Jay L. Wile's Blog, page 19

You Just Never Know What Will Inspire a Student

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Spoons used as resistors in series (left) and in parallel (right).

In my high school physics course designed for homeschooling, I cover the standard topics that are considered important in preparing a student for university-level physics. One of those topics is resistance in electrical circuits. Unless you are dealing with exotic substances at very low temperatures (superconductors), all materials that conduct electricity resist the flow of electrons to some extent. A good conductor has a low resistance; a poor conductor has a high resistance. The amount of resistance in an electrical circuit and the voltage of the power source determine the amount of current flowing through the circuit, so it is important to be able to calculate a circuit’s overall resistance.

When resistors are connected so that the electricity must flow through each one of them, we say that the resistors are hooked in series. Notice how the spoons are connected in the left-hand photograph above. If I hook a battery up to the handle of the right-hand spoon and the head of the left-hand spoon, electricity would have to flow through both spoons to get from the negative side of the battery to the positive side. That tells you the spoons are hooked together in series.

When resistors are connected so that electricity has a “choice” about which resistor to travel through, we say that the resistors are hooked up in parallel. Notice how the spoons are connected in the right-hand photo above. If I were to hook a battery to the handle and head of the bottom spoon, the electricity would only have to travel through one of the two spoons to go from the negative side of the battery to the positive side. That tells you the spoons are hooked together in parallel.

Whether resistors are hooked in parallel or series has a profound effect on the electrical current running through the circuit. In most high-school physics courses, there is a laboratory exercise where students construct a circuit with resistors in series and then measure the current. They then take those same resistors and construct a circuit with them in parallel and measure the current. The current in the parallel circuit is significantly higher. This laboratory exercise typically involves an electronic device call a “breadboard,” resistors used in electrical circuits, and a power source, like what is shown in the picture below:

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Resistors in a bread board connected to a power source (click for credit)

Since my course is designed for the home, it doesn’t make sense to have the parents purchase such equipment for just one or two experiments. As a result, I have the students use stainless steel spoons (not silver spoons) as resistors. They connect the spoons together with wire and tape, and then they use a battery to power their circuit. They connect their circuit to the top of an incandescent flashlight and use the brightness of the light as an indicator of the current. The light shines much brighter when the spoons are connected in parallel, because the current is greater.

I have always disliked that experiment. It is time-consuming to set up, it is clunky, and it just looks incredibly amateurish. It works, and it adequately demonstrates what it is meant to demonstrate. It just doesn’t look as “scientific” as the kind of experiment that would be done in a school. This week, I was discussing that experiment in one of my online physics courses, and I told the students that the experiment is annoying, and it might take some trial and error to get it working, but it will work if you are careful. I was then surprised to hear a student say:

This is the experiment that made my brother an electrical engineer…He had this experiment set up for two weeks in our basement. He worked on it in the basement for an hour every day once he got done with school…He just raves about it.

I was taken aback. A clunky, amateurish circuit using spoons as resistors inspired him to start making his own clunky, amateurish circuits, and that inspired him to become an electrical engineer!

Once I got over my surprise, I started thinking. I wondered if any student had ever been inspired by the “breadboard” version of the experiment pictured above. I decided that it probably had inspired at least some students. Then I wondered if the clunky, amateurish experiment in my book was more effective at such inspiration, less effective, or pretty much the same. It’s possible that since the components of my experiment are common objects found in the home, it makes doing variations on the experiment much easier. That might make it more inspiring. However, the ease with which a breadboard and laboratory-based materials work might make doing variations on the experiment more interesting, which might make the breadboard version more inspiring.

I really don’t know whether or not one version of the experiment has more potential for inspiring students. However, I do know is this: I would never have thought that this experiment would inspire anyone to become an electrical engineer. Nevertheless, it did so in at least one case. It just goes to show that at least sometimes, you never know what will inspire a student!

No, Scientists Did Not “Partially Revive” Pig Brains!

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One conception of a pig’s brain being kept alive outside the body. (modified from the linked image)

As anyone who reads my blog knows, I have a rather low opinion of science “journalism.” In my experience, most science “journalists” know little about journalism and even less about science. As a result, what they publish is often so misleading that it just adds to the level of scientific ignorance that is already shockingly prevalent in today’s society.

As a result, I was pleased to find that two different readers sent me two different articles about a recent experiment involving dead pig brains. They were both justifiably skeptical of what the articles were saying, and they asked my opinion. I am happy to oblige. The worst of the two articles can be found at Big Think. It is entitled “Yale scientists restore brain function to 32 clinically dead pigs.” It then goes on to say:

The image of an undead brain coming back to live again is the stuff of science fiction…But like any good science fiction, it’s only a matter of time before some manner of it seeps into our reality. This week’s Nature published the findings of researchers who managed to restore function to pigs’ brains that were clinically dead. At least, what we once thought of as dead.

None of this is true. The researchers have accomplished something that overturns the current scientific consensus about the survivability of neurons (the “workhorse” cells of the brain). They also might have developed a technology that will significantly improve drug testing, but they haven’t even come close to restoring brain function!

Not surprisingly, the scientific article that reports on the experiment doesn’t make the kind of outlandish claims you are finding in the popular media. Instead, it lays out precisely what the scientists did: They received about 300 pig heads that were shipped to them on ice from a food processing plant. They surgically removed the brains and put 32 of them in a system called BrainEx, which pumps a mix of chemicals designed to provide oxygen, sugar, and other nutrients to the tissues. The chemical mixture is at normal body temperature, so it essentially performs the functions that blood would perform if the animal were alive. They then studied what happened and compared the results to brains that were not put in the system and brains that were put in a similar system that did not contain the artificial blood.

