How Scientifically Literate Are You?

With natural gas at $4 and crude oil around $90, it is indeed oil that most fracking is going after. The fracking of 6 or 8 years ago in North Texas and Pennsylvania found so much natural gas that we North Americans are oversupplied with it at present.Gas isn't even a welcome byproduct in some situations, say, in places in North Dakota. There aren't pipelines yet to collect it, so many operators either burn it (legally) or just let it escape (illegally).

Percy, I'm not at all sure "nano-" was in use back in 1960-something. I vaguely remember "millimicro-" as a prefix back then - and SI units were only adopted in 1960, anyway. They sure weren't taught in my high school.

I will resist telling you how that argon made its way into our atmosphere. You won't believe me anyway.

Attoparsecs. That's the unit!!!

Used by civil engineers to measure rates of travel of substances in municipal sewer plants.....

And the ounces aren't the same size, either.....

Don't go measuring a two-by-four expecting it to be two by four, though. You'll be disappointed.