KS3 Science Journal 2023

KS3

SCIENCE JOURNAL

Tables Of Contents

INTRODUCTION

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Biology

The Brain, by Venoj Suthan, 8B

Charles Darwin And His Importance In Biology, by Aditya Srivastava, 8H

Can Humans Live On The Moon?, by Aryan Singh, 7L ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chemistry

Metal Ores and Extraction, by Kethav Sudhakar, 8H

Elements Guidebook, by Aryan Pothapregada, 8B, and Shubham Tumulu, 8B

Chromium Element Research, by Arshwin Thushakaran, 8B

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Physics

Dyson Spheres, By James Pallickamyalil, 8C

Was The Apollo Mission A Success? , by Aidan Manickarajah, 8B

Rogue Planets: What are they and can they house life?, by Rayyan Bashir, 8H

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INTRODUCTION

This year's British science week coincides with the publish of this journal, and the theme of Science week this year is connection. Everyone who worked on this journal (teachers and students) collaborated to create this high-quality journal.

In this first edition of the KS3 Science Journal, there are entries from Year Seven And Eight, on many scientific topics, including the brain, the Apollo mission, and elements.

BIOLOGY

by Venoj Suthan

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditi ons-and-diseases/anatomy-of-the-brain

Bibliography

byAdityaSrivastava

CHEMISTRY

USGSMineralCommoditySummaries:https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/

MineralsEducationCoalition:https://www.mineralseducationcoalition.org/

Geology.com:https://geology.com/minerals/

Mindat.org:https://www.mindat.org/

BritishGeologicalSurvey:https://www.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsuk/mineralstatistics/statistics.html

Wikipedia:wikipedia.com

Bibliography

by ArshwinThushakaran

Bibliography:

https://www.britannica.com/science/chromium

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium

PHYSICS

DYSON SPHERES

byJamesPallickamyalil

A Dyson-sphere is a megastructure capable of harnessing the power of a star. It sounds like science fiction but really for an advanced type 1 civilisation ( I will explain that soon) it is an idea to aim for in the far future.

Firstly we must realise that energy runs the world. Energy allows the advancement of a civilisation. Our species started off with our hands and bodies as our energy producers, then we found fire, then came the industrial revolution and now the Atomic era where we have learnt how to split a nucleus. Soon if we don’t exterminate ourselves or our habitat we will likely gain complete control of our planet’s resources.

The Kardashev scale is a scale for how advanced a civilisation is For example a type I civilization is able to access all the energy available on its planet and store it for consumption. A type II civilization can directly consume the energy of a star. Finally, a type III civilization is able to capture all the energy emitted by its galaxy. There are more types but those are the main ones we need to know for now. After we gain full control of our planet we will most likely look outwards towards space. But space travel is hard and expensive and requires huge amounts of energy unavailable to us. But we know the cheat code. The Sun.

The Sun is a furnace of energy 100 quintillion times more powerful then our most efficient nuclear power generators. It shines with the strength of trillion nuclear bombs

It must encompass a whole star to capture its output power. It would usher in an age of exploration and expansion we could never even imagine. But how would we make a Dyson-sphere , what would it look like and how would it work?

Well firstly a solid shell enveloping the Sun is probably not the way to go as a rigid body like that would be vulnerable to asteroid impacts and a lot could go wrong like it crashing straight into the Sun. A more viable design for a dyson-sphere might be a dyson swarm an enormous set of orbiting panels that collect the Sun’s power and beam it elsewhere. Such a swarm would give humanity basically unlimited energy but building it would not be easy. The Sun is very big so we would need a lot of satellites. Each satellite is a square kilometre and we would need about 30 quadrillion to surround the Sun. Even if they are built as lightly as possible we need about 100 quintillion tons of material and then we need the energy to actually put the parts together and deliver them to their positions around the Sun. We would further need a permanent infrastructure set up in space to start building.

Let’s just assume we have already achieved that and want to create the megastructure. We need to consider three things to create our dyson sphere: materials, design and energy. To obtain the needed materials we would need to disassemble an entire planet. Mercury is the best candidate as it is nearest to the Sun and very metal rich. Closer to the Sun means less moving stuff around and also as Mercury has no atmosphere and less surface gravity than Earth making it easier to get things off Mercury and into space.

For design we could use hexagonal polished metal foil mirrors 1 nanometre thick to direct concentrated sunlight to solar panels on Earth. This is exceptionally cheaper and safer than a heavier and larger mirror counterpart. Finally, we have energy and this is where we meet a problem. To perform all of these actions takes an unimaginable amount of energy. Even if we took all the fossil fuels and Uranium on Earth we could only launch the mass of Mt Everest into space which is a meagre achievement compared to planetary disassembly. To make the Dyson sphere it’s almost like we need the energy of a Dyson sphere which clearly cannot be done. So does that make it impossible to make a Dyson sphere?

Well no, it is possible but very hard and time consuming. However on Mercury there is a lot of sunlight so maybe we can collect our energy from there. We would have to automate most of the processes as humans are expensive and hard to maintain and keep alive as they have to be fed and given the right living conditions like enough oxygen and the right temperature making them worse than their mechanical counterparts. So ideally we would have a small crew of controllers who just look after and maintain the machines who do the actual work.

We would need four main things for our planetary disassembly. Solar collectors, miners, refiners and launch equipment. We could deploy solar panels or the mirrors from earlier and get our energy that way. We then use the energy to power the miners that start the disassembly of Mercury and the refiners take the materials and extract the essential metals we need and also fabricate the satellites. Finally we need to launch the satellites. Using rockets would be too expensive, risky and difficult so instead we will use a type of railgun or slider that is an electromagnetic track shooting the satellites into space. Even though that wouldn’t work on Earth, on Mercury ,as there is less gravity and no atmosphere, it would work just fine.

The satellites would be packed tight for launch but would unfold like origami once in orbit with metal supports. The more satellites we make the more energy we could take from the Sun and we could transfer that energy to Mercury speeding up the processes and fuelling the production of the satellites. One panel or satellite gives the power to build another and then those two another two and then 8 and 8 becomes 16 and so on.

Within just 60 doubling times the Sun would be completely surrounded by panels and this could all happen in just a decade. We would have so much energy. Even 1% of the energy is a substantial change in our energy budget. This energy could be used for many projects all around our solar system.

We could terraform planets build more megastructures and maybe even start on interstellar travel.

There are a few flaws in this idea such as completely disassembling Mercury which would hugely disrupt the solar system and be extremely difficult to do. However hopefully if our descendants decide to take on this unfathomable challenge they’ll find a way to acquire the necessary resources. A possibility could be that they use asteroid mining.

Based on physics alone it is possible to achieve such energy and power and soon, in the far future, a much more developed and advanced civilization could take on this incredible challenge and there only limit left would be their own imagination.