The brains that were put in the BrainEx system altered the chemical composition of the artificial blood. Once it had left the brains, the chemical mixture was partially depleted of sugar and oxygen. In addition, it contained carbon dioxide that wasn’t originally in the mix. Obviously, this meant some of the cells in the brains were alive – they were taking in the sugar and burning it for energy. When the scientists looked at samples of the brains from the BrainEx system under the microscope, some of the neurons looked healthy, indicating that they were alive during the experiment. They even found that some neurons were able to release neurotransmitters, which is a necessary step in the process that allows one neuron to send signals to another neuron.

This is a major accomplishment, and it does overturn the scientific consensus when it comes to the nature of neurons themselves. These cells have always been considered “fragile,” and it is thought that without a constant supply of blood, neurons die within minutes. That is clearly not true. The pig heads had no blood supply for several hours, yet some of the neurons were still able to perform their basic functions when they were given artificial blood. It also provides the possibility that neurons can be kept alive in the brain after death so that experiments can be performed on them while they are still in the brain. That could helps scientists better understand how drugs that are designed to alter brain function actually work!

However, this did not, in any way, restore function to the brains themselves. Indeed, the artificial blood contained a chemical that specifically reduced the ability of neurons to communicate with one another. That’s what leads to brain function. The reason for this was simple – since the neurons weren’t being regulated the way they are in a living pig, it was thought that the communication would go wild, harming the cells. In addition, the brains were monitored with an EEG throughout the six-hour experiment. During no time did the EEG show anything but a dead brain.

In other words, there was no brain function found in the experiment. Indeed, there was a chemical in the experiment that was designed to stop the process that is necessary for brain function. What if that chemical were removed? Most likely, the fears of the experimenters would have been shown to be correct. Without all the regulatory mechanisms necessary for brain function, individual living neurons would start producing signals like crazy. Those signals contain lots of energy, and that energy would probably kill many of the cells that the artificial blood was sustaining.

It will be very interesting to see how this technology develops and how it will be used in the future, but if you are hoping for living pig (or other animal) brains in vats, you will be disappointed. The brain is not just a collection of neurons. It is a collection of neurons and support cells whose communication is strictly regulated by a host of different processes. Get rid of those processes, and the brain will cease to function properly. Some cells in the brain might stay alive for a lot longer than we once thought, and some cells can be revived after being “put on ice” for several hours. However, without all the regulatory mechanisms in place, those cells will never form anything close to a functional brain.

Best Evidence Yet for a Black Hole!

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Four images of the center of M87 constructed from data collected by eight radio telescopes on four different days. The bar represents an angle of roughly 14 billionths of a degree, and the circle represents the resolution of the system.

(click for credit)

In 1796, Simon Pierre LaPlace predicted that there are objects in the universe which are so massive that light cannot escape them. As a result, they would be “invisible” to us. These objects have become known as black holes. More than 100 years later, Einstein published one of the most successful theories of modern science: General Relativity. A year later, Karl Schwartzchild used Einstein’s equation to define a black hole and calculate its radius, which is now known as the Schwarzschild radius. While black holes captured the imagination of many scientists, Einstein himself did not like them. In fact, in 1939, he published a paper that attempted to show they cannot exist.

Over the years, however, several lines of indirect evidence have supported the existence of black holes. For example, astronomers can measure the speed of objects in orbit around other objects. The speed of the orbiting object indicates the mass of the object being orbited. In the center of a nearby galaxy charmingly named “M87,” there is a disc of hot gas that is orbiting so quickly that the mass of what is being orbited must be three billion times the mass of our sun. However, the size of the object is, at most, the size of our solar system. Those measurements are consistent with Schwartzchild’s description of a black hole.

Of course, it’s always possible that the speed measurements are wrong, or that there is a very massive object that is consistent with what we think a black hole might be but isn’t actually a black hole. Thus, we need some other means by which to analyze the object. That’s where the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) comes in. Despite it’s name, it is not a single telescope. It is a combination of eight different telescopes that are found in different geographic locations. Those telescopes examined the center of M87 for several days, and their data were combined together to produce the images seen at the top of this post. They are exactly what one expects those telescopes to detect if the center of M87 is a black hole. Thus, as the title of this post indicates, they represent the best evidence to date for the existence of a black hole!

Now while these images are excellent evidence for a black hole at the center of M87, it is important to know what they are and what they are not.

Let’s start with what they are not. Despite what the popular press is saying, these are not pictures of a black hole. They are not pictures of the “shadow” of a black hole. In fact, they are not pictures at all! They are computer-generated images that illustrate what radio telescopes detected at the center of M87. Pictures are images that come from visible light. The radio telescopes used in the study do not detect visible light. They detect radio waves. Now, radio waves are a kind of light, but the wavelength of the light is too long for us to see with our eyes. However, they can be detected, which is what a radio does. Radio telescopes are fancy versions of a radio receiver. They receive radio waves from space, and scientist who study the data use that to infer what the radio telescopes were pointed at.

The EHT looked at the center of M87 and studied just one set of radio waves: those that had a wavelength of 1.3 millimeters. That kind of radio wave is actually called a microwave. The microwave oven you have in your home uses microwaves to cook your food, but those microwaves have a longer wavelength than what the telescopes were detecting. Since the telescopes were looking at only one wavelength of light, and since that wavelength is not anywhere close to visible, what you see above are not pictures. In addition, when you think of a picture, you think of something taken with a single lens, like the lens of a camera. In this case, the image was constructed from the combination of eight different instruments in far-flung locations including North America, Central America, South America, and Europe.

