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Probiotics and human health
What are probiotics?
Probiotics are live microorganisms that are intended to have health benefits. Products sold as probiotics include foods (such as yogurt), dietary supplements, and products that aren’t used orally, such as skin creams.
Although people often think of bacteria and other microorganisms as harmful “germs,” many microorganisms help our bodies function properly. For example, bacteria that are normally present in our intestines help digest food, destroy disease-causing microorganisms, and produce vitamins. Large numbers of microorganisms live on and in our bodies. Many of the microorganisms in probiotic products are the same as or similar to microorganisms that naturally live in our bodies.
What Kinds of Microorganisms Are In Probiotics?
The most common are bacteria that belong to groups called Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. Each of these two broad groups includes many types of bacteria. Other bacteria may also be used as probiotics, and so may yeasts such as Saccharomyces boulardii.
Probiotics, Prebiotics, and Synbiotics
“prebiotics” refers to dietary substances that favor the growth of beneficial bacteria over harmful ones.
“synbiotics” refers to products that combine probiotics and prebiotics.
How Popular Are Probiotics?
Data from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) show that about 4 million (1.6 percent) U.S. adults had used probiotics or prebiotics in the past 30 days. Among adults, probiotics or prebiotics were the third most commonly used dietary supplement other than vitamins and minerals, and the use of probiotics quadrupled between 2007 and 2012.
What the Science Says About the Effectiveness of Probiotics
Researchers have studied probiotics to find out whether they might help prevent or treat a variety of health problems, including:
- Digestive disorders such as diarrhea caused by infections, antibiotic-associated diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome, and inflammatory bowel disease
- Allergic disorders such as atopic dermatitis (eczema) and allergic rhinitis (hay fever)
- Tooth decay, periodontal disease, and other oral health problems
- Colic in infants
- Liver disease
- The common cold
- Prevention of necrotizing enterocolitis in very low birth weight infants.
There’s preliminary evidence that some probiotics are helpful in preventing diarrhea caused by infections and antibiotics and in improving symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, but more needs to be learned. We still don’t know which probiotics are helpful and which are not. We also don’t know how much of the probiotic people would have to take or who would most likely benefit from taking probiotics. Even for the conditions that have been studied the most, researchers are still working toward finding the answers to these questions.
Probiotics are not all alike. For example, if a specific kind of Lactobacillus helps prevent an illness, that doesn’t necessarily mean that another kind of Lactobacillus would have the same effect or that any of the Bifidobacterium probiotics would do the same thing.
Although some probiotics have shown promise in research studies, strong scientific evidence to support specific uses of probiotics for most health conditions is lacking. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved any probiotics for preventing or treating any health problem. Some experts have cautioned that the rapid growth in marketing and use of probiotics may have outpaced scientific research for many of their proposed uses and benefits.
How might they work? (What is their causal mechanism?0
Probiotics may have a variety of effects in the body, and different probiotics may act in different ways.
Probiotics might:
- Help to maintain a desirable community of microorganisms
- Stabilize the digestive tract’s barriers against undesirable microorganisms or produce substances that inhibit their growth
- Help the community of microorganisms in the digestive tract return to normal after being disturbed (for example, by an antibiotic or a disease)
- Outcompete undesirable microorganisms
- Stimulate the immune response.
What science says about the safety of probiotics
Whether probiotics are likely to be safe for you depends on the state of your health.
- In people who are generally healthy, probiotics have a good safety record. Side effects, if they occur at all, usually consist only of mild digestive symptoms such as gas.
- On the other hand, there have been reports linking probiotics to severe side effects, such as dangerous infections, in people with serious underlying medical problems. The people who are most at risk of severe side effects include critically ill patients, those who have had surgery, very sick infants, and people with weakened immune systems
Even for healthy people, there are uncertainties about the safety of probiotics. Because many research studies on probiotics haven’t looked closely at safety, there isn’t enough information right now to answer some safety questions. Most of our knowledge about safety comes from studies of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium; less is known about other probiotics. Information on the long-term safety of probiotics is limited, and safety may differ from one type of probiotic to another.
Quality Concerns About Probiotic Products
Some probiotic products have been found to contain smaller numbers of live microorganisms than expected. In addition, some products have been found to contain bacterial strains other than those listed on the label.
Source of info: US Dept of Health and Human Services, NIH, NCCIH Pub No. D345
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Where did the idea of using probiotics first develop?
The idea came from Nobel laureate Élie Metchnikoff. He postulated that yogurt-consuming Bulgarian peasants lived longer lives because of that custom. He suggested in 1907 that “the dependence of the intestinal microbes on the food makes it possible to adopt measures to modify the microbiota in our bodies and to replace the harmful microbes by useful microbes”.
There is a growing body of peer-reviewed science which indeed shows that there is a link between our gut flora (varieties of bacteria that live in our gut) and our health. But this link is complex, and it may vary widely from person to person, depending on their genes, and their gut biome.
Studies on gut bacteria and physical health
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Studies on gut bacteria and mental health
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Studies which show that treatment should be personalized
Senior author Eran Elinav, an immunologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and colleagues found that many people’s gastrointestinal tracts reject generic probiotics before they can get to work. Even worse, Elinav’s team found that microbial competition from off-the-shelf probiotics can prevent natural gut bacteria from reestablishing themselves after being wiped out by antibiotic drugs.
“I think our findings call for a fundamental change from the currently utilized one-size-fits-all paradigm, in which we go to the supermarket and buy a formulation of probiotics which is designed by some company, to a new method which is personalized,” Elinav says. “By measuring people in a data-driven way, one would be much better able to harness different probiotic combinations in different clinical contexts.”
… Elinav’s group isn’t claiming that probiotic supplements don’t carry heavy doses of beneficial gut bacteria. In fact, the studies confirm that they do. Because many probiotics are sold as dietary supplements, and thus aren’t subject to approval and regulation by many national drug agencies, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the team first set out to ensure that the probiotic supplements in the study actually contained the 11 main strains they were supposed to deliver.
“All those strains were present and viable to consumption and beyond, following the passage through the GI tract, and even in stool, and they were still viable,” Elinav says.
But uncovering what impact these strains of bacteria have on the people who consume them required more digging, poking through patient’s stool and even inside their guts.
