Popular Science Magazine for Students and Their Parents
#7 2018
(16) JULY
oyla-science.com How should you approach SOLVING A MATH PROBLEM?
What is the
IG NOBEL PRIZE
awarded for?
PARANORMAL
talents exposed
The secret of the NUMBER е
The emergence of DOTA
Should you be afraid of
PRESERVATIVES IN FOOD?
ANIMATED COVER
THE MIND IN THE GRIP OF A PARASITE?
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TABLЕ OF СОNTЕNTS SPORT
All you need to know about Soccer p. 4 MATH
How should you approach
TECHNOLOGY
The work of Field-Effect Transistors: what is information stored on? p. 20
Solving a Math Problem? p. 10 The secret of the Number е p. 14 CULTURE
The Rise of DotA: why millions of people play it? p. 30
MATERIALS SCIENCE
The history of the development of Drilling
Technology
Aerogel – the airy stuff
p. 36
p. 64
MEDICINE
How Toxoplasmosis controls a person
p. 48
BIOLOGY
The story of the Latimeria –
the Four-legged Fish
p. 54
GEOGRAPHY
Tick-borne Encephalitis: how to protect yourself ? p. 42
What’s hidden below the Subglacial Lake in Antarctica? p. 58
SKEPTIC
Paranormal talents exposed p. 71 Should you be afraid of Preservatives in Food? p. 82
SOCIETY
What is the
Ig Nobel Prize awarded for?
p. 76
CHEMISTRY
This is
SP OR T
You don’t need much to play the most popular game on the planet: a lawn, a ball, and a few friends. In turn, it will give you an emotional charge and sense of
The First Kicks We do not know exactly when football madness began. Kicking a ball around was popular from Egypt to South America, from Greece to China. But the word “football” first appeared in a proclamation issued by King Edward III of England in 1363. The instigator of the Hundred Years War forbade his subjects from playing “handball, football, or hockey; coursing and cock-fighting, or such idle games.” In those days, the inhabitants of the British Isles played football in a crowd — without any rules and restrictions on the number of players. The games would often end in street fights, with the ensuing consequences. But despite bans from city authorities, football continued to gain popularity.
You could see chaotic scenes in the nineteenth century as this illustration of a game between England and Scotland played at the Kennington Oval, the same field that housed the first FA Cup final in 1872.
M AT H E M AT IC S
WHAT TO DO
If a Problem Can’t Be Solved? Statistically, the majority of people prefer simple tasks over difficult ones. They gladly undertake problems which seem solvable to them. This is the case if you look at the statistics of the answers to the question “Why do you love mathematics?” An overwhelming majority answer: “Because I’m good at it.” So, what are we to do if this isn’t the case?
M AT H
The number e Why is the number 2.718281828459045... special? What was it that attracted mathematicians to the extent that it was singled out among infinite others and even given a nominal letter – e? It’s not that eye-catching, and the numbers after the period last indefinitely, which means you have to deal with approximation all the time. As we will see, however, the e number opens the door to surprisingly beautiful solutions to various problems.
Napier’s Number The history of the number begins in Scotland in the 17th century. The irrational constant appears in an implicit form in the works of John Napier, hence its alternate name — apier s constant. It was implicit because the mathematician used the natural logarithm while the constant had not yet been defined. It is with the works of apier that the early history of logarithms and their applications to complex calculations began. Soon, Edmund Wingate and William Oughtred created the first logarithmic ruler, which became a must-have calculating tool for engineers. It allows you to quickly produce all algebraic operations, including the trigonometric functions.
T ECHNOLOG Y
The Semiconductor of the Digital Express Train
What is a flash drive? It is a device for recording and preserving information with a USB interface, filled with flashtype memory modules. In this minuscule body, there is room for integrated systems with millions of cells. But how exactly do these systems contain gigabytes upon gigabytes of information?
M EG A PI XEL
Crunching the Smart Wafer A wafer is a round plate made of a defect-free single-crystalline high-purity material purified up to . . A cylindrical crystal is grown from molten silicon and sliced into plates. Integrated circuits are then built over the carefully-smoothed out and polished surface of the plates. The ready “wafer” is tested and cut into individual crystal processors. They are constantly trying to make the diameter of semiconductor plates bigger to accommodate more elements. And since the costs of producing a larger plate grow non-linearly, the price of processors goes down. So, for example, the transition from 200 to 300 mm diameter in the early 2000s reduced their cost by 40%. Today, the industry is introducing a new standard of the plate diameter — 0 mm. Engineers boost the computing power of integrated circuits by increasing the complexity of their design while making them smaller. As a result, electronic devices become increasingly compact and powerful.
A tiny speck of dust on the “wafer” can put it out of action, so one of the crucial conditions for the production of microprocessors is the sterile cleanliness of the premises. For example, the air there is 100% clean (the surgery room is below that level), and the workers’ protective suits prevent particles of skin, hair, or textiles from getting on the silicon plates.
CU LT U RE
WELCOME TO
DOTA, noobs!
How did DotA appear? What does it have to do with is Warcraft III and other Blizzard projects? What are MOBA games and why are they actually more complicated than we usually believe that they are? And how do get used to the fact that, at first, you will inevitably fail your team? In general, let’s break down dota.
M AT E RI A L S S CIE N CE
THE GHOSTLY AEROGEL
M E DICIN E
YourONBrain Toxoplasma gondii /ˈtɒksoʊplæzmə ˈɡɒndiaɪ/
Do you order burgers medium-rare? Do you love to pet homeless cats? Or maybe waiting for a green light at the stoplight is torture for you? If you answered yes to at least two of these questions, it’s possible your behaviour was directed by a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii.
Fixated on a Cat Toxoplasma gondii is a single-cell eukaryotic organism which is the only representative of its genus, and which scientists attribute to the type sporozoa. Malaria parasites (Plasmodium falciparum and cryptosporidium, which causes diarrhea, are also included among this type. The
Toxoplasma gondii is a single-cell, highly specialized parasite with a complicated life cycle
G EOG R A PH Y
THE LOST VOSTOK Dreamers’ visions of a forgotten world may become a reality. Only, this world is not lost in the vast expanses of South America, but on the coldest continent: Antarctica. Deep beneath the ice, a giant lake is hidden, which, for millions of years, was isolated from the outside world. What awaits us on the bottom?
SKE P T IC
A RANKING OF 20TH CENTURY SCAMS
Those who have the paranormal “abilities� can be very persuasive and resourceful. Moreover, they do their best to avoid confronting sceptics, so it is quite hard to catch them redhanded. Read our list of weird talents, ranked by the difficulty of blowing their cover .
CH E M IS T RY
PRESERVATIVE #1: HOW BAD IS IT?
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