Despite the fact that these images are not pictures, they are very impressive. They represent data that many thought could never be collected. After all, while M87 is “close” as galaxies go, it is still more than 53 million light years away! That means from our perspective here on earth, the center of the galaxy is incredibly tiny. In order to see tiny objects, telescopes have to collect a lot of data from them, so generally speaking, the tinier the object, the larger the telescope needed to study the object. To study something as small as what is shown in the images above, a single telescope would have to be so big that it would probably collapse on its own weight! That’s why it took eight telescopes in different parts of the world to get the job done.

More importantly, what the telescopes detected is exactly what one would predict for a black hole that is surrounded by hot gas. Because of a black hole’s unique properties, it severely warps space and time in its vicinity. As a result, the microwaves emitted by the hot gases do not travel in straight lines. They travel in curved lines as shown in the animation below:

This animation from the National Science Foundation (NSF) helps you visualize why the images captured by EHT are such excellent evidence for a black hole. Credit: NSF

Not only do the images show what is expected from a black hole (a ring of microwaves with a disc-like void in the middle), they show that there are more microwaves in certain areas of the ring (the brighter areas in the images) as compared to other areas. Once again, this is what the black-hole model predicted the telescopes should detect. Even the way the bright spots change over the four different days was predicted by the model.

Now while I do consider these images to be excellent evidence for the existence of a black hole at the center of M87, I will make one caveat. The data from eight different radio telescopes had to be combined in order to produce the images, and that’s not an easy task. After all, each telescope is at a different part of the earth, which means they each view the center of M87 a bit differently. As a result, the data must be added together with a mathematical model. That model necessarily includes assumptions, so it is possible that what we are seeing is an artifact of the model. However, as the scientists state in their peer-reviewed paper, multiple independently-produced models were used, and the differences in the results are negligible. That provides a lot of confidence that the images are real.

These results open up a entirely new realm of astronomical observations, and as astronomers get better at this technique, it will provide further tests of the validity of black-hole physics as well as General Relativity. It is definitely the most exciting astronomical discovery since the detection of gravitational waves!

Robert Rowlett, Homeschool Graduate and Deputy Attorney General

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Robert Rowlett

I recently wrote about Hayley Bower, a homeschool graduate who earned a degree in Engineering Physics. When I interviewed her for that article, I also interviewed her boyfriend, Robert Rowlett. He is just as impressive as Hayley, but in a completely different way. He was homeschooled for thirteen years, kindergarten through 12th grade, and he had a very traditional experience. Unlike most homeschooled students, he didn’t get together every week with other homeschoolers in a co-op setting. Instead, he learned on his own and was entirely taught at home. His only co-op experience was teaching a co-op class.

By the time he was in high school, his parents noticed that he took after his grandfather, who had been a chancery court judge in Tennessee for 25 years. As a result, they signed him up for a homeschool speech and debate team. Initially, he found the public speaking experience nerve-wracking, but he got over that pretty quickly. As he told me:

It didn’t take six months of competing [in debate tournaments] and it became my entire high school…It’s what I loved doing, and I did it all the time.

Not surprisingly, the class he taught at co-op was a speech and debate class.

As you would expect from someone who loves speech and debate, he wanted to be an attorney. He decided to major in biology at Anderson University and then go to law school. As time went on, however, he found that the biology program was largely focused on preparing students for the medical profession, so he switched majors to political science. He ended up graduating in three and a half years magna cum laude as a member of the AU Honors Program. His B.A. is in political science with a minor in biology.

The semester before Robert graduated, an AU chemistry professor asked him to speak to a group of six incoming freshman who were recent homeschool graduates. The professor wanted Robert to share his thoughts on the transition from homeschooling to university. Guess who was one of those incoming freshmen? Hayley Bower! That’s how they met. So you could say that homeschooling is what brought them together.

How does Robert think homeschooling prepared him for university?

Homeschooling made me a lot better prepared for college than most of the incoming people. For example, a lot of the freshman…from public school lacked basic English skills, basic public speaking skills, and basic research skills…The self-study, the writing, the research and the public speaking I did in homeschooling put me far ahead of the other incoming people.

One thing he was not quite prepared for, however, was observing the poor choices that many of his fellow students at university made. He said that it was quite a shock to see how some of these students used the freedom they had at university to do immoral things. He stated that parents of university-bound children need to

Continue to stress with your children that when they go to college, they will have a lot of opportunit[ies] to make bad choices…Tell them, “When you see all of your friends going to the bar, and they are all underage…just don’t be stupid. Don’t go.”

He also has some advice for university-bound students:

Focus on the things that you have skills in, but don’t be afraid to move around. I switched majors. I started in biology, switched around, and still graduated early. If you get in marketing, for example, and hate it and want to switch to psychology or dance, do it.

Robert attended the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University (Bloomington) and graduated cum laude three years later. He participated in moot court and was a Senior Managing Editor for the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies. Then came the real test of his education and his commitment to becoming an attorney – he had to take the bar exam. As he says:

The bar was the worst experience of my life. I have learned that’s pretty much what any attorney will tell you.

He studied 8-10 hours a day, seven days a week, for three solid months. The hard work paid off, however, because he passed the bar exam on his first attempt.

Now that he is a full-fledged attorney, he works at the Office of the Indiana Attorney General. He was accepted into the Intensive Deputy Attorney General (“I-DAG”) Program, a litigation-focused training program for promising young attorneys that wish to become Deputy Attorneys General. As a result of completing the I-DAG Program, his official title is Deputy Attorney General for the Administrative and Regulatory Enforcement Litigation section. He litigates cases, performs case analysis, completes legal research, writes briefs, and appears and orally defends cases in court. In fact, he even contributed a section to a brief that went to the Supreme Court of the United States! That’s quite an accomplishment for an attorney who is so young.