The authors set out to directly measure gut colonization by first finding 25 volunteers to undergo upper endoscopies and colonoscopies to map their baseline microbiomes in different parts of the gut. “Nobody has done anything quite like this before,” says Matthew Ciorba, a gastroenterologist at Washington University in Saint Louis School of Medicine unaffiliated with the study. “This takes some devoted volunteers and some very convincing researchers to get this done.”
Some of the volunteers took generic probiotics, and others a placebo, before undergoing the same procedures two months later. This truly insider’s look at the gut microbiome showed some people were “persisters,” whose guts were successfully colonized by off-the-shelf probiotics, while others, called “resisters,” expelled them before they could become established. The research suggests two reasons for the variability in the natural response of different gastrointestinal tracts to probiotics.
First and foremost is each person’s indigenous microbiome, or the unique assembly of gut bacteria that helps dictate which new strains will or won’t be able to join the party. The authors took gut microbiomes from resistant and persistent humans alike and transferred them into germ-free mice, which had no microbiome of their own. All the mice were then given the same probiotic preparation.
“We were quite surprised to see that the mice that harbored the resistant microbiome resisted the probiotics that were given to them, while mice that were given the permissive microbiome allowed much more of the probiotics to colonize their gastrointestinal tract,” Elinav explains. “This provides evidence that the microbiome contributes to a given person’s resistance or permissiveness to given probiotics.”
The second factor affecting an individual’s response to probiotics was each host’s gene expression profile. Before the probiotics were administered, volunteers who ended up being resistant were shown to have a unique gene signature in their guts—specifically, a more activated state of autoimmune response than those who were permissive to the supplements.
“So it’s probably a combination of the indigenous microbiome and the human immune system profile that team up to determine a person’s specific state of resistance or colonization to probiotics,” Elinav says. These factors were so clear that the team even found that they could predict whether an individual would be resistant or permissive by looking at their baseline microbiome and gut gene expression profile.
This unusual in situ gastrointestinal tract sampling also turned out to be key, because in a number of cases the microbiota composition found in a patient’s stool was only partially correlated with what was found inside the gut. In other words, simply using stool samples as a proxy can be misleading.
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The benefits of probiotics may not be so clear cut
Related articles
Do Probiotics Really Work? Scientific American
Learning Standards
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We don’t always need to make a hypothesis
Newton didn’t frame hypotheses. Why should we?
The success of a grant proposal shouldn’t hinge on whether the research is driven by a hypothesis, especially in the physical sciences.
Scott Milner, Physics Today, 24 Apr 2018
“Not hypothesis driven.” With those words and a fatal grade of “Very Good,” a fellow reviewer on a funding agency panel consigned the proposal we were discussing to the wastebasket. I listened in dismay. Certainly the proposal had hypotheses, though it didn’t have boldface sentences beginning “We hypothesize . . .” as signposts for inattentive readers. Then I remembered the famous words from Isaac Newton’s Principia: Hypotheses non fingo. “I do not frame hypotheses.” If that approach worked for Newton, why do we have such a mania for hypothesis-driven research today?
The emphasis on hypothesis-driven research in proposals is strangely embedded in the scientific community, with no obvious origin in funding agencies. The word hypothesisappears nowhere in the NSF guide to writing and reviewing proposals, and only once in the National Institutes of Health proposal guide. Yet grant-writing experts universally stress that proposals should be built around hypotheses and warn that those not written this way risk rejection as “fishing expeditions.”
In recent years, a few voices in the biosciences community have questioned this exclusive focus on hypothesis-driven research, even as the mania spreads to the physical sciences. Allow me to add my voice. Evaluating grant proposals is hard, but shoehorning every proposal into the language of hypothesis testing benefits neither the prospective grantee nor the evaluator. It can also hinder scientific progress.
Today many high school teachers present the scientific method as synonymous with hypothesis testing. Yet hypotheses are just ideas about how nature works, or what 19th-century scientist and philosopher William Whewell called “happy guesses.” Hypotheses organize our thinking about what might be true, based on what we’ve observed so far. If we have a guess about how nature works, we do experiments to test the guess. In quantitative sciences, the role of theory is to work out consequences of the guess in conjunction with things we know.
Perhaps the most famous hypothesis in all of science is that new species arise from the action of natural selection on random mutations. Charles Darwin based his hypothesis on observations of a few species during his famous voyage to the Galápagos. Charged with predictive power, Darwin’s hypothesis applies to all life, everywhere, at all times. Generations of biologists have tested and built on Darwin’s hypothesis with a vast array of new discoveries. The theory of evolution is now firmly established as the central pillar of biology, as well supported by evidence as any theory in science.
But what would Darwin have written had he been obliged to write a proposal to fund his voyage on HMS Beagle? He didn’t have the hypothesis of natural selection yet—it grew out of the very observations he was setting out to make. If he wrote, truthfully, that “the isolated islands we will visit are excellent natural laboratories to observe what becomes of species introduced to a new locale,” it would be judged by today’s standards as a fishing expedition without a strong hypothesis.
What did Newton hypothesize, despite his protests to the contrary? He identified the right variables for the problem of planetary motion: force and momentum. Newton’s grant proposal might have read: “I hypothesize that momenta and forces are the right variables to describe the motion of the planets. I propose to develop mathematical methods to predict their orbits, which I will compare with existing observations.” That’s not quite a guess about how nature works, but rather the best way to describe motion mathematically, which by its widespread success grew into intuitive concepts of force, momentum, and energy.
Newton wrote hypotheses non fingo because of what he didn’t hypothesize. He wrote in reaction to vortex theories of gravity originated by René Descartes and Christiaan Huygens. They imagined that so-called empty space was actually filled with swirling vortices of invisible particles that swept the planets along in their orbits. The vortex idea is certainly a guess about how gravity works; it’s just not a very helpful guess. The idea of invisible particles that only reveal themselves by effects on unreachably distant planets is too elastic a notion. It’s not specific enough to make testable predictions. In the language of 20th-century philosopher of science Karl Popper, it’s not readily falsifiable.
Newton didn’t provide a just-so story, a fanciful mechanism for why momentum was conserved or how gravity arose. Instead he formulated simple rules that describe how the planets move—and as it turns out, how nearly everything else moves under ordinary circumstances. Powerful as Newton’s insight was, his description of gravity had the unsettling feature of “spooky action at a distance” of the Sun on the planets, and indeed every mass on every other mass. It took another 250 years for an explanation of the physical origin of gravity.
