Tag: John Hawkhead

Posted on

Flickerings by John Hawkhead

migraine flickerings
sighting an electron stream
leave free radicals

by John Hawkhead

A free radical is an atom, ion or molecule with at least one unpaired valence electron and which are usually highly chemically reactive with short lifetimes.

They are formed either from other radicals or by breaking a covalent bond in a spin-paired molecule, leaving each of the fragments with one of the electrons in the original bond.

The author of this haiku suffers from migraines where vision is impaired in such a way that there appears to be a stream of electrical waves and particles across the eye.

Further reading:

‘Radical (Chemistry)’, Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_(chemistry)

‘Migraine’, Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migraine

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/). Read more of John’s sciku here!

Posted on

Gene Editing by John Hawkhead

a cure for cancer…
cutting the gordian knot
in a gene sequence

by John Hawkhead

Gene editing provides us with the ability to make highly specific changes in the DNA of a living organism. It has the potential to revolutionize cancer treatment via manipulation of the genome to target specific genetic mutations that drive the growth and spread of tumours.

The cutting of the Gordian knot is a legend associated with Alexander the Great about a complex knot that tied an oxcart. It was claimed that whoever was able to untie it would be destined to rule all of Asia. When Alexander was challenged to untie the knot he cut through it with his sword rather than attempt to untie it. This is now used as a metaphor for solving a seemingly intractable problem through bold means or thinking differently.

Further reading:

‘What is genome editing?’, 2019, National Human Genome Research Institute, available: https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/policy-issues/what-is-Genome-Editing

‘How CRISPR Is Changing Cancer Research and Treatment’, 2020, National Cancer Institute, available: https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2020/crispr-cancer-research-treatment

‘The Potential Revolution of Cancer Treatment with CRISPR Technology’, 2023, Stefanoudakis, D., et al., Cancers (Basel), https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers15061813

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/). Read more of John’s sciku here!

Posted on

Quantum Worlds by John Hawkhead

quantum worlds
my shadow as real
as I am

by John Hawkhead

One of the experimental tests used to determine the nature of fundamental quanta such as photons is the ‘double-slit aperture test’.

A stream of photons is projected towards a barrier with two slits. The result is an interference pattern on a screen beyond the slits that demonstrates the wave-particle duality of the photon.

One explanation for this duality applies the multiverse concept and theorises that particles from parallel universes interact with the photons being projected towards the slits. In this multiverse concept, the shadow areas in the aperture pattern ‘hide’ alternative universes. The theory is that ‘shadow photons’ are affecting the the photons in the double-slit experiment.

Similarly, the terms shadows and shades are often used to describe the dead when seen crossing back into this world from the ‘other side’ as ghosts or spirits. Is it possible that our shadows are experienced in alternative universes..?

Further reading:

‘Double-slit experiment’, Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment

‘Many worlds interpretation’, Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/).

Enjoyed John’s sciku? Check out more of his sciku here: ‘Dark matter’, ‘Chirality’, ‘Spooky Interaction’, ‘Dancing’, ‘Planetarium’, ‘Empty Space’, ‘Averages’, ‘New Beginning’, ‘Interactions’, ‘Surface Tension’ and ‘Shell Game‘.

Posted on

Shell Game by John Hawkhead

waterfall rainbows
gnats scribble probabilities
in atomic shells

by John Hawkhead

In atomic physics and chemistry, electron shells (and subshells) are thought of as a series of ascending orbits that electrons occupy around an atom’s nucleus. Shells correspond to principal quantum numbers or are labelled alphabetically with the letters used in X-ray notation. Each row on the periodic table of elements represents an electron shell.

Each shell can contain only a fixed number of electrons. The numbers of electrons that can occupy each shell and subshell arise from equations in quantum mechanics, which state that no two electrons in the same atom can have the same values of the four quantum numbers that describe an electron in an atom completely:

  • Principal quantum number (n)
  • Azimuthal quantum number (ℓ)
  • Magnetic quantum number (mℓ)
  • Spin Quantum number (ms)

Further reading:

‘Electron shells’, Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_shell

‘Quantum number’, Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_number

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/). Read more of John’s sciku here!

Posted on

Surface Tension by John Hawkhead

surface tension
she dips a toe
into my silence

by John Hawkhead

Surface tension is the tendency of at-rest liquid surfaces to shrink into the minimum surface area possible. This allows objects with higher density than water to float on its surface without becoming submerged.

Surface tension results from the greater attraction of liquid molecules to each other (cohesion) than to air molecules (adhesion).

Further reading:

‘Surface tension’, Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_tension

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/). Read more of John’s sciku here!