Robert says that he is a “big fan” of homeschooling and plans to homeschool his own children one day. It’s easy to see why.

An Excellent Commentary On Science

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Robert Tracinski, who writes about politics and culture

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We live in an age of shocking scientific illiteracy, and to add insult to injury, some of the loudest “cheerleaders” for science are some of the most ignorant when it comes to science. No one illustrates this better than Bill Nye, who is considered by many scientifically illiterate people to be today’s spokesperson for science, despite the fact that he is woefully ignorant about the science upon which he pontificates (see here, here, here, here, here, and here).

As a result, it is refreshing to run across the work of someone who is not even trained as a scientist but can write about science realistically. I was recently sent an article by one such person: Robert Tracinski. He has a degree in philosophy, but has spent more than 20 years writing about politics and culture. Nevertheless, the piece I read was about science, and it has some very important words for the scientifically illiterate among us. The title of the piece is Why I Don’t “Believe” in “Science”, and while the title might surprise you, I strongly recommend that you read it in its entirety. As a trained scientist who does original research in my field, I can tell you that it is one of the best commentaries on science I have seen from a layperson.

Is it surprising that I am recommending a piece from someone who doesn’t “believe in” science? It shouldn’t be. As he writes in the piece:

The problem is the word “belief.” Science isn’t about “belief.” It’s about facts, evidence, theories, experiments. You don’t say, “I believe in thermodynamics.” You understand its laws and the evidence for them, or you don’t. “Belief” doesn’t really enter into it.

I couldn’t agree more. The problem, of course, is that some of the people claiming that they “believe” in science the loudest don’t understand the least bit about it. They think “belief in science” means accepting the scientific consensus on any issue. That, of course, is the opposite of science. As Tracinski writes:

Some people may use “I believe in science” as vague shorthand for confidence in the ability of the scientific method to achieve valid results, or maybe for the view that the universe is governed by natural laws which are discoverable through observation and reasoning.

But the way most people use it today — especially in a political context — is pretty much the opposite. They use it as a way of declaring belief in a proposition which is outside their knowledge and which they do not understand.

There are a lot of people these days who like things that sound science-y, but have little patience for actual science.

I couldn’t agree more. If you want to use science as a means by which to understand what is going on in the world, you are in for some hard work. It doesn’t mean just parroting what the High Priests of Science proclaim. It means studying the evidence related to the issue, educating yourself about how different groups of scientists interpret that issue, and then deciding for yourself what position is backed by the most evidence. It also means being willing to change your mind if you learn additional evidence that contradicts your original position.

Your “belief” is quite irrelevant, as is the dogma promulgated by the High Priests of Science. Only the evidence is relevant, and if you aren’t willing to investigate that evidence, you are not using science.

Hayley Bower, Homeschool Graduate and Engineer

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Hayley Bower

I have been interviewing homeschool graduates to learn what they are doing these days, how homeschooling helped or harmed them in their post-high-school endeavors, and what advice they might give to homeschooling parents and students. As part of that project, I was happy to interview a former student of mine, Hayley Bower. At the same time, I interviewed her boyfriend who is also a homeschool graduate, and I will write about him (and the fun story of how they met) in a separate article.

I met Hayley in 2014 when she was a student in the general chemistry course I taught at Anderson University. A faculty member had informed me that she was a homeschool graduate and had used my biology, chemistry, and physics courses in high school, but I probably would have guessed it anyway. As is typical for homeschool graduates, she was in the honors program, actively engaged in class, and confident with the material. In addition, she always had a wonderful smile on her face when she spoke with me.

Hayley graduated from Anderson University four years later with a degree in engineering physics. She earned the Outstanding Student of the Year award in the School of Physical Sciences and Engineering for the 2015-2016 school year. When that was announced publicly, I joked with my colleagues that since she was my student as a freshman, I was taking all the credit for her earning the award. Honestly, however, I had nothing to do with it. She was an outstanding student from the moment she walked into my class.

Hayley went to a private Christian school from pre-school to eighth grade, and her parents started homeschooling her in high school. Initially, she hated it! She jokingly said:

You go from being with your best friends all day, every day, to being at home with your brothers.

She did get involved in a co-op where she met with other homeschooled students once a week, and beginning the second year, she came to appreciate homeschooling and the co-op. She loved the flexibility that came with homeschooling, and realized that she had a lot more time to do the things she wanted to do because she could learn much more efficiently at home.

Since she lived in Anderson, she took some university-level courses at Anderson University. By the time she graduated from high school, she had earned 13 credits toward her university degree. Since the credits applied to both her high school and university education, they are often referred to as “dual credits.” This brings me to some advice Hayley has for homeschoolers:

Start dual credits earlier, maybe even as a sophomore. It gets you used to the environment and makes the transition to college easier.

What does she think about how homeschooling prepared her for university?

I thought it made the classes easier, because you already know how to teach yourself, and that’s what you have to do at college. You also have to do it once you leave the classroom and no longer have access to the expertise of professors.

In addition, in some of her higher-level courses, she was the only student. She felt right at home in those classes.

While at university and work, she didn’t “advertise” the fact that she was homeschooled, but if it came up in conversation, she would let her fellow students and colleagues know. She said the typical reaction she got was:

Oh, you were homeschooled? But you seem so normal!

Once she earned her degree she got a position as a Success Agent at Salesforce, a leader in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) services, assisting customers with the Marketing Cloud platform. That’s not exactly engineering physics, but it does use the programming skills that she learned at university. She is also currently working on a Master’s degree in systems engineering at Purdue University so that she can continue to advance her education and career.