Albert Einstein’s hypothesis about gravity, unlike Newton’s, was mechanistic: Mass curves space, which is slightly elastic; as a result, straight lines bend near massive objects, including the path of light from distant stars passing near the Sun on its way to our telescopes. It took years for Einstein to develop the math to show that Newton’s description, which was consistent with so many observations, was only an approximation—and to make astounding predictions of things that happen to huge masses (collapse into black holes) or when big masses move really fast (gravitational waves).
Setting physical science apart
So why is present-day funding so focused on hypothesis-driven research? A clue is that hypothesis-driven experimental design is best suited to certain influential fields, especially molecular biology and medicine. Researchers in those fields study complicated, irreducible systems (living organisms), have limited experimental probes, and are often forced to work with small data sets. Unavoidably, the most common experimental protocol in these fields is to poke at a complex living system by giving it a drug or chemical and then measuring some indirectly related response. Those experiments live and die by the statistical test. When a scatter plot of stimulus versus response looks like a cloud of angry bees, the formal discipline of testing the null hypothesis is essential.
That is an overly narrow paradigm for what experiments can be. In the physical sciences, we are more able to manipulate and simplify the system of interest. We also enjoy more powerful experimental techniques, in many ways extensions of human senses, allowing us to see into a material, to listen to how it rings in response to being pinged with electromagnetic fields, to feel how it responds to a gentle push on the nanoscale.
When you can do those things, experiments can be so much more than testing whether changing X influences Y with statistical significance. In fact, the history of science can be viewed as the development of new ways to probe nature. The Hubble Space Telescope was not driven by a hypothesis but rather by a desire to see deeper into the universe. Observations from Hubble and other modern telescopes enable new hypotheses about the early universe to be formulated and tested.
Progress in science often depends on advances in how to measure something important. A century after Einstein, ultrasensitive detectors brilliantly confirmed his prediction of gravitational waves. Those detectors rely on clever ideas for using lasers and interferometry to measure extremely tiny changes in the distance between two points on Earth. That work was not hypothesis driven, except in the obvious sense that general relativity predicts gravitational waves. Likewise, progress in quantitative sciences often relies on advances in our ability to compute the consequences of hypotheses that already exist.
Hypotheses are all well and good. But in evaluating research proposals, the key criterion should be: Will the proposed work help us answer an important question or reveal an important new question we should have been asking all along?
Scott Milner is William H. Joyce Chair and Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University.
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How to create a hypothesis
Science starts with people looking at something in our world. Someone may notice patterns. They many wonder why things behave the way that they do. At that point they may make a hypothesis. But what exactly is a “hypothesis”?
Examples:
If you’re repairing a car then a hypothesis would be your tentative explanation for why the car isn’t working. After you do a repair you then test it by seeing if the car now works.
If you’re a detective investigating a crime then your hypothesis is your tentative explanation for who did it and how they did it. After you do a careful investigation of all the evidence you can find, then you see if this hypothesis is supported by the evidence.
In science the word hypothesis has a special meaning – and it probably doesn’t mean what you think it does: “Hypothesis” doesn’t mean “educated guess.”
Vocabular: tentative – something that we accept as true for now, but we’re willing to change our minds if evidence compels us to.
Here’s a better definition
A hypothesis is a tentative explanation for a phenomenon that can be tested by experiment.
A phenomenon is any kind of observable or measurable occurrence in nature.
What are some examples of phenomenon?
* When water gets hot enough it boils
* When any metal gets hot enough, it melts, and then boils.
* When a rock is dropped, gravity pulls it down faster and faster every second
* When you pluck a guitar string, it vibrates and creates a sound
* When you hit any tightly stretched object, it vibrates and creates a sound
———————————————–
Suppose that your car will not start. Create a hypothesis.
“My car does not start because the battery is low.”
Predictions:
* If the headlight switch was left on for a long time, this would result in a battery drain.
* The starter will make a certain type of sound if the battery is dead (many of you will know what I am talking about here.)
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If the battery is dead, the voltage across the battery terminals will be much lower than normal.
Experiment: Test to see if predictions are verified or refuted
* Check whether the lights were left on.
* Insert the key and turn it; listen to the sound of the engine.
* With the right device, check the voltage of the battery.
Evaluate the results:
If predictions are verified, then our hypothesis was confirmed.
If predictions are refuted then our hypothesis must be rejected.
If that’s the case then we come up with another hypothesis, e.g. “The starter is broken”, or “Out of gas”, etc.
How to write a hypothesis
Your hypothesis must be something you can test.
“If I do [this], then [that] will happen.”
If I [give flower seeds an organic fertilizer] then [they will sprout faster than those fed a synthetic fertilizer].
Examples
BAD – Planets move around the Sun at different speeds, because different angels push them. – This is untestable.
GOOD – Planets move around the Sun at different speeds, because at different distances from the Sun, they experience a different amount of pull from the Sun’s gravity. – This is testable.
Detecting Planet X
Social media and internet searches show a plethora of articles on “Planet X”, a vaguely worded term for some supposedly mysterious planet of apparently great importance.There are also conspiracy theories about the government or NASA supposedly hiding “Planet X” for some nefarious reason.
In science, we generally never use this phrase. When a scientist does say “Planet X” he/she merely means “any undetected planet in our solar system”.
Planets beyond Pluto
Scientists never quite said “Pluto isn’t a planet anymore.” That’s a misleading statement which muddies the waters. Here’s what really is going on.
Old view
Solar system is made of one star, several planets, comets, meteors, and gas & dust particles.
More recent, yet now outdated view
Solar system is made of one star, several planets, comets, meteors, and gas & dust particles.
The planets are either terrestrial (“Earth like”) or gas giants.
New view
Solar system is made of one star, several planets, comets, meteors, and gas & dust particles.
The planets are now in categories:
terrestrial, gas giants, ice giants, or dwarf planets.
So all that really happened is that Pluto was moved from one general group, into a more specific group (dwarf planets.)
Here are some of the planets beyond Pluto, in our own solar system, already discovered. For size comparison they are shown as if they are near each other.
