The frosting over of glass on the car windshield while driving through a fog can actually be dreadful and in some cases involving accidents, even fatal. This is why there are ongoing scientific experiments to try and keep the windshield glass clear. Researchers Michael F. Rubner, Robert E. Cohen and their team have been working on developing a water repelling coating that can be applied to the glass to ensure it does not blind the driver of the car.

The coating is supposed to keep the glass free of fog and frost enabling the driver to have a clear view through the windshield while he drives. If they succeed in making the glass coating there will be other possible uses for it. For instance the coating may help photographers who rue the lens of their camera fogging over in an outdoor shoot.

Possible industrial uses would include windows for homes and offices which would use the glass coating to repel water and forever stay clear. There may be something tricky with cleaning these windows so as not to take off the coating with regular domestic cleaning products. Its enough fodder for a new science project to produce a cleansing agent that does not react with the glass coating chemicals.

Did you ever wonder what happened to the human body when it went into the zero gravity environment of space? This has been the subject of many interesting science projects on astronauts and here is what they have come to understand.

The bones in the lower part of the body no longer need to support the body as instead of walking the astronauts tend to float from place to place. This makes them lose calcium which is absorbed into the body and the bones  are weaker and more brittle. The muscles are also not used in quite the same manner and tend to atrophy, which means to lose muscle mass.

The heart does not have to pump quite as hard to get the circulation going and over time tends to reduce in size. The lack of gravity makes the discs of the spine expand and so an astronaut is actually taller in space than on earth. Bodily fluids do not get dragged down to the lower body and tend to stay in the upper regions. This gives astronauts puffy faces and head aches.

Sleeping in space also poses a problem and the lack of sleep can affect the performance of the astronaut as well. All in all the science experiments aside, being in outer space is not likely to be a very exciting time for the human body.

The center of our galaxy, The Milky Way, is a high radiation zone.  It is being currently studied by researchers from the Centre for Astronomy of Heidelberg University and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. The weather conditions in the center have been compared to those seen at the inhospitable and stormy Cape Horn on our planet, while the conditions on Earth have been likened to the Italian Riviera by the scientists conducting the study.

The center of the galaxy is where an existing black hole and formation of new stars has created a radiation wind of the kind that humans would never survive. It is a thousand times stronger than the radiation that is caused by our sun, Sol. The research is providing invaluable information in the formation process of young stars. They are currently following the progress of an extremely dense cloud at the Galactic Center called G0.253+0.016 which has been labeled a cosmic weather balloon.

Through astronomical observations the researchers have managed to calculate the approximate temperature of this dense cloud. This data was then used to try and determine the actual temperature at the Galactic Center. There is no doubt that as this science project progresses we will learn new things about the formation of stars in our galaxy.

Whenever we speak of plastics there is the addendum of it being man made. Most science projects that involve making materials out of different kinds of plastics use artificial processes, so it is interesting to note that natural plastic does exist in space.

The Cassini space craft which NASA is using to study Titan, one of the planet Saturn’s moons, has discovered propylene in the lower atmosphere. Propylene is a chemical which is found on Earth in food grade storage containers, car bumpers and other cosmetic products. However on Earth it is mostly a man made plastic molecule.

The space craft’s Composite Infrared Spectrometer or CIRS was used to measure the infrared light, akin to heat radiation, emitted from Saturn and its moons. CIRS used the thermal fingerprints of different chemicals to isolate and identify the composition of the lower atmosphere. Propylene is the first molecule that was discovered on Titan using this process.

Earlier Voyager had detected hydrocarbons on Titan in a flypast. Researchers hope to find out even more about Titan using both space based and on ground instruments. The study of Titan is an ongoing science project which should reveal a lot more as time goes by.

Ozone is a greenhouse gas and can cause conditions similar to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So it is a concern to know that airline flights across the globe are releasing ozone into the atmosphere. To determine which flights were releasing the most ozone was the objective of the science project taken on by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The MIT team used a global chemistry-transport model to check which areas of the globe were most likely to generate the most ozone. The study showed that the area over the Pacific was the most sensitive to ozone creation and that the flights that were taking off from Australia and New Zealand were the ones that were generating the most of this green house gas.

The study estimated that 1 kg of aircraft emissions, specifically oxides of nitrogen (NO_x) such as nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide, will result in an extra 15 kg of ozone being produced in a year in the region. This is three times higher than the production in North America and five times higher than the figures for Europe.

The researchers also found that there was 40 percent more production of NO_x in the month of October as compared to the month of April. While there is no immediate manner in which this production can be curbed, this scientific experiment has shown up a potential danger to the environment in the Pacific region.