Jun 14: A Springtime Science Question Show
We answer your questions about geese, asteroids, pools, microwaves, rooftops, and more
On this week's special episode of Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald, we find experts to answer your burning science questions.
Wayne McKim from Calgary, Alberta wants to know: why have whales not evolved or adapted to be able to breathe under water?
For the answer, we're going to Chloe Robinson, the advisor and technical lead for the whales initiative at the conservation group OceanWise in Victoria.
Hans Sauermann in Nipigon, Ontario says: When the last ice age was at its peak I'm told to believe that there was ice between two and three kilometers thick where I live. An enormous volume of water was taken out of the oceans and moved onto the land where it could no longer slosh back and forth with the tides…What effect, if any, would such a monumental shift in weight have on our earth's rotation?
For the answer, we're going to Mathieu Dumberry, a geophysics professor at the University of Alberta.
Adrienne Morey from Sooke, British Columbia asks: Not long ago, asteroid Bennu was discovered to have been made entirely of accreted rubble, yet when a sample from Bennu was brought back to earth, it showed evidence of minerals interacting with water. So could this evidence of water on Bennu support the possibility that the asteroid belt itself was originally a planet in the long-distance past?
For the answer, we turned to Kim Tait, the senior curator of mineralogy at the Royal Ontario Museum and part of the Mineralogy and Petrology Working Group on the Osiris Rex mission.
Taylor Orser in Sydenham, Ontario would like to know: If every building was required to have a highly reflective surface on the roof instead of something that absorbs light, could that be enough to affect the rate of warming of the planet?
For the answer, we brought in Howard Barker, a research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Rob Botman from Toronto, Ontario wants to know: Are trade winds, used by sailors, entirely due to weather patterns or are they in part due to permanent influences like the rotation of the earth?
For the answer, we reached out to Rachel White, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of British Columbia.
Alan Rothenbush from Madeira Park, British Columbia wants to know: Can black holes be created slowly? For example, can a small dense object like a neutron star slowly eat all the matter around it until it too grows so massive that it collapses into a black hole?
For the answer, we're going to Hilding Neilson, an astrophysicist at Memorial University of Newfoundland & Labrador
James Hayes from Ottawa, Ontario asks: My daughter is a competitive swimmer. People in the sport will claim a particular pool is "fast" or "slow." Is it actually possible for a pool to have conditions for swimmers to go faster or slower?
For the answer, we asked Tom Vandenbogaerde, the performance scientist coach with Swimming Canada.
David Erickson from Gatineau, Quebec wants to know: How are particles identified from their tracks/patterns in the Large Hadron Collider? How do we know that a track is a muon, for instance, or that a track signifies a new particle or one that we know exists but that we haven't yet seen its telltale "shadow"?
For the answer, we're going to Aveen Mahon, a PhD student at the University of Victoria who works on TRIUMF's particle accelerator projects in Vancouver.
John McMurray from Rocky County Alberta says: I saw swans heading north in a large V formation with about 20 birds on each side. I'm pretty sure some of the birds were Canadian geese! Is it possible for more than one species to join in the V formation?
For the answer, we asked Catherine Ivy, assistant professor in Biology at the University of Saskatchewan.
Michael Kaufman from Toronto, Ontario asks: if heating foods on the highest setting in a microwave breaks down nutrients, is it better to cook food at a lower level?
For the answer, we called Dmitriy Soldatov, a professor of chemistry at the University of Guelph.