Ceres, Charon, Eris, Dysnomia, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake,
This picture shows the sizes of the original three dwarf planets (Eris, Ceres, and Pluto) as compared to Earth. It also shows Pluto’s large moon Charon (and its two small moons Nix and Hydra) and Eris’s moon Dysnomia to scale. The image also shows Earth’s Moon (Luna) and the planet Mars for comparison. None of the distances between objects in this image are to scale. Images courtesy of NASA, ESA, JPL, and A. Feild (STScI).
also see
Credit: Konkoly Observatory/András Pál, Hungarian Astronomical Association/Iván Éder, NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Why is it difficult to find new worlds?
Out there, space gets dark alarmingly fast. Planets twice as far away look 16 times dimmer: The intensity of the sunlight weakens by a factor of four going out and then four times again coming back.
At an orbital distance of 600 astronomical units (an AU is the distance between Earth and the sun), Planet Nine would be 160,000 times dimmer than Neptune is at 30 AU.
At 1,000 AU, it would appear more than 1 million times weaker.
“There’s really a brick wall, basically, at 1,000 AU,” said Kevin Luhman, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University.” That’s partly why laying eyes on the planet has proven so tough.
Why Can’t We Find Planet Nine? Quanta Magazine
Possible large planet orbiting beyond Pluto
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Related articles
Evidence that we’re seeing effects of a 10th planet
Looking for Planet Nine, Astronomers Gaze into the Abyss
How Astronomers Are Going to Find Planet Nine
XKCD Possible Undiscovered Planets Comic: Funny yet scientifically accurate
Swarm of asteroids instead of another plant
No Need for Planet Nine? Small Objects’ Gravity Could Explain Weird Orbits
A New Study Could Explain Away Some Evidence for Planet Nine
Goodbye, Planet Nine! New and better data disfavors the existence of a giant world beyond Neptune.
General resources
Mikebrownsplanets.com
Videos
Science Bulletins: The Hunt for Planet X. American Museum for Natural History.
Astronomers find evidence of a ninth planet in the solar system – Caltech, Robert Hunt, Reuters
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Learning Standards
Next Generation Science Standards
Connections to Nature of Science: Science Models, Laws, Mechanisms, and Theories Explain Natural Phenomena.
A scientific theory is a substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment, and the science community validates each theory before it is accepted. If new evidence is discovered that the theory does not accommodate, then the theory is generally modified in light of this new evidence. (HS-ESS1-2),(HS-ESS1-6)
A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas (2012)
Some objects in the solar system can be seen with the naked eye. Planets in the night sky change positions and are not always visible from Earth as they orbit the sun. Stars appear in patterns called constellations, which can be used for navigation and appear to move together across the sky because of Earth’s rotation…. The solar system consists of the sun and a collection of objects, including planets, their moons, and asteroids that are held in orbit around the sun by its gravitational pull on them. This model of the solar system can explain tides, eclipses of the sun and the moon, and the motion of the planets in the sky relative to the stars.
Graveyard Spiral
In aviation, a graveyard spiral, or death spiral, is a dangerous spiral dive entered into accidentally by a pilot who is not trained or not proficient in instrument flight when flying in instrument meteorological conditions.
Graveyard spiral diagram from Figure 16-5 of the Federal Aviation Administration handbook, “Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge”, 2008 edition
Graveyard spirals are most common in nighttime or poor weather conditions where no horizon exists to provide visual correction for misleading inner-ear cues.
Graveyard spirals are the result of several sensory illusions in aviation which may occur when the pilot is in IMC – Instrument meteorological conditions. That means flying in bad weather, when one can’t see the ground, or even horizon, and thus one needs to fly solely by using instruments.
In such conditions, it is possible to experience spatial disorientation and loses awareness of the aircraft’s attitude. In other words, the pilot loses the ability to judge the orientation of their aircraft due to the brain’s misperception of spatial cues.
The graveyard spiral consists of both physiological and physical components.
What is supposed to happen:
We think of our ear as an organ for hearing, but that’s only one small part of what it does. Your inner ear has a series of fluid filled tubes which sense orientation, acceleration, and up from down. It lets you tell whether you are standing up, or upside down, even if your eyes are closed.
Notice the three sets of fluid-filled tubes. They are like the motion detectors in a Wii controller
Notice the three sets of fluid-filled tubes (semicircular canals)
They are like the motion detectors in a Wii controller. Since they are all perpendicular to each other, they tell your brain about motion in the X, Y or Z direction.
Here you see what happens when you tilt your head down:
How does a pilot get disoriented, and tricked into performing a graveyard spiral?
These three sets of tubes are the equivalent of gyroscopes located in the X, Y and Z plane.
Each corresponds to the rolling, pitching, or yawing motions of an aircraft.
Ideally, as your airplane and body moves, your inner ear sends correct signals to the brain, which then correctly interprets them. Thus you should feel whether you are right side up, or upside down; whether you are banking right, or are flying level.
But this system evolved in our ancestors, for primates who lived on the ground or spent some time in trees; the vast majority of their motion was during day, or during night when the moon was out (which offers plenty of light.) Most motion of our ancestors was done with sight, not blind. But in this case we are dealing with pilots flying in IMC – Instrument meteorological conditions, and evolution didn’t prepare our species for this kind of motion.
So when flying blind, our inner ear & brain don’t work perfectly. They can get tricked. People can end up feeling like they are level, when they are really turning, or even feel right-side-up when they are upside-down! You can read more details here.
There is a solution. A pilot must consciously override our instinct to judge our orientation based on what we feel, and instead rely on the visual cues of horizon, and of the instruments in the airplane, until the brain once again adjusts.
Perception vs reality
Learning Standards
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Cell phone chemistry
Chemistry is everywhere – even in your phones
Article 1: “Digging for rare earths: The mines where iPhones are born. How are these unusual minerals extracted from the ground and why is that process an environmental risk? CNET’s Jay Greene explains.” – from CNet 9/26/12
Digging for rare earths: The mines where iPhones are born
Article 2: Pay dirt: Why rare-earth metals matter to tech (FAQ) It was once an obscure topic only for geologists. But China’s control over rare earth elements used in green- and high-tech equipment is causing alarm as the nation cuts exports.
Pay dirt: Why rare-earth metals matter to tech
Here is the full PDf handout: Periodic table of iPhones (Full PDF handout)
Article 3:
Does cell phone use cause cancer?
Article 4:
Measuring data with smartphone apps
Learning Standards
Massachusetts
ETS3. Technological Systems
7.MS-ETS3-2(MA). Compare the benefits and drawbacks of different communication systems.
