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This week, we will be discussing Spider-Man, Native American scientists, Guion Stewart Buford Jr., and, as always, opportunities for students.
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Spider-Man's Webbing
With the new movie Spider-Man: No Way Home approaching, we will be dissecting the science behind Spider-Man. If you don’t already know, Spider-Man is a high school kid known as Peter Parker. One day, while at a science exhibit, Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider. As a result, he gained abilities such as super strength, heightened senses, the ability to climb walls, and much more. Although he has all these powers, one big factor that assists him as a superhero is the webbing he created. Click here to see his power and webs in action. Now let’s find out if the power of his webs are possible in real life.
Peter Parker created his own synthetic webs from chemicals taken from a chemistry lab. These synthetic webs supposedly mimics the webs of a real spider. Impressively, as seen in the clip above, these webs were able to hold an entire boat full of passengers together. Could spider webs really be that strong? According to a report by the American Chemical Society Macro Letters, a study found that webs produced by venomous brown recluse spiders are approximately five times stronger than steel. This is in terms of tensile strength, which tests the tension something is able to go through before breaking. With the use of atomic force microscopes, the study found that individual strands were composed of thousands of nanostrands. To make the silk even stronger, these spiders weaved 20 micro loops into each millimeter of silk they produced. However, another study found that “The stiffness of silk, which is its ability to deform elastically when force is applied, is many times less than that of steel.”
Looking back at the movie, James Kakalios, a physicist and author of The Physics of Superheroes, said that in the movie a quarter of an inch of spider silk could hold together 6000 pounds. In real life, even though the tensile strength and density is significantly greater than steel, the weak ability to elastically deform makes Spider-Man’s web strength abilities unrealistic through natural spider silk.
When watching Spider-Man: No Way Home, keep these interesting facts in mind as you see Spider-Man's webs in action!
In honor of Native American Heritage Month, we will be featuring three amazing Native American figures in STEM!
Susan La Flesche Picotte was the first Native American to earn a medical degree! She is part of the Omaha tribe in Nebraska and is fluent in four different languages. Picotte moved to Philadelphia later in life and began attending the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. After three years, Picotte graduated valedictorian of her class and became a doctor. She returned back to Nebraska to help treat local cases of tuberculosis and cholera in a new boarding school. Dr. Susan, as her patients called her, became the only doctor within 1,350 square miles. Picotte later opened a private practice in Bancroft, Nebraska.
Born of Chickasaw heritage, John Bennett Herrington is the first Native American astronaut to travel to space. Herrington was born in Wetumka, Oklahoma but grew up in Colorado, Wyoming, and Texas. He graduated from the University of Colorado before studying aeronautical engineering at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. After, he was accepted into the Johnson Space Center and was commissioned as an ensign at Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida. Herrington was selected as an astronaut in 1966, making him the first Native American astronaut to travel to the International Space Station in the STS-Endeavour space shuttle. He even carried eagle feathers, arrowheads, wooden flutes, and flags representing the Chickasaw and Crow nations on his trip to the ISS!
Mary Golda Ross was the first Native American aerospace engineer and was the great-great granddaughter of Chief John Ross, who led the Cherokee nation during the Indian Removal Act in the 1830’s. At just 16, Ross attended the Northeastern State Teacher’s College and graduated with a degree in mathematics. She also worked as a statistician for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and as an advisor at the Sante Fe Indian Boarding School. After, she received her master’s in astronomy at Colorado State College of Education. Ross then worked at Lockheed’s Advanced Development Programs as the only female engineer and helped design fighter planes. At NASA, Ross helped rewrite the Planetary Flight Handbook and create flight concepts to Mars and Venus.
Guion Stewart Buford Jr
Guion Steward Bluford Jr. was born on November 22nd, 1942, and was the first African American (though the second of African descent) to head to space. Today, he turns 79!
He received a degree in aerospace engineering from Pennsylvania State University and first served as a fighter pilot in Vietnam where he flew 144 combat missions. He later became a staff development engineer and branch chief at the Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Bluford was first selected to become a NASA astronaut in 1978 (out of about 10,000 applications), as part of the astronaut group 8 cohort. After one year of training and conditioning, Bluford was officially declared an astronaut and served as a mission specialist. His first trip to space came through STS-8, which launched on August 30, 1983. On this mission, Bluford helped deploy a national satellite, test a robotic arm, and conduct biology experiments — contributing to an expanding understanding of space and its impacts on the human body.
Bluford went on a total of four space flights (STS-8, STS-61-A, STS-39, STS-53) which totaled 668 hours logged in space. In 1997, he was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame; in 2010, the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame; in 2019, the National Aviation Hall of Fame.
Happy 79th birthday Guion Stewart Buford Jr.!
CyberStart America Program
The National Cyber Scholarship has created a cybersecurity training game to encourage high schoolers to try out the growing field, especially as demand for workers is increasing. The free game-like user experience creates a fun learning environment for the complex topic, making it a great learning tool for beginners. The program allows experience with problem solving in different cybersecurity situations, and as you continue to level up and develop skills, students will be able to get connected with related scholarships to further encourage their academics in cybersecurity. Registration for the training game is open and students may begin whenever!
STEM Journal Student Challenge
Oak Ridge Institution for Science and Education often hosts challenges for different months, and they’re making November focus on STEM observation and journalism. ORISE is encouraging students to be more aware of their physical surroundings and to record their observations down in either a journal or online blog for five days. Entries have to either include a proposed solution to a problem found, or an explanation of a phenomenon seen. The Institution is opening entries to four categories of ages, ranging from kindergarten all the way to twelfth grade, with prizes ranging from a robot to 3D printers. Applications are due through a form by November 30th; perhaps you can even gain some inspiration based on our past Sci-Fi or Fact, or the STEM News sections of the newsletter!
World of 7 Billion Video Contest
With climate change on the rise as well as world population, Population Education is hosting a video contest open to students to bring more awareness of growing problems with a focus on highlighting problems that rising populations bring, and a sustainable solution to it. Videos must have one of the following themes: Agriculture and Food, Ocean Health, Urbanization. There are multiple prizes to be handed out for middle school, high school, state, regional, and international student entries! Deadline for entries is February 22nd, 2022, but it’s wise to begin planning ahead as filming and editing may take longer than anticipated.
NSCDA Congressional Essay Contest
Write an essay about, “one of the five freedoms in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and discuss why it should or should not be changed in today’s high-tech global society,” for a chance to win a trip to Washington DC! Essays must be 750 words. Winners receive a fully-covered trip to the Washington Workshop’s “Congressional Seminar,” “a week-long civic-focused adventure in our nation’s capital.” Essays are due December 1st.
2021-2022 National High School Poetry Contest
Do you enjoy writing poetry, or expressing your love of STEM through poetry? Enter your poems into the Gannon University National High School Poetry Contest! Your poem may be in rhyme, free verse, Haiku or other accepted poetry forms with a maximum of 40 lines. Winners receive monetary awards. The deadline is February 1, 2022.
James Webb Telescope
The James Webb Telescope, launching December 18th, is set to alter astronomy forever; it will succeed the Hubble Space Telescope as NASA's Flagship astrophysics mission. According to NASA, the telescope will find the, “first galaxies that formed in the early universe and peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems.” But how? And why is this important? Check out Seeker's video below to learn more about, "How James Webb Will Give Us Our Best View Yet Of the Universe."
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