what really killed William henry harrison

Current event 6                                                                                                                                                Sam Brashear

Chem. IR/IH                                                                                                                                       4/2/14

                I found an article that was about what some think could be the real cause of the death of William Henry Harrison. It was originally believed that he died because of pneumonia after giving a speech of 8,334 words in winter weather without clothes like a top hat or a jacket. What the cause might have been was most likely enteric fever, which could have been caused by the lack of a sewage system. Before 1850, the White house had no sewage system, so it all flowed onto public area just near the White house. The water supply was seven blocks away from the White house, so there could have been a way for gastrointestinal pathogens to infect the water supply.

                This can say a handful about general safety and sewage management back then, and the lack of these played huge roles in making us realize that we needed to manage sewage. It is important so diseases don’t infect our drinking water. Where the water went to could have been the source of where the disease formed. From improving sewage systems, we also improved medicine.

                It was honestly shocking to know the actual truth instead of something that you accepted as true for so long. Like the death of our ninth president, who spoke the longest speech in US history, and tragically days later from what his doctor originally thought was pneumonia. It was especially interesting knowing something about one of our own presidents.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/01/science/what-really-killed-william-henry-harrison.html?ref=science

The value of infinity

Current event review                                                                                                                                    Sam Brashear

Chem. IH                                                                                                                                                             2/6/14

 

                The article I found, Assigning a Value to Infinity, was about the real value of infinity and was in this past Tuesday’s Science Times. It all started after a video was recently released. It was about two physicists who, through much calculation, were able to find the real value of infinity and proved that infinity isn’t as big as we thought it was. The physicists added the natural numbers, and the value came out to be -1/12.

                This has an impact on humanity because we all mostly assumed that infinity never ended, and we were accustomed to this idea, so people stuck with this idea. Now, since the real value of infinity has been figured out, the way we see it is different from the way we used to see it. Also, calculations will now be different. This value has an effect on both modern physics and quantum theory.

                This article proved to be very interesting to read because it talked about the value of infinity, something most people thought as never ending. It would be very interesting to someone who is interested in math, science, or just infinity in general. Even if you aren’t interested in those things, I would still recommend reading this article.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/science/in-the-end-it-all-adds-up-to.html?ref=science