7.MS-ETS3-4(MA). Show how the components of a structural system work together to serve a structural function. Provide examples of physical structures and relate their design to their intended use.
College Board Standards for College Success: Science
Objective C.2.1 Periodic Table
Students understand that the periodic table is an organizational tool that can be used for the prediction and classification of the trends and properties of elements.
C-PE.2.1.1 Predict, based on its position in the periodic table, the properties of a given main group element. Properties include appearance, electronegativity, type of bond formed, and ionic charge. Make a claim about the type (metal, nonmetal, metalloid) of the given element. Give examples of other elements that would have similar properties, and explain why they would have similar properties.
Students apply, as well as engage and reason with, the following concepts in the performance expectations:
Properties of an element can be predicted based on its placement in the periodic table. Groups of elements exhibit similar properties with predictable variations; rows of elements have predictable trends.
Elements are often classified as metals, nonmetals and metalloids
AAAS Benchmarks
All matter is made up of atoms, which are far too small to see directly through a microscope. 4D/M1a
The atoms of any element are like other atoms of the same element, but are different from the atoms of other elements. 4D/M1b*
There are groups of elements that have similar properties, including highly reactive metals, less-reactive metals, highly reactive nonmetals (such as chlorine, fluorine, and oxygen), and some almost completely nonreactive gases (such as helium and neon). 4D/M6a
CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards
CD.L2-07 Describe what distinguishes humans from machines, focusing on human intelligence
versus machine intelligence and ways we can communicate.
CD.L2-08 Describe ways in which computers use models of intelligent behavior (e.g., robot motion,
speech and language understanding, and computer vision).
CD.L3A-01 Describe the unique features of computers embedded in mobile devices and vehicles
(e.g., cell phones, automobiles, airplanes).
CD.L3A-10 Describe the major applications of artificial intelligence and robotics.
Common Core ELA. WHST.6-8.1 Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content.
Why does science matter?
The following has been excerpted from “Science matters because it works”, by The Logic of Science website, 4/23/17.
______________________
Why should you support science? Because it works! It’s crazy to me that I even have to say that, but this is where we are as a society. Various forms and degrees of science-denial are running rampant; attacks on science are being disseminated from the highest levels. Indeed, it has gotten to the point that scientists feel compelled to take to the streets to march for science and remind everyone of the fundamental fact that science works, and is unparalleled in its ability to inform us about reality and improve our world.
Just look around you. Everything that you see was brought to you by science.
- Batteries that power your electronic devices are a result of scientific advances in chemistry, as are the plastics that make up seemingly everything in our modern world.
- Planes that let you travel the world in mere hours were produced by our understanding of physics.
- Medicines that have doubled the human life expectancy came from biology, physiology, etc. Diseases that once claimed millions of lives each year are now almost unheard of thanks to advances in immunology, virology, etc.
- Even on topics where people frequently criticize science, like cancer, there have been great advances. Our ability to fight many cancers is improving, and, at the risk of appealing to anecdotes, I personally have family members who recovered from cancers that were untreatable just a few decades ago.
- Our entire modern world only exists because science works. Medicine, computers, cell phones, satellites, plastic, etc. all exist because science works.
Nevertheless, here we are, in a reality where some politicians [refer to global warming as a hoax], where countless celebrities go around promoting all manner of unscientific woo… a world where even a notion as ridiculous as believing that the earth is flat can enjoy a resurgence of popularity.
… At this point, inevitably lots of people are going to get offended and respond with something to the effect of, “I’m not anti-science, but…I disagree with the way that science is being done, I think that massive corporations are buying off scientists, I have anecdotes that don’t match the science, scientists have been wrong in the past, scientists are close-minded, etc.,”
Those aren’t valid responses [because] science is a method, and it either works, or it doesn’t. You can’t pick and choose when you want to accept it and when you want to reject it.
This brings me to two important points. First, the people who make, “I am not anti-science but…” arguments are nearly always people with no experience in science. They are people who are projecting their preconceptions onto a method that they know nothing about.
When people say that “scientists are just going along with the dogma of their fields” they are revealing how little they actually understand about how science operates… No one gets funding for blindly going along with something that everyone already knows. You only get funding for pushing boundaries and chasing novel ideas. Indeed, every great scientist was great precisely because they discredited the views of their day.
Arguments arise when science conflicts with someone’s personal beliefs.
For example, some people are happy enough to have science make more efficient batteries, predict tomorrow’s weather, cure their illnesses, etc., but the instant that it says that burning fossil fuels is bad, they turn on science and invent fanciful conspiracies, appeal to a minority of fringe researchers, cite discredited papers, etc.
Conversely, droves of people stand behind the science of climate change 100%, but when the same scientific method says that GMOs are safe, suddenly we are back in conspiracy land.
That’s not how this works… When thousands of papers conducted by countless scientists from all over the planet arrive at the same conclusion, you don’t get to reject that conclusion just because you don’t like it.
A final group of dissidents take things even further and directly question the validity of science itself. They claim that decades of research on vaccines is discredited by the simplistic notion that “mothers know best.” They ignore the scientific impossibility of homeopathy in favor of personal anecdotes. They insist that the fact that something has been used for thousands of years is more important than the fact that numerous studies have shown that it’s nothing but a placebo, and they embrace all manner of nonsense about energy fields, crystals, etc.
All of that is discredited by the obvious fact that science works: We had anecdotes and appeals to antiquity (or popularity, or maternal instincts) for thousands of years, but they got us nowhere. Science is the thing that allowed us to tell which of those anecdotes were based on causal relationships and which ones were based on spurious correlations,
Science is the thing that allowed us to know which natural remedies actually worked (e.g. aspirin) and which ones were hogwash. Further, science is the thing that let us improve on nature and synthesize purer and more concentrated forms of natural chemicals, as well as making medicines that aren’t even found in nature. For example, if you have diabetes and take insulin, you get that insulin not from nature, but rather from a GMO that was produced by science. Similarly, if you need surgery, you are going to want to be knocked out using the best anesthetic that science has to offer, rather than eating some herbs.
The history of tobacco actually illustrates this well. Tobacco was used medicinally for centuries by Native Americans, it was supported by countless anecdotes, it was 100% natural, mothers thought it was best for their children, etc. Today, however, we know that not only does it fail to cure illnesses, but it is extremely carcinogenic.
