Its no surprise that the Earth has a lot of unexplored territory when it comes to the oceans and seas of the world. While man may have made strides in space exploration, it has been difficult to map the seven seas. In fact some experts say that close to 99 percent of the ocean floor is uncharted and undiscovered.

The primary problem for exploration has been the great depth at which this ocean floor lies and the inability of man to dive that deep and stay there for the long periods of time an in-depth exploration would take. This is the problem that the scientists designing and building the Sea Orbiter are hoping to solve.

The Sea Orbiter is a $43 million research project which is a result of more than 30 years of research and designing. A self sufficient slow drift vessel, the Sea Orbiter is going to work as an international oceanic station to conduct scientific research into the oceans of the world.

Its a tribute to Jules Verne and will be a 24/7 laboratory where the crew is able to live underwater for months on end to complete research studies. Captain Nemo would be proud of the way that this partially crowd funded science project is coming together.

In the age of miniaturization, its kind of difficult to keep up with the smallest electronic gadgets that are multiplying by the dozen. Here we take a look at some of the smallest functional cameras in the world to see if we can actually settle the debate of which one is the smallest of them all.

Hammacher Schlemmer sells a miniature camera measuring 1.125 inches long, 1 inch wide and 1.062 inches deep. It can easily rest on one finger.It has a built in battery that can be recharged after its 30 minute usage time. Plus a USB port that can be used to transfer the images it takes. Its 1.195 cubic inches volume is certainly small.

JTT’s Chobi Cam One is another competitor for the position of the world’s smallest camera and while its dimensions are not as compact, its 0.934 cubic inches volume certainly is. However it has an external battery and that does take up more in size.

Swiss company CSEM has its Vision-In-Package or VIP optical sensor which sits in a package containing its own processor, and is smaller than the size of a stock cube. Unfortunately this little baby that uses Bluetooth to transfer data is not currently commercially available. However future science projects for robotic surgery and drones sound promising when using the VIP.

The Federal Aviation Administration of FAA is wondering if this little one and a half square inch flying drone camera needs to be registered. Its so tiny that the Axis Vidius can very easily fit into the palm of your hand, but its still powerful enough to live stream the video its recording.

In December the FAA began its drone registration program for all drone pilots both professional and hobbyists and within two days had more than forty five thousand registrations on its portal online. However the Axis Vidius weighs just about half a pound and is currently exempt from being registered at the FAA.

Although the quadcopter is really small it can use WiFi and stream a live video in the five to seven minutes that it manages to stay in the air. While it has its own controller, the user has the option of also controlling it from a tablet or smart phone.

At less than a hundred dollars and with no additional headaches of registration with the FAA, the Axis Vidius may well emerge as the drone of choice for a number of first time buyers. And trust me there will be more interesting science projects just round the corner with the tiny quadcopter drone flying about.

For those who love to run in the great outdoors, running on a treadmill can seem boring and not at all stimulating. At the same time, running is definitely much easier on a treadmill than in inclement weather in the winters. The question then arises, which is better?

Is running in the real world, going over unknown ground more difficult and challenging than simply notching up the slope gradient while running in a gym on a treadmill? The scientists who decided to measure the difference came up with the observation that yes, running outdoors does expend more energy.

However, the difference is so minute that it would be insignificant unless you were running really fast. For a mile run in seven minutes or less the difference in energy expended is less than one percent. So you will end up burning a 100 calories for running that mile if you ran indoors or just 101 calories if you ran outside.

The simplest solution is to set the treadmill at a one percent incline and that will compensate for the one percent less energy expended. The real thing to stay healthy is not the discovery of the science experiment, but the frequency of how often you do exercise!

Ever wondered why when you listen to loud and popular music beats, your heart begins to pound. The blood begins to flow and you feel all active and energised? Also the reverse is true for softer songs. When you listen to soothing music your heartbeat also calms down. Some music which is soothing may be considered romantic as well.

While no music listener will doubt the fact that music really affects their mood, a number of physiological experiments have also been conducted to back up the effect music has on pour physical bodies. Now scientists have come up with a possible explanation as to why the sound of music affects us so very deeply.

Foetuses can experience external sounds when they are six months in the womb. By the end of the second trimester the mother’s heartbeat is easily heard and when it rises the baby begins to associate the sound with the stress that she is feeling.

In essence our response to soothing music is calming but to fast beats is stressed. In a sort of empathic memory based reaction to how we felt our mother’s heart beat race when she was feeling stressed. More science projects may need to be undertaken to establish this as a fact, but the theory is interesting.

With the state of fossil fuels being what they are, it makes sense for us to make cars that are more fuel efficient. There are different ways that you can do this. You can make better engines so that the fuel is converted more efficiently into energy with minimal wastage. Or you can redesign the car frame to ensure that the drag force acting on it is reduced allowing it to be more energy efficient.

