Bennett Science Blog

Photo Credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture By Amber Bennett You probably think that fires are bad for forests. However, a recent study shows that the opposite can be true. Hydrologists with the National Park Service at Yosemite National Park have been studying evapotranspiration. This is the process of plants releasing extra water into the air as vapor through tiny holes in their leaves. Over the course of 18 years, the scientists measured the water-vapor release using sensors in two river basins in California. Then, they compared the amount of vapor released from burned areas of the forest to that of unburned areas.  The Yosemite study looked at areas where forest fires that reduced the amount of young trees and underbrush by 40-50 percent. In these areas, roughly 17 billion gallons (77 billion liters) of water was saved from being lost to the air as vapor. That's a huge water savings! So, How Do Fires Help Forests? Without human intervention, a wildfire will ...

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons By Amber Bennett An enormous ring-shaped lab west of Chicago is helping scientists study illnesses; combat pollution; and design even better aircraft, batteries, and bridges. The outer diameter of the Advanced Photon Source's experiment hall is the length of more than 3½ football fields! Plus, the building sports a pipe ring that measures more than 1,100 meters around. So, What Is a Particle Accelerator?  Simply, it's to send beams of tiny particles at targets and record what happens. (These subatomic particles are, as the name implies, smaller than atoms.) The collisions can give scientists detailed info about the structure of incredibly tiny things. What Do They Study at the APS? Unlike at other particle accelerators, the scientists at the APS don't want to directly use the beam of electrons. Instead, they're trying to harness the photons (particles of light) created by the beam of electrons. The incredible energy and sma...