She thinks that her experience in homeschooling, as well as her time at a small university, has been very helpful for her current position. She told me:

The interaction you get as a homeschooler is helpful. I am the youngest person in my department and one of only two women. Homeschooling gets you used to talking with people who are older and different than you, and that has helped me a lot in my current position within the department and communicating with customers.

I think this comment is very insightful. In most school settings, students tend to interact with others of similar age. In homeschooling, you spend a lot of time interacting with your parents and other people who aren’t in school during the day (typically adults). Even in a homeschool co-op setting, there is a low student-to-adult ratio, and the age range of the students with whom you interact is wider than what you see in a traditional school. As a result, homeschoolers are much more comfortable in groups made up of many different ages. This is something C.S. Lewis’s stepson noticed about homeschooled children.

Not surprisingly, Hayley is glad that she was homeschooled. Based on her success at such an early stage in her career, I think it is safe to say that it prepared her well for life as an adult. More importantly, it helped to mold her into the wonderful Christian woman she is today.

Soft Dinosaur Tissue Looks Really Young!

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“Soft” tissue from an Allosaurus fossil, which is supposed to be 145 million years old. (Image from study being discussed)

In 2005, Dr. Mary Schweitzer stunned the paleontology community by finding soft tissue in a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil that is supposed to be more than 65 million years old. Because it is very difficult to understand how tissue could remain soft for more than 65 million years, many scientists tried to contest her findings. Over the years, however, more discoveries of soft tissue in fossils that are supposed to be multiple millions of years old have been made (see here, here, here, here, and here, for example). As a result, most scientists have come to accept the fact that there is soft tissue in fossils that are up to 550 million years old.

Now the focus on soft tissue in fossils is changing. Scientists are trying to find some chemical mechanism that would allow soft tissue to avoid decay and fossilization over such a long period of time. Dr. Schweitzer herself did experiments to suggest that iron might help to stave off decomposition and fossilization, but from a chemical standpoint, it simply doesn’t work (see here and here).

A reader recently asked me about another proposed explanation that I had somehow missed. The study was published late last year, and while it attempts to explain how soft tissue can avoid decomposition over millions of years, it doesn’t achieve its goal. Instead, it actually gives more evidence that the fossils in the study are very young. However, it does produce some interesting results that require further investigation.

To understand the study, you first have to learn two chemical terms: oxidation and reduction. In short, oxidation occurs when an element in a chemical reaction loses electrons. Reduction occurs when an element gains electrons. As you can see, these processes are “opposites” of one another. As a side note, batteries are based on chemical reactions that use oxidation and reduction. Well, some environments (especially ones that have some oxygen in them) can perform oxidation on the chemicals found in that environment. Not surprisingly, such environments are referred to as oxidative environments. An environment that tends to reduce the chemicals in the environment are called reducing environments. Now you are ready to understand the study.

The researchers looked at several fossils. Based on their external characteristics, they decided whether the fossils were exposed to an oxidative environment or a reducing environment. They then crushed up samples of the fossils and soaked them in an acidic solution (pH = 1). The acid removed the minerals in the fossil, but it wasn’t strong enough to react with any soft tissue that might be in the fossil. They found that while none of the fossils they thought came from reducing environments had any soft tissue in them, several of the fossils they thought were from oxidative environments did. In other words, this study seems to indicate that oxidative environments yield fossils with “soft” tissue, while reducing environments do not. This should be investigated further to see if it is a general trend.

The reason I put “soft” in quotes is that while these tissues were not mineralized, they were not soft and flexible, either. For example, the authors found tissue in fossil scales as well as bones. They describe the tissue from the scales as “brittle and cracked” and the tissue from the bones as “also brittle.” Thus, the “soft” tissue they found isn’t like the amazingly elastic soft dinosaur tissue that Dr. Schweitzer found or that Dr. Anderson and Mr. Armitage found. Despite the tissue not being what one normally thinks of when it comes to soft tissue, it was clearly tissue that had not been fossilized, so it is a kind of soft tissue.

They examined their “soft” tissue with Raman spectroscopy, a well-known technique which allows you to learn about the nature of the molecules in a sample. They found lots of Advanced Glycoxidation Endproducts (AGEs) and Advanced Lipoxidation Endproducts (ALEs). Those are what you expect to find when proteins undergo oxidation in biological environments. That’s not really surprising. Put a tissue sample in an oxidative environment, let it sit, and it will form AGEs and ALEs at the same time it is decomposing. Indeed, the researchers confirm this by taking soft tissue from modern eggshells, bones, and scales and heating the tissue in an oxidative environment while continually moistening it. This produced some AGEs and ALEs, but not as many as what was seen in the “soft” tissue that came from the fossils.

The researchers used these results to suggest that this might be how soft tissue remains in fossils after millions of years. The proteins undergo oxidation to form AGEs and ALEs. Those chemicals retain the shape of the soft tissue, but they are significantly more resistant to decomposition than the proteins that they came from. In addition, AGEs and ALEs tend to repel water, so they might form a water-resistant “shield” around tissue that is deeper in the fossil, allowing it to resist decomposition even better.

AGEs and ALEs are more resistant to decomposition than proteins, but there is no indication that they would last for millions of years. There is certainly no evidence for that given in the paper. They are also water-repelling, but it’s not clear how they would shield other tissue from water. They would have to fully form on the outer parts of the fossil before water got to the inner parts of the fossil, and it’s not clear how that would happen. Nevertheless, I would be interested in any proposed mechanisms by which this could occur.