The folks over at Delft University  of Technology decided to go with the second option when they designed what they called the Ecorunner. These students of engineering came up with the most aerodynamic shape for a car as yet designed. You will be excused for thinking that its actually some kind of small plane, when you look at it first.

The Ecorunner has a drag coefficient of 0.0512 which is about six times less than most mass produced cars these days. So how does this reduced drag coefficient translate into fuel efficiency you want to know? Rather well as per the tests conducted on it. It shows a 1227.5 km per cubic meter of fuel efficiency on its hydrogen tank.

In regular car terms that is sort of like running more than 3000 km on a single litre of petrol. Now that is a science project that everyone can put their weight behind.

The atmosphere of the earth allows us a certain degree of protection from the harmful ultra violet and infra red rays that stream towards us continuously from outer space.  The sun’s rays contain potentially skin damaging properties and while the ozone layer does manage to shield us from some of them, it’s a good idea to double up the security by adding sun screen to our skin.

Now what exactly is sun screen and how does it help? The main components of a good sun screen usually include zinc oxide in heavy oil or white particles of titanium dioxide. These are inorganic particles which opaque sun blocks use as an effective layer of paint on the skin to shield it from the harmful rays of the sun.

In a lighter clear sun cream you will find organic compounds such as phenyl benzimidazole. While this will allow the visible rays of light’s spectrum into the skin, it will still protect it against the ultra violet block of rays. Most good sun screens have done some scientific study and tend to use a combination of the organic and inorganic compound particles to give a better range of protection to the user.

Did you know that energy is needed for just about every activity that we do these days? You can literally not take a sip of water and not contribute to the Carbon Footprint, or addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Here is an eye opener for simple, day to day activities that you may not have realized actually have a carbon footprint.

When you sit and watch TV for two hours on a 24- inch plasma screen television, you have managed to created a carbon footprint of 440 gm. This is the equivalent of driving a car for some 1.6 km. If you have a 32 inch LCD screen that you watched for the two hours, the carbon footprint just came down to 176 gm. Yes, the older technology is actually greener.

Did you just order yourself a large cappuccino? You just added 235 gm to the atmosphere! How did that happen, you wonder? Partly because of the cow that was contributing to the milk that coffee needed to be made. A black tea or coffee cup, made at home where just enough water for that one cup was boiled would just cause a carbon footprint of 21 gm.

Bottles water has nearly 1150 times the emissions attached to it compared to a glass of simple tap water. As a 500 ml bottle contributes 160 gms to the atmosphere as compared to the 0.14 gm of the tap water. Just let this science project convince you to be more conscious about your daily lifestyle choices.

When you think of carbon footprints, most people automatically picture a factory, or a manufacturing unit. One that emits copious amounts of smoke and dust. One that raises the level of air pollution along with the carbon content in the air. Did you ever imagine that something as simple as sending an email can also have a carbon footprint?

Yes, apparently the digital activities that you do also contribute to the carbon footprint. A small email you send out can have about 4gm of CO2 added to the atmosphere. A large email attachment may even add 50gm. Five large emails have a carbon footprint which is the equivalent of burning 120 gm of coal. And guess what? The digital world generates more of a carbon footprint than you would have thought possible.

Receiving a spam email, one that you don’t even open but simply delete, also has a carbon footprint of 0.3 gm. If you decide to conduct a single page web search on a laptop which is fairly energy efficient you are likely to release a carbon footprint of 0.2 gm. If that same web search is conducted on an older model desktop, you are looking at a carbon footprint as high as 4.5 gm.

So the next time you think that just because you are personally not riding a car, or working in a factory, you are not contributing to the carbon content in the atmosphere, think again. As per this science study just about any activity, including wholly digital ones, contribute to the carbon content. There are of course ways to reduce this.

Space travel is not simple and even when you get to your destination, such as the closest planet, you may still be uncomfortable because of the bulky space suits that you need to wear. In an effort to make it easier to move around in what is sure to be an unfamiliar and somewhat hostile terrain, Dava Newman is working on a science project to design skin tight space suits.

The aeronautics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is hoping to create a liveable atmospheric pressure in the weightless vacuum of space. Currently the space suits in use by astronauts are gas inflated, bulky and weight over 300 pounds. The new skin tight suit that professor Newman is working on weighs just a fraction of that at about 45 pounds.

In the space suits in use today, a rip would cause a drastic drop in pressure in no time at all and would cause any mission outside the craft to be aborted. Another advantage of the new space suits will be the fact that a rip in the suit can be patched up in real time using a galactic elastic bandage. The suits will be constructed out of plastic, elastic and shape retaining “memory alloys”.