Why do we know that? Because of science! Careful and systematic studies revealed that all of those anecdotes, maternal instincts, etc. were wrong.
Now, someone may write a comment about the time that some scientists were paid off by Big Tobacco to support smoking, or the doctors who thought smoking was safe, but those are distortions: Sure, there was a transition period when evidence was still being accumulated and scientists and doctors were not convinced. Nothing in science changes overnight. But that period didn’t last because science prevailed.
Similarly, there were a minority of scientists that were paid off, and tobacco companies put tons of money and effort into creating the illusion that there was no scientific evidence that smoking was dangerous, but that was a smoke screen created by the tobacco companies, and their efforts ultimately failed.
This is the same thing that is happening today on many issues.
- The science on climate change, for example, is extremely clear. It is supported by thousands of studies and is agreed upon by virtually all climatologists. Nevertheless, fossil fuel companies have created an illusion of controversy. They have a handful of scientists that they publicize strongly, and they pour tons of money into promoting the notion that the science isn’t settled.
- The anti-vaccine movement is the same thing. The science for vaccines is solid, but they have a handful of “experts” and pump so much money into it that it appears that there is a conflict, even though this is a settled issue among medical experts.
- Similarly, big organic companies pump untold millions of dollars into opposing GMOs and making it appear that the science isn’t settled, even though nearly 2,000 studies have conclusively shown that GMOs are safe for humans and no worse (or even better) for the environment than traditional crops.
If you want life-saving medical breakthroughs to continue, then you need to support funding for agencies like the NIH. If you want to benefit from an enhanced understanding of the universe, then you need to support funding for things like the NSF. If you understand how many technological wonders have come from the space program and want more technological advances, then you need to support funding for NASA. I could go on, but hopefully you get my point. The way that I see it, our society is at something of a crossroads, and either we will fight for science, support it, and move forward because of it, or we will reject it, downplay it, and ignore it, in which case, at best, we will stagnate and halt our progress, and at worst, we will move backwards (e.g., increased disease outbreaks as vaccination rates fall). The choice between those two options seems pretty obvious to me.
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This website is educational. Materials within it are being used in accord with the Fair Use doctrine, as defined by United States law.
§107. Limitations on Exclusive Rights: Fair Use. Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phone records or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use, the factors to be considered shall include: the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. (added pub. l 94-553, Title I, 101, Oct 19, 1976, 90 Stat 2546)
Proteins
What are proteins? Surprise – they are chemicals!
They’re made of smaller chemical units called amino acids.
Here we see 2 amino acids joining together to make a mini-protein.
Some atoms are left over: 1 O and 2 H.
They float off as an H2O molecules (water – which is another chemical)
Imagine getting many amino acids.
Then they bond to each other, making a chain.
Then it folds up into a 3D shape – that’s a protein.
Where do our body’s proteins come from?
We eat food with proteins – vegetarian or meat – and break them down into individual amino acids.
Then our DNA instructs our cells to attach them in a new sequence.
What is their job?
Some float in the lipid bilayer (cell membrane)
They control which molecules enter or leave the cell.
Some are hormones (chemical messengers)
They’re released in one part of the body and travel to another part.
from Mar Vista Animal Medical Center, marvistavet.com
Cell organelles are made of proteins and lipids
Hair and nails are made of protein
Bone isn’t mysterious – it is a matrix of protein fibers and minerals
Antibodies are a special type of protein; they have a shape which attaches to bacteria or viruses.
Chemical reactions in our cells, by themselves, are too slow.
So some proteins are specially shaped to speed of those reactions.
Such proteins are called enzymes.
from dynamicscience.com.au
Skin pigments are from colorful proteins.
Eye pigments are from colorful proteins.
Learning Standards
HS-LS1-6. Construct an explanation based on evidence that organic molecules are primarily composed of six elements, where carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms may combine with nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus to form monomers that can further combine to form large carbon-based macromolecules.
Clarification Statements:
• Monomers include amino acids, mono- and disaccharides, nucleotides, and fatty acids.
• Organic macromolecules include proteins, carbohydrates (polysaccharides), nucleic acids, and lipids.
Disciplinary Core Idea Progression Matrix: PS1.A Structure of matter
That matter is composed of atoms and molecules can be used to explain the properties of substances, diversity of materials, how mixtures will interact, states of matter, phase changes, and conservation of matter.
Boardgames, Eurogames, and Science Oh my!
Eurogames – also called designer games, or German style boards games – are all the rage. Adults play them for fun at home, with friends, and even at board game cafes.
Eurogames are different from abstract strategy games, like Chess, Go, Pente, Checkers or Othello. They are also different from typical American board games, which usually are based on conflict between players, eliminating people from a game, and have a significant degree of luck.
Eurogames are tabletop gaming experiences, with artfully designed physical components. They emphasize strategy and downplay luck. Conflict is downplayed, as these games keep all the players in until it ends.
We can even use them to teach science and history.
What subjects can we use these games for?
Biology & Ecology
Evolution, by North Star Games.
Lets you create and adapt their own species in a dynamic ecosystem with hungry predators and limited resources. Traits like Hard Shell and Horns will protect you from Carnivores, while a Long Neck will help you get food that others cannot reach. With over 12,000 different species to create, every game becomes a different adventure. So gather your friends around the table and see who will best adapt their species to eat, multiply and thrive!
Dominant species by GMT games (Evolution by natural selection)
This game recreates the encroachment of an Ice Age and what that entails for the living creatures trying to adapt to the slowly-changing Earth. Each player assumes the role of one of six major Animal groups – Mammal, Reptile, Bird, Amphibian, Arachnid or Insect. Each begins the game in a state of natural balance with regards to one another.
But that won’t last: It is indeed “survival of the fittest.” Through wily Action Pawn placement, players will strive to become Dominant on as many different Terrain tiles as possible… Players will be aided in these endeavors via Growth, Migration and Domination actions, among others. All of this eventually leads to the end game – the final ascent of the Ice Age – where the player with the most Victory Points will have his Animal crowned the Dominant Species.
Cytosis: A Cell Biology, Board Game
Players take turns placing workers on available organelles within a human cell in order to collect resources (such as Carbohydrates or ATP!) or take actions (such as purchasing Cell Component cards or translating mRNA into Proteins.)