This sciku was previous published in Human/Kind: A Journal of Topical and Contemporary Japanese Short-forms and Art, issue 1:1, p14.

Posted on

Interactions by John Hawkhead

bosons and mesons
all the stuff we talk about
just interactions

by John Hawkhead

In particle physics, bosons are subatomic particles whose spin quantum number has an integer value and which obey Bose-Einstein statistics. Examples of bosons include the Higgs boson particle and photons (light).

Mesons are a form of boson: they’re hadronic subatomic particles composed of an equal number of quarks and antiquarks bound together by a strong interaction. Mesons are the interaction agents between protons and electrons, but are unstable outside of the nucleus, decaying to particles such as electrons, neutrinos and photons. Despite their small size (0.6 times the size of a proton or neutron) and instability, they’re observable by particle detectors and have been used to study the properties and interactions of quarks.

Further reading:

‘Boson’, Wikipedia article – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boson

‘Bosons and Fermions’, Office of Science, US Department of Energy – https://www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsbosons-and-fermions

‘Meson’, Vedantu article – https://www.vedantu.com/physics/meson

‘Meson’, Wikipedia article – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meson

‘Meson’, Encyclopaedia Britannica article – https://www.britannica.com/science/meson

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/). Read more of John’s sciku here!

Posted on

New Beginning by John Hawkhead

protostar flare
a new beginning
in the sonogram

by John Hawkhead

A protostar is a young star still gathering mass from its parent molecular cloud. The protostellar phase is the earliest the process of stellar evolution.

A sonogram is a picture made by ultrasound waves to show the inside of the human body, including in pregnancy assessment.

Further reading:

‘Protostar’, Wikipedia article – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protostar

‘Ultrasound’, Wikipedia article – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasound

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/). Read more of John’s sciku here!

Posted on

Averages by John Hawkhead

mean median mode
learning my average
did not measure up

By John Hawkhead

In mathematics mean, mode and medium are different types of averages from a data set:

  • Mean is the average of a data set, calculated by adding all the data set numbers and then dividing the result by the total of values in the set.
  • Median is the middle value of a data set ordered from least to greatest.
  • Mode is the value that appears the most times in a set of data.

Further reading:

‘Central tendency’, Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_tendency

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/). Read more of John’s sciku here!

Posted on

Empty Space by John Hawkhead

bar talk
his atoms and mine
mostly empty space

by John Hawkhead

Atoms are 99% empty space, comprised of electrons in orbits around a nucleus made up of protons and neutrons. It follows then that approximately 99% of the human body is empty space with the remaining 1% (the electrons, neutrons and protons) being particles that have existed for billions of years.

At least this is the common mental image of an atom – the planetary model, originally proposed by Ernest Rutherford in 1911 and further refined by Niels Bohr in 1913. And yet…

Researchers increasingly understand that whilst electrons occupy discrete energy levels, they don’t always behave like discrete particles. Electrons are quantum objects – an electron is partly a wave and partly a particle. Under normal conditions an individual electron isn’t traveling in an orbital path through nothingness around its nuclei, but is instead spread out in an electron cloud.

As astrophysicist Dr Ethan Siegel says, “Inside your body, you aren’t mostly empty space. You’re mostly a series of electron clouds, all bound together by the quantum rules that govern the entire Universe.”

Further reading:

‘Due to the Space inside Atoms, You Are Mostly Made up of Empty Space’, Trevor English, Interesting Engineering: https://interestingengineering.com/science/due-to-the-space-inside-atoms-you-are-mostly-made-up-of-empty-space

‘Rutherford model’, Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/science/Rutherford-model

‘You Are Not Mostly Empty Space’, Ethan Siegel, Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/04/16/you-are-not-mostly-empty-space/

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/). Read more of John’s sciku here!

This sciku was previously published in MahMight haiku journal 2021.

Posted on

Dancing by John Hawkhead

photons
E=mc2
dancing

By John Hawkhead

Photons are some of the most fascinating particles in the physical sciences; fundamental particles of light that are the smallest possible packets of electromagnetic energy.

Albert Einstein’s mass–energy equivalence (represented by the formula E = mc2) gives the basic relation between mass and energy, stating that under appropriate situations mass and energy are interchangeable and the same. Yet photons have a rest mass of zero – they are massless particles – therefore should they even have any energy at all? And if they have neither mass nor energy then would they even physically exist?

E = mc2 is actually a special case of the more general equation E2 = p2c2 + m2c4, where E is energy, p is momentum, c is the speed of light and m is mass at rest. Since photons have no mass, this equation becomes E = pc.  Effectively, photons get their energy from their momentum and can never be at rest, constantly moving.

