Author: Christina M. H. Powell, PhD
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Why is the sky blue?
Light appears white but is made up of all the colors of the rainbow. Sunlight is an electromagnetic wave that causes the charged particles within air molecules to oscillate up and down as sunlight passes through the atmosphere. These oscillating particles cause sunlight to scatter in all different directions. The blue component of sunlight has […]
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Merry Christmas!
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” Luke 2:14 Please sign up for my blog at questioningyourdoubts.com for 2014 – new URL to reflect the title of my book: Questioning Your Doubts: A Harvard PhD Explores Challenges to Faith Thank you! May you have a wonderful day celebrating […]
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Paying Attention to Product and Process
Many scientists, especially biochemists, love to cook when they are not spending time in the laboratory. After all, a recipe bears resemblance to a protocol, some measuring cups look like beakers, and a creative dish is just an edible experiment. Whenever I have the opportunity, I enjoy spending time at the lab bench known as […]
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What Lab Glassware Taught Me About Community
As a graduate student working in a research lab, I quickly came to appreciate the person who washed and prepared the glassware. If we ran out of clean graduated cylinders, beakers, and flasks, all the experiments for the day would need to be put on hold. Furthermore, we had to place our trust in the […]
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Questions Jesus Asked in His Ministry
Sometimes people get the false impression that faith means learning the right answers. However, Jesus understood the importance of asking the right questions. Here are a few examples. Questions of Priorities The priorities I would write on paper and the priorities my choices write on the hours of my life sometimes begin to differ in […]
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Winning in the Twelfth Inning
How can you not be romantic about baseball? – Billy Beane Last Saturday, my family had the opportunity to attend a baseball game at Fenway Park. For many years, I worked in a research lab across the street from Fenway, so taking the subway into the city brought back memories. You could not have asked […]
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Constructing Newton’s Bridge
Isaac Newton, one of the most influential scientists who ever lived, also was a Christian theologian. He once said, “We build too many walls and not enough bridges.” His quote resonates with me because bridges filled the landscape of my childhood. I spent the first eighteen years of my life growing up in “The City […]
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Patterns Likely to Lead to Success
I enjoy sports on a recreational rather than competitive level, yet I often find inspiration for my non-athletic goals by observing the practices of top athletes. Even elite athletes occasionally experience bad days, sustain injuries, and perform under their potential for a game or a short stretch of a season. Yet, successful athletes know how to return to […]
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Three Great Easter Questions
While preparing for the Easter holiday, I began to think about the great questions contained in the Biblical account of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, celebrated by Christians on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. These questions quickly get to the heart of the Christian message and remain relevant even today. How would you answer the […]
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Which Butterfly Caused the Tornado?
The public expects science to deliver discoveries that provide increasingly precise answers about our world. Yet some scientific discoveries suggest inherent limits to scientific knowledge. One example is chaos theory, popularized as the “butterfly effect.” The butterfly effect is a simple insight first extracted from the complex science of meteorology by Edward Lorentz in 1961 […]