Players use their resources to build Enzymes, Hormones, and Hormone Receptors and also to help detoxify the cell – all of which score health points. The player with the most health points at the end of the game wins!
Linkage: A DNA Card Game by Genius Games
In Linkage, each player links RNA cards side by side to build their own RNA strand, attempting to copy the shared DNA Template. Players must choose between BUILDING on their own RNA strand, REPAIRING their RNA strand, or Mutating an opposing strand. Players earn points based upon how accurately their RNA strands match the DNA template.
Peptide: A Protein Building Card Game, by Genius Games
Players make thoughtful selections from a number of openly available Organelle Cards creating an interactive open‐card‐ drafting mechanic. Selected Organelle Cards award players with either resources or actions. Each player uses their resources and actions to link Amino Acid cards side‐by‐side, in an effort to build the protein chain worth the most points!
Ecology and Environment
Planet, by blue orange
A world is taking shape in the palm of your hands. Take on the role of super beings and compete to create perfect worlds with the ideal conditions for wildlife to flourish. In this very unique game, each player’s board is a 12-sided 3-dimensional planet core.
Throughout 12 turns, select landscape tiles representing oceans, deserts, mountains or frozen lands, and arrange them on your planet to create the best ecosystems. Win Animal Cards while fulfilling your own ‘’Natural Habitat’’ objective and create the most populated planet in the universe.
Photosynthesis, by blue orange
“Take your trees through their life-cycle, from seedling to full bloom to rebirth, and earn points as their leaves collect energy from the revolving sun’s rays. Carefully pick where you sow and when you grow, as trees in the shadows are blocked from light, and from points.”
Evolution: Climate (Stand-Alone)
North Star Games
Evolution: climate takes the evolution to the next level by introducing an ever-changing and often unforgiving climate into the mix. Give your species a long neck to get food that no one else can reach, evolve a coat of heavy fur for protection against the bitter ice age, or feed at night with nocturnal to avoid the heat of the cruel desert sun. With amazing new traits, extraordinary new challenges, and over 200,000 ways to adapt your species, evolution: climate is the most diverse, strategic, and rewarding evolution version yet.
Biology: Diseases, Viruses
Pathogenesis, by WIBAI Games
Pathogenesis is a deck building game in which players take the role of bacterial pathogens attacking the human body. The game was developed in partnership with scientific illustrator somersault1824. Based on real science and the mechanics were created to mimic how real biology works.
Pandemic, by Z-Man Games
Four diseases have broken out in the world and it is up to a team of specialists in various fields to find cures for these diseases before mankind is wiped out. Players must work together playing to their characters’ strengths and planning their strategy of eradication before the diseases overwhelm the world with ever-increasing outbreaks.
For example the Operation Specialist can build research stations which are needed to find cures for the diseases. The Scientist needs only 4 cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal 5. But the diseases are out breaking fast and time is running out: the team must try to stem the tide of infection in diseased areas while also towards cures. A truly cooperative game where you all win or you all lose.
Plague, Inc.
A strategic game of infection, evolution and extinction for 1-4 players lasting 60-90 minutes. Each person takes on the role of a deadly disease competing against their friends in a battle to be the first to infect and wipe out the world!
Virulence An Infectious Card Game
by Genius Games
Learn about viruses from a science game! Play as a virus to take over the host cell and collect helicals, icosahedrals, genomes, spherical envelopes just like in biology class.
Physics
Antimatter matters
An elbowfish game. Teaches modern physics
Explore the strange and wonderful world of quantum physics, where a handful of tiny particles interact to form the atoms that make up ourselves and everything we experience in the world around us. As the lead scientist on an orbiting space laboratory, you are in charge of humanity’s first attempt to construct ordinary matter from individually captured elementary particles.
Encounter hazards like quantum entanglement, antimatter collisions and solar flares messing up your instruments, while facing the actions of other player-scientists racing toward the same goal. Will you be the first to collect the right particles and successfully build an atom? The game balances strategic choices with interactions with other players and the unpredictable nature of the universe. Simple rules-10 minutes to learn.
Visual design uses double-coding to make it accessible to gamers with color-blindness and to those with limited vision or fine-motor skill.
Tesla vs. Edison, by Artana
You control a start-up company in the early days of the U.S. electric industry. In the beginning you only have your lead inventor, some shares of preferred stock, and some money. Over the course of the game you will be hiring other famous technicians and business people to work for you. Each luminary or inventor has their own special abilities.
There are four focuses in the game: claiming electric projects on the map, advancing up a tech tree, investing in public relations to improve public opinion of your company or the technologies it uses, and buying and selling stock on a dynamic market.
Physics Laws: Discovering STEM – Inertia, Friction, Circular Motion and Energy Conservation Building Set
Laser Maze, by Thinkfun
Board games for physics classroom from Boardgamegeek.com
Games listed on educationaltoolsportal
Chemistry
Chemistry Fluxx (Looney Labs)
Learn how elements combine and interact as you try to match the current goal and win. Students and adults can both play and remain competitive. Elements are listed with their Atomic number and their bohr Atomic model, and are color coded by Type: alkaline earth metals, transition metals, noble gases, etc.
Covalence: A Molecule Building Game, by Genius Games
In covalence, players work together to accurately build a number of secret Organic molecules. One player has knowledge of the molecules, while all other players must deduce what these secret molecules are, based upon a limited number of clues given to them by the knower.
Compounded, by Greater Than Games
Compounded is a game about building chemical compounds through careful management of elements, a fair bit of social play and trading, and just a bit ok luck. In Compounded, players take on the roles of lab managers, hastily competing to complete the most compounds before they are completed by others – or destroyed in an explosion.
Ion: A Compound Building Card Game
Genius Games
players select from a number of available ions and noble gases, with the goal of forming neutrally charged compounds or sets of noble gases. Players score additional points for creating compounds found on the goal cards each round.
Valence Plus
by Science Ninjas
Build elite teams out of elements from the periodic table to find molecules and win the game! But be careful – opponents might attack you with acid squads, reducing your bases to worthless salt and water! It’s all here – molecule formation, acids and bases, chemical reactions, even advanced concepts like secondary oxidation states.