How they move has been the subject of study for decades, with recent research suggesting that photons can behave as both particles and waves (to find out more, check out the sciku ‘Spooky Interaction’, also by John Hawkhead).

This sciku plays around with the concepts of photons, square dancing and the randomness of measuring the path of photons.

Further reading:

‘Light has no mass so it also has no energy according to Einstein, but how can sunlight warm the earth without energy?’, Science Questions with Surprising Answers: https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2014/04/01/light-has-no-mass-so-it-also-has-no-energy-according-to-einstein-but-how-can-sunlight-warm-the-earth-without-energy/

‘Mass–energy equivalence’, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence

‘Does light have mass?’, Physics FAQ: https://www.desy.de/user/projects/Physics/Relativity/SR/light_mass.html

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/). Read more of John’s sciku here!

‘Dancing’ was previously published in Failed Haiku 74 (1 Feb 2022).

Posted on

Planetarium by John Hawkhead

planetarium
she reaches across space
to find my hand

by John Hawkhead

In the 2008 USA presidential election, Senator John McCain criticised the value (and cost) of planetariums, as being little more than “overhead projectors”.

Yet planetariums, as well as being a unique form of entertainment, are valuable science communication tools: interactive and immersive pedagogic instruments for astronomical education.

For example, research by Plummer (2008) suggests that attending a planetarium program increased understanding of celestial motion in students aged 6 to 8 years old. Planetariums are also especially valuable for those living in large towns and cities, where light-pollution prevents most stars from being visible.

To celebrate the value and power of planetariums, the second Sunday of every March is International Day of Planetariums.

Further reading:

‘The Value of Education in the Planetarium’, The International Planetarium Society: https://www.ips-planetarium.org/page/planetariumeducationvalue

‘International Day of Planetariums’, AnydayGuide: https://anydayguide.com/calendar/3858

‘Early elementary students’ development of astronomy concepts in the planetarium’, Journal of Research in Science Teaching: https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.20280

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/). Read more of John’s sciku here!

‘Planetarium’ was previously published in Poetry Pea – podcast (June 2022); Journal 2:22 (Sept 2022).

Posted on

Spooky Interaction by John Hawkhead

explaining photons
my side of the argument
neither here nor there

By John Hawkhead

Scientists argued for years about whether photons were particles or waves, but it seems that photons can behave as both. They are now known as ‘gauge bosons’ of force-carrying particles that enable interactions between matter particles and fundamental forces, and exhibit a third property known in quantum physics as ‘excitation’.

Dark matter theory suggests the possible existence of ‘dark photons’ as mediators of interaction between dark matter particles. Some experiments have indicated that interacting photons remain connected even as they move away from each other at the speed of light; therefore, appearing to interact faster than the speed of light. Einstein’s term for this was “spooky interaction at a distance”. As with other fundamental particles, it is not possible to know the location and velocity of a photon.

Further reading:

‘The wave-particle duality of photons’, Photon Terrace article, https://photonterrace.net/en/photon/duality/

‘Wave-particle duality and uncertainty principles’, section on Wikipedia entry for Photon, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon#Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality_and_uncertainty_principles

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/). Read more of John’s sciku here!

Posted on

Dark Matter by John Hawkhead

dark matter theory
how strange particles appear
as they disappear

By John Hawkhead

Dark matter is a term used to describe the effect on the movement of stars by what scientists hypothesise to be matter. However, dark matter does not emit light or energy, and so is ‘invisible’. To hold the elements of the universe together, dark matter must make up approximately 80-85% percent of the universe.

Many scientists think dark matter is made up of particles known as weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS) or another type of particle the neutrino. The quantum world allows for the existence of virtual particles that can appear and disappear in zero point energy conditions.

Further reading: An Introduction to Dark Matter

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/).

Read more of John’s sciku here!

Posted on

Chirality by John Hawkhead

chiral molecules
we cannot superimpose
cis/trans isomers

By John Hawkhead

In chemistry, a molecule or ion is called chiral if it cannot be superposed on its mirror image by any combination of rotations and translations. This geometric property is called chirality.  In Latin, “cis” means “on this side,” while “trans” means “on the other side.

In gender terms ‘cis’ means the gender you identify with matches the sex assigned to you at birth. Trans (gender) is when your gender identity differs from the sex on your birth certificate.

Further reading: Organic Chemistry: Chirality

John Hawkhead (@HawkheadJohn) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/). Read more of John’s sciku here!