But none of that is nearly as important as something the authors of the paper don’t seem to notice. Their Raman spectroscopy of the fossils demonstrates that the proteins in the tissue are not fully oxidized. Yes, parts of the proteins have oxidized, but parts of them have not. In Figure 2, for example, the spectra clearly show that the Allosarus fossil that is supposed to be 150 million years old still has many of the original protein bonds intact. Sure, there are fewer intact protein bonds in the fossils than in the modern tissue that was heated, but still, there are plenty of intact protein bonds. If the tissue were millions of years old, I wouldn’t expect that!

Consider, for example, the way they got AGEs and ALEs to form in the modern tissue. They heated it. Heating speeds up the oxidation, but the highest temperature they used was 120 degrees Celsius, and the longest they heated the tissue for was 60 minutes. In that very short time, a lot of oxidation had already occurred! That’s what I would expect. Now, of course, the fossils weren’t exposed to such high temperatures, but they are supposed to have millions of years over which the oxidation could take place. Why aren’t the proteins fully oxidized?

Indeed, one of the samples they looked at was an eggshell fossil from Egypt. It is thought to be 3,000 years old, and it is fully oxidized. No original protein bonds are detected in the “soft” tissue pulled from that fossil. As a chemist, that’s exactly what I expect. Under typical conditions, I would think that the proteins in a fossil would fully oxidize in a few thousand years. Now, if conditions are particularly good, it might take twice as long, or perhaps ten times as long. However, to get the results that these researchers got, you have to believe that oxidation in the Allosarus fossil takes more than 50,000 times as long as it did in the Egyptian eggshells. As a chemist, I cannot find any way to justify that.

In the end, then, while this study is an attempt to explain how soft tissue can avoid decomposition and fossilization over millions of years, the results provide even more evidence that the fossil tissues which were examined are only thousands of years old. I do hope more studies like this one are done so we can have a better idea of how much oxidation has taken place in dinosaur fossils. I predict that this will further strengthen the case that the fossils are not millions of years old.

A Frustrating Book, But A Good First Step

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A new, honest book about the creation/evolution controversy with the church.

When the creation/evolution controversy comes up in Christian circles, it is often accompanied by a lot of strife. Some Christians think that evolution comes straight from the Devil, while others think that when Christians refuse to accept the fact of evolution, they are harming the cause of Christ. Unfortunately, most of the major Christian organizations that focus on the subject fuel this acrimony. As a result, when I heard that the Colossian Forum had convinced Dr. Todd Wood (a young-earth creationist) and Dr. Darrel R. Falk (a theistic evolutionist) to write a book about the subject, I was intrigued. I actually pre-ordered a copy of the Kindle version, but later was happy to find that the publisher had sent me a free paperback copy to review.

The book, entitled The Fool and the Heretic, is made up of chapters written by Dr. Wood (the “fool”), chapters written by Dr. Falk (the “heretic”), and short interludes written by Rob Barrett of the Colossian Forum. There are also discussion questions at the end of each chapter. Drs. Wood and Falk are diametrically opposed when it comes to the question of origins, and that becomes clear right up front. Indeed, the first chapter (written by Wood) is entitled “Why Darrel is Wrong and Why It Matters,” and the next chapter (written by Falk) is “Why Todd is Wrong and Why It Matters.” Because of those titles, I almost named this review, “Why Todd, Darrel, and Rob are all wrong and why it matters,” because that’s the main conclusion I was left with when I finished the book.

Both initial chapters present the standard view from each camp. Dr. Wood says that Dr. Falk is wrong because when you try to interpret the first eleven chapters of Genesis to be anything other than historical narrative, you end up doing great theological damage to the rest of the Bible. Dr. Falk says that Dr. Wood is wrong because the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, and when Christians reject that evidence in order to hang on to an outdated view of Scripture, it ends up causing great damage, especially to those who are interested in pursuing the truth. They will eventually encounter this overwhelming evidence, and it will produce a crisis of faith, which sometimes results in leaving the faith. Of course, neither of those assertions is new, and in my view, neither of them is correct.

Contrary to Dr. Wood’s view, the history of Christendom is replete with examples of great Christians who did not interpret the first eleven chapters of Genesis as historical narrative and yet not only did great works for the cause of Christ but also provided great insights into the meaning of Scripture. Origen of Alexandria, Clement of Alexandria, Hilary of Poitiers, Cyprian of Carthage, William of Conches, Charles Hodge, Benjamin B. Warfield, C.S. Lewis, and Gleason Archer all come to mind. Contrary to Dr. Falk’s position, while there are cases of young-earth creationists giving up the faith because of evolution, there are also cases of atheist evolutionists coming to faith in Christ because of young-earth creationism (see here, and here, for example). In my personal experience, there are more of the latter than the former.

What makes this book particularly frustrating, however, is that all three of the contributors seem to agree with Dr. Falk on the idea that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming. Dr. Wood is well-known for saying that there are “gobs and gobs” of evidence for evolution, and he doesn’t do anything to back away from that incorrect view in this book. Unfortunately, even Barrett says:

When it comes to the science of origins, Darrel appears to hold all of the cards. Legions of scientists have been working diligently for more than a century to refine our understanding of evolution. Mountains of evidence support the theory of evolution, so much that no single scientific specialist can appreciate it all. Even Todd would agree with that. (p. 125)

Dr. Wood probably does agree with that, but many scientists, including me, do not. Unlike Todd, I am not a creationist because I think the first eleven chapters of Genesis must be interpreted as historical narrative. I am a creationist because the data clearly support the creationist position. Indeed, I was an atheist who became a creationist because of science. In my opinion, when it comes to the science of origins, creationists appear to hold all of the cards.

This, of course, brings me to my second frustration with the book. It barely touches on the science related to origins. There are 188 pages of text in the book, and only a handful of them deal with any science. Unfortunately, in those pages, the treatment is ridiculously simple. Now I understand that a scientific discussion is not the primary aim of the book. However, if your book is going to claim (incorrectly) that there are “mountains of evidence” supporting the theory of evolution, you had better at least climb that mountain a little bit. Unfortunately, none of the contributors do.

