This afternoon we had two cool field trips to the library and plasma lab. My group went to the library first. We were presented a multitude of rare and old book from authors such as Copernicus. Copernicus was the first person to present the idea of the solar system being heliocentric, however he could never get the related mathematics to work out. Many years later Galileo proved the theory with math. The collection also contained some really interesting anatomy books from the 1400-1800’s. The texts showed progression over time about the understanding of the human body. Many of these books were in Greek and Latin as they were the languages of the educated and scholarly. Ironically the classical Roman world had medical advances almost equivalent to the renaissance over 1000 years prior. The dark ages following the fall of the Roman Empire put quite a damper on science, education, and technology. Concluding the days activities we saw technology that Romans nor people 1000 years later could every fathom and that is plasma. Plasma is the 4th state of matter on the earth and is actually most prominent in space. Every star in outer space is made of plasma including out sun. The machines at the LAPD could make and sustain plasma long enough to run tests on it. The plasma is must not touch anything during the tests because it is millions of degrees hot. Massive magnets all of the machines keep the plasma suspended in the vacuum. I don’t really understand why were testing it and what it could potentially have in store for science but it was cool to learn about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(physics)#Definition_of_a_plasma
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus
http://www.plasma.inpe.br/LAP_Portal/LAP_Site/Text/Basic_Plasma_Physics.htm
http://www.innerbody.com/htm/body.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anatomy