Engineering
Gizmos, by CMON
Players look to create the most magnificent of machines, taking on the role of inventors at the Great Science Fair. By utilizing four different types of energy marbles, taken from the innovative 3D marble dispenser, they will purchase and construct new additions to their Gizmos. The best Gizmos will be able to chain-reaction off of new additions as they’re made, giving players multiple results from taking a single action.
Engino Discovering STEM Mechanics Gears & Worm Drives
Discover how gears can reduce or increase speed and learn how Worm drives are used to change rotational speed. Build 12 working models such as a helicopter, vise, hand drill, scissor lift, and more.
Polydron Engineer, hand2mind
Students build and explore various shapes, enabling them to see links between mathematics, design, and technology. Construct realistic models that demonstrate engineering principals and the workings of simple machines. Comes with triangles, squares, rectangles, gears, work cards, lesson plans, and more.
History of science & the scientific method
Progress: Evolution of Technology, NSKN Games.
Each player takes his civilization from early antiquity and learns various technologies, moving progressively to the Middle Ages, the Industrial Revolution, and Modern Times and ending with today’s Internet or Social Welfare.
The 210 technology cards in the game are divided into three ages (Ancient, Middle Ages, Industrial) and three types (Military, Science and Culture). With every advancement on a path, you gain easier access to its more advanced technologies and you’ll end up opening the door to the next age.
The New Science, Conquistador games
In The New Science you play as Isaac Newton, Galileo or one of three other great minds from the scientific revolution in 17th century Europe. You are in a tense intellectual race with your opponents, attempting to publish your remarkable scientific discoveries first in order to gain prestige, be seen as the finest mind of your era, and consequently be appointed the first President of the Royal Society.
You achieve this by first researching, then experimenting on, and finally publishing new discoveries. But you need to carefully decide what and when to publish: while the only way to win is publishing to gain prestige, all other scientists will read your books and gain the same knowledge, costing you a key advantage. A fast-playing worker placement and area control game for 2-5 players.
Astronomy & Space
Xtronaut: The Game of Solar System Exploration
by Xtronaut Enterprises
Captures the real-world science, technology, and challenges of planetary exploration. Easy to learn, gives 2 – 4 players ages 7 and up the chance to develop space missions, build authentic rocket systems, and explore the solar system. Designed by NASA scientists. Exposes players to space science concepts related to planning and undertaking a real space mission.
Terraforming Mars Board Game, by Stronghold Games
In the 2400s, mankind begins to terraform the planet Mars. Giant corporations, sponsored by the World Government on Earth, initiate huge projects to raise the temperature, the oxygen level, and the ocean coverage until the environment is habitable. As terraforming progresses, more and more people will immigrate from Earth to live on the Red Planet. Experience ‘Science Future’ as you compete to be the most successful corporation on Mars.
Mad Science
SPECTRE: The Board Game from Modiphius Entertainment
Compete to become Number 1 of the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion (SPECTRE)
Are you simply in the game to acquire gold bullion, or are your aspirations more philosophical, safe in the knowledge that the world would be better off with you running it
Implementation
Most students need an entire class period of playing the game in order to fully grasp the concepts and strategy. Using games would thus be most productive if they were scheduled as part of the curriculum, with several sequential days set aside for playing the game/class experience.
Learning standards
The mechanics of the Nazaré Canyon wave
The Portuguese town of Nazaré can deliver 100-foot (30.4 meters) waves.
How can we explain the Nazaré Canyon geomorphologic phenomenon?
In the 16th century, Portuguese people and army protected Nazaré from pirate attacks, in the Promontório do Sítio, the cliff-top area located 110-meter above the beach.
A screenshot from the short film “Nazaré – Entre a Terra e o Mar”, showing what the canyon would look like if the sea were very clear and transparent.
Today, from this unique site, it is possible to watch the power of the Atlantic Ocean. If you face the salt water from the nearby castle, you can easily spot the famous big waves that pump the quiet village.
What are the mechanics of the Nazaré Canyon? Is there a clear explanation for the size of the local waves? First of all, let us underline the most common swell direction in the region: West and Northwest.
A few miles off the coast of Nazaré, there are drastic differences of depth between the continental shelf and the canyon. When swell heads to shore, it is quickly amplified where the two geomorphologic variables meet causing the formation of big waves.
Furthermore, a water current is channeled by the shore – from North to South – in the direction of the incoming waves, additionally contributing to wave height. Nazaré holds the Guinness World Record for the largest wave ever surfed.
In conclusion, the difference of depths increase wave height, the canyon increases and converges the swell and the local water current helps building the biggest wave in the world. Add a perfect wind speed and direction and welcome to Nazaré.
The Mechanics of the Nazaré Canyon Wave:
1. Swell refraction: difference of depths between the continental shelf and the canyon change swell speed and direction;
2. Rapid depth reduction: wave size builds gradually;
3. Converging wave: the wave from the canyon and the wave from the continental shelf meet and form a higher one;
4. Local water channel: a seashore channel drives water towards the incoming waves to increase their height;
a) Wave fronts, b) Head of the Nazaré Canyon, c) Praia do Norte
Article from Surfer Today, surfertoday.com/surfing/8247-the-mechanics-of-the-nazare-canyon-wave
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This section from telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/10411252/How-a-100-foot-wave-is-created.html
Currents through the canyon combine with swell driven by winds from further out in the Atlantic to create waves that propagate at different speeds.
They converge as the canyon narrows and drive the swell directly towards the lighthouse that sits on the edge of Nazaré.
From the headwall to the coastline, the seabed rises gradually from around 32 feet to become shallow enough for the swell to break. Tidal conditions also help to increase the wave height.
According to Mr McNamara’s website charting the project he has been conducting, the wave produced here are “probably the biggest in all the world” for sandy a sand sea bed.
On Monday the 80 mile an hour winds created by the St Jude’s Atlantic storm whipped up the swell to monstrous proportions, leading to waves of up to 100 feet tall.
The previous day as the storm gathered pace, waves of up to 80 feet high formed and British surfer Andrew Cotton managed to ride one of these.
Image from How a 100 foot wave is created, The Telegraph (UK),
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This website is educational. Materials within it are being used in accord with the Fair Use doctrine, as defined by United States law.
§107. Limitations on Exclusive Rights: Fair Use. Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phone records or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use, the factors to be considered shall include: the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. (added pub. l 94-553, Title I, 101, Oct 19, 1976, 90 Stat 2546)
KaiserScience 