Now, despite the fact that I found the book frustrating, I also found it to be a very positive addition to the creation/evolution discussion within the church. As you read through the pages, you see what it means for two people who genuinely love each other to disagree about something really important. It means that they get past the animus and try to understand each other. For example, there is a wonderful discussion about how Dr. Falk initially dismissed Dr. Wood’s understanding of a particular scientific idea, but later apologizes, because he comes to realize that Dr. Wood does understand the idea quite well. In the same way, there is a discussion of how Dr. Wood thought that people like Dr. Falk weren’t worried about the devout Christian who reads the Bible and doesn’t care to understand the science of evolution. However, Dr. Wood comes to realize that Dr. Falk is, indeed, worried about such people, because they may one day be faced with the supposed “mountain” of evidence, and that might result in a crisis of faith.

In the end, that’s the main focus of this book. It isn’t specifically about the creation/evolution debate itself. It’s about how Christians who are on opposite sides of the issue need to get beyond the debate and find something deeper. Why? This is adeptly explained by Barrett:

Jesus cuts through arguments in ways that bring us back to the fundamentals. His enemies tried to entrap him with the hot debate over paying taxes. But he refused the two options and challenged his followers to dig deeper to discover what it might mean to give God what belongs to God (Matt. 22:21). What if there’s something more important at stake than whether we pay taxes?…What if our disagreements are about something more than who’s right and who’s wrong? What if our plight of division and disagreement is an opportunity for something new to appear, something worthy of Jesus? What might that look like? (pp. 11-12)

I honestly think it would look a bit like this book. So while it wasn’t the book I was hoping for, it is a good first step in opening up a dialogue on the creation/evolution debate that might, one day, produce something deeper.

C.S. Lewis’s Stepson at the Texas Homeschool Convention

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Me and Douglas Gresham, C.S. Lewis’s stepson. The cross he is wearing was made by his daughter, a professional jeweler. It has Aslan at the center of the cross.

I travel to a lot of different places and meet a lot of different people. I also hear a lot of different speakers. After a while, most of those experiences become a blur in my mind. However, a few stand out as truly extraordinary, and last weekend was one of those. I spoke at the Texas Homeschool Convention, and while I was there, I got a chance to meet with Douglas Gresham, a man I had corresponded with a few years ago and interviewed a few weeks ago. We had a lovely lunch, over which Mr. Gresham shared some of his memories of C.S. Lewis, who he refers to as “Jack.”

As I listened to Mr. Gresham’s stories, I was struck by Dr. Lewis’s humor. This is not something I had noticed by reading his books and essays, and it is not something I recall any biographer discussing. Nevertheless, nearly every tale I heard was either charmingly witty or downright hilarious. For example, Mr. Gresham was discussing a time at the dinner table where his mother, Joy, asked C.S. Lewis about a task that she had reminded him of but was afraid he had forgotten. He said:

My mother asked, “Jack, did you take care of that matter?” Jack replied, “Yes, of course I did. What do you take me for, a fool?” She replied, “No, I took you for better or for worse.”

I also learned that Mr. Gresham was responsible for a bumper sticker that was popular a while ago. As I mentioned in my previous article, Mr. Gresham has become an advocate for homeschooling. Apparently, someone was interviewing him about education, and in his typical witty way, Mr. Gresham said:

Schools are for fish.

Later on, the interviewer contacted him and asked for his permission to turn that phrase into a bumper sticker. I remember seeing a couple of them at past homeschool conventions.

Later on, I got to hear Mr. Gresham’s presentation to the convention attendees, and it was wonderful. He told the audience why he was an advocate of homeschooling, and he shared a lot from his personal life. For example, he told the story of how he met Dr. Lewis. He lived in upstate New York when he was a child, but his mother began a correspondence with C.S. Lewis while she and her husband (Mr. Gresham’s father) were having a difficult period in their lives. Her husband eventually divorced her, and when Mr. Gresham was eight years old, she took her two sons to England to meet C.S. Lewis.

Mr. Gresham said that he imagined England as a place where knights rode horses and saved damsels in distress. After all, that’s what he had read. So when he heard that he was going to meet C.S. Lewis he said:

I was expecting this man in silver armor, carrying a big sword who was handsome as a prince…He was a stooped, balding gentleman in very old, shabby clothes who had ink stains on his hands…It took him about five or ten minutes to get rid of the illusions I had.

He then talked about a very difficult time shortly after coming to England. His mother was in the hospital, and he thought it was for something minor. However, he was called out of school and Dr. Lewis had to tell him that his mother had been diagnosed with cancer. He saw his mother, was overcome with dread that she would die, and eventually left the hospital to walk back home. He felt all alone. His new life and new country were still overwhelming to him, and he didn’t think anyone except his mother really cared. Along the way, he saw a church. He wanted to go into the church, but he first had to go through a gate in the fence. He said:

…I undid the latch on the gate, and I stepped through the gate into the church yard, and I stepped out of this world. That’s the only way to describe it…Everything was just super alive…I was suddenly aware of an extremely powerful, very loving presence in the church yard, and not with words you can hear with your ears, he said, “Look, if you really don’t think you can live without your mother, I can fix it. All you have to do is ask.” That’s a very, very important thing to learn. When we are in terrible trouble, terrible strife, and we need some help, all we have to do is ask.

He then went into the church and prayed. He asked God to fix it. His mother’s cancer then went into remission, and it stayed in remission for four years. During that time, he became comfortable with Dr. Lewis and his new life, and when his mother died of cancer, he was able to continue without her.

