I apologize for taking so long with this entry of my blog. I have
been abnormally busy lately with my academics and poetry.
Today, I am writing on how all of the sciences are related to one
another, in the hopes that you will come to realize that the sciences
are not as separate as popular culture and news has us believe.
This blog will be geared to those individuals – weather you're the
average person or a student of science, or a full blown scientist –
who have the opinion that the different fields of science are
completely isolated from one another. This sentiment is not true,
and I hope to show the false-hood of this concept here.
In physics, we have the concept of “The Right-Hand-Rule”. This
pretty much determines whether the a force perpendicular to two
vectors is “positive” or “negative”. Torque is a good
example of this. The amount of torque placed on, say, a bolt by a
crescent wrench is perpendicular to the position vector and the force
vector; in other words, how much force you're applying to the wrench
clockwise or counterclockwise, and where on the wrench you're
applying it. When the torque you apply to the bolt is negative, you
are loosening the bolt, while a positive torque yields a tightening
the bolt.
Biochemistry has a similar concept, though the application is
different. To a biochemist, the right-hand-rule yields a
“handedness” to a spiral molecule. The most common use is with
proteins, which the molecule is oriented in a particular fashion and
what the physicist calls a positive with the torque, the biochemist
calls a “right-handed” molecule, because the spiral twists
upwards in a right-handed sense. That is to say, when you curl your
fingers of the right hand in the direction of the spiral, the thumb
is pointing up. When the spiral is in what the physicist would call
negative, the biochemist calls a left-handed helix.
In proteins and chains, there are proteins and chains, there is
directionality involved, which is a concept straight from vectorial
mathematics. When there are two parts of a protein chain very close
to each other, there are molecular forces which hold them together.
How these forces hold these parts of a chain together depends on the
“directionality” of the chain segments. The directionality
refers to whether they both are carbon to nitrogen or nitrogen to
carbon, or one is carbon to nitrogen while the other is nitrogen to
carbon. This is equivalent to two people laying in the same bed
where both of them have their head on the same side of the bed versus
where they are laying head to foot. The prior is referred to as
“parallel” and the latter is referred to as “anti-parallel”.
The prefix anti- means they are parallel to one another, but going on
opposite directions, like the two sides of the same street.
In biochemistry, the affect of proteins, DNA, RNA, etc. inside the
body attract each other electrically. This attraction comes straight
from the physics concept of electromagnetism. Here, I will give a
couple equations to show a point. In physics, the energy of a system
of two objects with wildly different charges is given by E=(k*q)/(r),
where E is
energy, k is the electrical constant, q is the charge of the smaller
charge, and r is the distance between the two charges. In
biochemistry, since the two charges are much closer to equal than in
physics – and since we have to look at the solvent in the system –
we use a modified version of this equation, E=(k*q1*q2)/(D*r),
where each q is the charge of each respective molecular group and D
is the Dielectric constant of the solvent. The dielectric constant
is basically the electrical conductivity of the solvent.
Notice that these two equations are quite similar. The fact that the
physics equation leaves out an (r/D),
tells us that this quantity is effectively one. As we all know, when
we multiply anything by 1, we get out that same anything we put in.
(The wordiness of the previous sentence is exactly why we put letters
in mathematics. I will write a blog on that concept sometime in the
future.)
This is just the tip of the iceberg for the interconnectivity of the
sciences. My prompt for you is to find more ways any two or three or
any number of sciences is interconnected. This holds especially true
for those of you going to college right now. The more you yourself
look for and find the interconnectivity of the sciences, the better
you will learn the material of your primary degree program. You will
also see that the credit requirements for your degree programs are
less arbitrary than you realize.
I hope you have learned something today. Until next time, don't
forget to be awesome.
-K. “Alan” Eister Δαβ
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