out more about interesting Massachusetts trivia, about famous scientists past and present, and about interesting places to go throughout the state where you can think, learn and explore.
Why is Michael Phelps the ultimate athlete? How does Nastia Liukin pull off those incredible uneven-bar dismounts? We examine the physics and physiology behind the games.
Much has been written about the superhuman athletic ability of swimmer Michael Phelps, winner of six gold medals at the 2004 Athens games. He's a genetic phenom, built like a fish, with hands and feet like canoe paddles. All this is true—it is impossible to win at the Olympics without a genetic predisposition to your sport. But if Phelps accomplishes his goal of breaking the record of seven gold medals in one Olympics, set by Mark Spitz in 1972, it will be the result of a perfect blend of natural ability, training and technique.
Body: Phelps's body is a famously specialized swimming machine. His wingspan, at 6 ft. 7 in., is 3 in. longer than his height. And his long torso and relatively short legs—he has an inseam of 32 in.—let him ride high in the water.
Biochemistry: Strokes such as the butterfly tend to build up lactic acid in muscles, reducing their ability to perform. Phelps's exact numbers are kept secret, but tests suggest that he naturally produces far less lactate than most athletes do.
Flexibility: Some sports require strength (shot put); others, flexibility (gymnastics). Swimming requires both. Phelps's flexible elbows, knees and ankles allow him to move through water with minimal resistance.
Hydrodynamics: In a 200-meter freestyle race, a swimmer moving at 3.8 mph expends 290 kilojoules fighting his own drag. To combat this, Phelps must adopt a streamlined swimming posture—head down, hips high.
Technique: Phelps is the master of the dolphin kick. By pushing off the wall and whipping his legs, he can swim faster than with a traditional stroke—gaining an advantage of half a body length over competing swimmers.
Training: Phelps trains every day of the year—4 hours in the pool, 1 hour on dry land. Since swimmers can burn about 1000 calories per hour, Phelps's diet tends to be relatively high in carbohydrates to avoid glycogen depletion.
At the Woods Hole Research Center, we are studying how the forests and land cover of New England are changing.
In southeastern Massachusetts and on Cape Cod, we quantify rates of forest clearing and other changes in land use with satellite data and GIS data. We also look at the expansion of impervious surfaces, and their impact on water flow and water quality.
In Massachusetts and Maine, we study how climate and disturbance (e.g. nitrogen deposition and forest management) influence the exchange of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and the forest. This research helps quantify the contribution of New Englandsâ forests to the global carbon budget, and how this contribution might change in the future.
When the next revolution rocks physics, chances are it will be about nothingâthe vacuum, that endless infinite void. In a discipline where the stretching of time and the warping of space are routine working assumptions, the vacuum remains a sort of cosmic koan. And as in the rest of physics, its nature has turned out to be mind-bendingly weird: Empty space is not really empty because nothing contains something, seething with energy and particles that flit into and out of existence. Physicists have known that much for decades, ever since the birth of quantum mechanics. But only in the last 10 years has the vacuum taken center stage as a font of confounding mysteries like the nature of dark energy and matter; only recently has the void turned into a tantalizing beacon for cranks. As one blond celebrity heiress and embodiment of emptiness might say, nothing is hot.
Tired of rising gas prices? The UMass Amherst microbiology department is on your side. In the fall of 2006, Dr. Susan Leschine and Tom Warnick discovered a new naturally occurring microbe in the soil of the Quabbin Reservoir. This new microbe, named the "Q Microbe" is able to readily convert most forms of cellulose into ethanol. This ethanol can be used as an alternative fuel source, reducing the United States' dependence on foreign oil. The Q is unique because it is able to make ethanol without the use of enzymes, making it much more cost effective than previous microbial energy sources. Currently, the Q microbe is being used in conjunction with SunEthanol, the Department of Energy, and various organizations to commercialize this renewable energy source.