There were other wonderful stories as well. For example, most people are probably aware of the deep friendship between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien (which Gresham insists is pronounced tol-KEEN). As a result, Gresham came to know Dr. Tolkien very well. He said that Tolkien was a warm, gentle man. When Dr. Lewis died, Gresham was 18 years old. Without hesitation, Dr. Tolkien said that Gresham could always stay with him if he ever needed a place to live. I simply cannot imagine what it was like to have intellectual and spiritual giants like Tolkien and Lewis as constant companions!

Mr. Gresham spoke for about 30 minutes (without notes or any specific preparation), and then he opened it up for questions. He especially encouraged children to ask questions, and because of that, many of them were focused on Lewis’s masterwork, The Chronicles of Narnia. I was struck by the genuine way he dealt with both the children and their questions. For example, one question was about the order in which you should read the books. There is some discussion about that. However, Mr. Gresham gave an explanation as to why there is controversy and then said simply:

I think it doesn’t matter in what order you read them, as long as you read them. But thank you for the question, it was very good!

He treated every question like that. He gave a thorough answer and made the questioner feel important. Towards the end, one very young child was supposed to ask a question but simply said:

I am named after your stepdad…My name is Jack.

If you were C.S. Lewis’s stepson and someone said that to you, what would you say? Mr. Gresham said:

Ah terrific! Well done. Jack would be thrilled about that – my Jack.

From the first time I corresponded with him, I was impressed by Douglas Gresham, and getting to know him this past weekend only served to make me more impressed.

If you are interested in hearing from Mr. Gresham in person, he will be doing the same thing at the Ohio Homeschool Convention. Since he does not use notes and says that he tries to say what the Holy Spirit leads him to say, I am sure that even his initial talk will be different from this one. I look forward to hearing it!

Tori Miller, Homeschool Graduate and Elementary Education Major

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Tori Miller, a homeschool graduate I have in one of my university courses.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I first learned about home education when I found out that my top students at Ball State University were graduates of homeschooling. After taking a long hiatus from academic life to write textbooks designed for homeschoolers, I am once again “dabbling” in academia as an adjunct professor of chemistry and physics at Anderson University. I am once again teaching homeschool graduates in my university classes, and I continue to be impressed by them.

As a part of a new series on this blog, I decided to interview one of my current students, Tori Miller, who is in a physics class I am co-teaching. Entitled “Teaching STEM in the Elementary Classroom,” it gives future teachers specific tools that they can use to incorporate science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) into their lesson plans. While you might find it odd that a homeschool graduate is studying to be a school teacher, I think it is awesome!

Tori was homeschooled K-12, and although she has only been at Anderson University for two years, she is technically near the end of her junior year because of all the college credits she has earned. Initially, she was thinking about studying accounting so she could help her father in a family business, but she decided she wanted to work more directly with people. If you meet Tori in person, you will see why. She is friendly, outgoing, and always willing to lend a helping hand.

Once she decided that she wanted to work with people, she gravitated towards professions where she could help make the world a better place. She considered nursing, but says that science is not her strong suit, although you wouldn’t know that from her performance in my class. She settled on education because she thinks that she can do a lot of good there, and she hopes that she can bring the values that she learned through homeschooling to the classroom.

I asked Tori about how she thinks homeschooling prepared her for university life. She says it produced a good work ethic in her, and it also taught her about taking responsibilities seriously and having respect for authority figures. She also says that homeschooling gave her a desire to pursue a higher education, since she was taught to appreciate learning and was also encouraged to make life better for those around her.

While she thinks homeschooling prepared her well for university, she did say that she was a bit unprepared for the social and spiritual diversity she found on the university campus. She didn’t have much experience working with people from lots of different backgrounds. While she was able to adapt, she says the transition to university would have been smoother if she had prior experience in such situations. This brings me to Tori’s first bit of advice to homeschooling parents:

Find the balance for your children so that they have a strong faith in Jesus while at the same time having exposure to others besides just homeschoolers. They need to be able to converse with unbelievers and other people outside of their realm. It helps mature your children and prepare them for life outside of school.

She thinks it is important for parents to prepare their children for the unChristian ideas they will encounter as they go on to university or the real world. I think she sums up the reason for this pretty well:

You might not be useful for Jesus if you continue to be shocked about what’s going on.

Yes, a lot of the ideas you will encounter, even at a Christian university, will be shocking. However, being shocked doesn’t further the cause of Christ. Teach your children about these ideas now so that when they encounter them later on, they can love those who espouse such ideas and gently tell them why those ideas are not only counter to Christ, but are also detrimental to being happy and fulfilled.

To the students who are near the end of their homeschooling years, she also has some important advice:

Make sure your faith is strong. If you are secure in Him and what He has done in you, you won’t have problems when you encounter shocking ideas.

Of course, since we talked about all these new ideas she has encountered at university, I asked if her spiritual beliefs had changed much as a result. She says that being exposed to so many new ideas made her think about things she probably wouldn’t have otherwise considered, but she doesn’t see any real changes in her beliefs.

This brings me to my favorite thing that Tori shared with me during our time together. From the first day she was in my class, I sensed that there was something special about her, and what she said to me near the end of our interview confirmed it:

Make sure that you don’t think your ways are always right. Sometimes, we can get so focused on our walk with God that we forget to be open minded in a healthy way.

This is true on so many levels. We can miss many theological truths if we think that our theology is always right. We can miss many social truths if we think our politics are always right. And while Tori claims that science is not her strong suit, her statement is one of the most important things a scientist must learn. If we continue to think that the science we believe is always right, we might miss the opportunity to change science for the better!