The melting of this substance releases methane into the environment, which causes additional global warming.
What is permafrost?
100
Many critics say that this has raised food prices in Mexico, increased the use of fertilizer, and spurred farmers to put land into production that was once set aside for conservation.
What is corn ethanol?
100
Often used to improve chemical reactions by lowering the energy of activation barrier.
What is a catalyst?
100
This term refers to one billionth of a meter.
What is nanometer?
100
Professor Bailey, who led the effort to draft the first Pure Food and Drug Laws in Kansas, created this song for the KU Science Club.
What is the "rock chalk" chant?
200
This substance makes up just 9% of manmade greenhouse gases, but it has 86 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.
What is methane?
200
The typical internal combustion engines loses this much fuel energy as heat.
What is two-thirds?
200
Raw material should be this rather than depleting wherever technically and economically practicable.
What is renewable?
200
The prefix “nano” comes from this Greek word.
What is dwarf?
200
Known as “The Big Dipper,” this 7-foot tall legend started his super-stardom in Lawrence, Kansas in the late 1950s.
What is Wilt Chamberland?
300
Data shows that atmospheric concentrations of important heat-trapping gases have increased substantially since this time period.
What is the industrial revolution?
300
Around half of the cost of electric vehicles come from this component.
What is the battery?
300
This refers to the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated by a person, organization, event or product during a specific time frame.
What is carbon footprint?
300
This special metal has been used throughout history from Egyptians to American settlers to prevent bacteria in food and wounds. Today, ultra-tiny versions of it are being used to keep socks stink-free.
What is nanosilver?
300
In 1905, two KU chemistry professors, Hamilton P. Cady and David F. McFarland, made this momentous discovery after analyzing a gas from Dexter, Kansas, southeast of Wichita.
What is helium?
400
This material absorbs the majority of incoming solar energy to the Earth.
What is the oceans?
400
This originates from the combustion of fossil fuels and reacts to produce acid rain.
What is sulfur dioxide? OR What is nitrogen dioxide?
400
This describes the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic and other requirements of present and future generations.
What is sustainability, or sustainable?
400
This material has a wide range of applications, from paint to sunscreen to food coloring, acting not only as a whitener but also for its UV resistant properties.
What is titanium dioxide?
400
As the sole survivor from a great battle on the Great Plains, this famous animal can be seen 150 years after its death at the KU Natural History Museum through the art of taxidermy.
What is the horse known as Comanche?
500
Calculations made in the late 1800s by the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius are associated with this phenomenon.
What is the greenhouse effect?
500
Fatty acid methyl esters (or FAME’s) are created by this chemical reaction.
What is transesterification?
500
This new research area studies nature's best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell is an example.
What is biomimicry (or biomimetrics)?
500
At just one atom thick, this flat sheet of carbon is both the thinnest and strongest material every made and is the basis for the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics.
What is graphene?
500
Not many undergraduates enter the University of Kansas having already achieved worldwide fame. But in 1930, Clyde Tombaugh, a 24-year-old amateur astronomer from Burdett, Kansas, became famous for identifying this object in our solar system.