Just How Did They Measure Hydrogen's Weight?

Gizmodo has an interesting post on Korean researchers having developed an unmanned plane that uses half-a-kilo of hydrogen to make whopping 10-hour flights. Unlike fossil fuels, Hydrogen packs an immense amount of energy and a half-kilo of the thing is energy equivalent to 1.3 kilograms of gasoline (Source).

My question is, how does one go about measuring the weight of Hydrogen? Being the lightest substance, it's not like you can fill a balloon with hydrogen and tape it to a weighing scale as that would show a negative weight. Moreover, just how negative the weight will be depends on the atmospheric pressure at the time of measurement. Vacuum measurement seems like a good alternative, but as soon as you fill a test tube (previously holding vacuum) with Hydrogen, it should become lighter than its original weight.

Googling for Hydrogen's weight measurement led to some 404s in the book search and more 404s in the actual results. I'm wondering if Google is trying to hide this particular information from the public. One of the results points to heating Methane until it breaks down (The Methane molecule consists of one atom of Carbon and four atoms of Hydrogen) to release Hydrogen. A difference in the weight of Methane used and of the Carbon left over should give the true weight of Hydrogen, given that one knows just how many molecules of Methane were there to start with. Even then, isn't every Hydrogen atom like a wing for the Carbon atom?

If you find yourself inclined to answer, leave a comment. For the sake of simplicity, let's not get into Avogadro's number and such jargon - not every reader may be able to follow.

OLPC's XO Reviewed

NY Times' David Pogue reviews OLPC's 'Initially planned at $100 but now selling at $200' XO laptop. Somewhat contrary to what a lot of people are expecting, the XO does pack a punch when it comes to functionality that will help students in poor countries.

The lappy appears small, but is fully loaded. The OLPC is for sale in America for two weeks, starting November, at $400. You don't get extra features for that amount, what you do get is the satisfaction of having helped one poor child get a laptop somewhere on the planet. No, you won't know where that child is. The XO has a gamepad controller, stereo speakers, a little camera, a dustproof and splashproof keyboard and a drop-proof casing. For more great info on the OLPC laptop, take a look at this YouTube video-

UC Berkeley YouTube Group

Hi, my name is UC Berkeley. I am 139 years old and live in Berkeley, California. My hobbies include Teaching, Research and Public Service. Maybe YouTube should not have treated UC Berkeley as just another group started by a person, but both YouTube and UC Berkeley are doing a great service by offering courses online for free. To access more than 300 hours of videotaped courses from UC Berkeley, visit this link.

These courses, from some of the best faculty in the world, can help every student supplement her knowledge outside of their respective classrooms. Especially in developing countries, perhaps such courses should be made mandatory for students to attend. Christina Maslach, UC Berkeley's vice provost for undergraduate education , said the following in a statement

"UC Berkeley on YouTube will provide a public window into university life, academics, events and athletics, which will build on our rich tradition of open educational content for the larger community,"

Another school that has made news earlier about Open Course ware is MIT, with over 1700 courses available for free to anyone with an internet connection. These courses, some of them including video lectures, help students plan a course of study and enhance their knowledge in a particular course.

I hope other top schools soon jump into the arena of providing information free of charge as a way of helping students in developing countries. With free education, the world will surely be a better place.

Other places where this was mentioned:

UC Berkeley first to post full lectures to YouTube at News.com

Berkeley puts courses on YouTube at SMH

UC Berkeley Puts Courses On YouTube at TechCrunch

UC Berkeley's YouTube Channel Offers Full-Course Lectures at Mashable

UC Berkeley Puts Lectures Online To Bore You At Home at Gizmodo

Learning A New Language? TryMango!

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With the plethora of learning resources available today, language learners have never had better times. Here's shiny new Mango Languages. Unlike Coffee Break Spanish, Mango is a totally free resource and the presentation is in the form of slides. If your iPod is the only gadget you wish to use for your language learning, that's your choice, but Mango is a great resource if you are interested in learning languages.

For one, you can choose from a total of 11 different language courses - each with over 100 lessons. On an average, each lesson contains around 80 slides and focuses on one part of the conversation. Registration is also simple and straightforward. What I liked best is the color coding of the words. This may not work as well with some languages, but it's a neat feature. You can click on a word to hear it. Alternatively, you can click on the icon before the sentence to hear the full sentence. You can even invite friends and challenge them to an (offline) competition later.

As of now, the service is not monetized. While I would prefer to see AdSense at work here, really any method is okay as long as the modules are available for free. If they start charging for content, it may hit the subscription base. I wouldn't mind paying for proficiency certification tests though.

If you are in for community-based language learning, you can also try xLingo or Tutorom. Personally, I'd rather learn the basics from a structured program and maybe later shift to community based learning to polish the diction and accents. Which type of language learning resource do you prefer?

PS: Please take a minute to bookmark this post if you liked it. Do check out my 'Recent musings', you might find them interesting.