• Mohammad Mohd Sabri (B.Sc., ME, IUPUI), “Diamonds” by Rihanna

The song that I chose for my Nano music presentation is Diamonds by Rihanna and the lyric  that caught my attention was “shine bright like a diamond.” First of all, let’s compare the brightness of a diamond with the brightness of a flame. The famous scientist, Michael Faraday said “you have the glittering beauty of gold and silver, and still higher luster of jewels, like the ruby and diamond; but none of these rival the brilliancy and beauty of flame. What diamond can shine like the flame?” He was contrasting the brightness of the diamonds to flame. The brightness of diamonds doesn’t hold a candle brightness of a candle flame. Well, diamonds do not shine in the dark because it needs light. However, the hydrocarbons within the flame start getting burned at the base as they travel up the flame (due to heat rising, presumably) they form the types of carbon. In this case, the formation of tiny nanodiamonds is being produced at a rate of 1.5 million per second. Those continue up to the flame while the combustion continues, and they burned up in the flame and are released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. The flame itself uses the help of many particles of nanodiamonds to obtain its shine although it manages to create a light of its own. It is ironic because at the time Michael Faraday didn’t know that nanodiamonds play an important role in candle flames and their brightness. Also, ­it is best if Rihanna changes the lyric from “shine bright like a diamond” to “shine bright like nanodiamonds” since flame gives out light with the help of millions of nanodiamond particles that are being created in the process of the flame. These clusters of nanodiamonds give up a much brighter light than the light of a single diamond.

 

Listen to "Diamonds" on Youtube and keep signing "shine bright like nanodiamonds"!

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• Nicole Rivera (B.Sc., ME, IUPUI), "Thunderclouds" by LSD

I chose the song Thunderclouds by the group LSD as the name of this song reminded me of electron clouds. Two lyrics that stood out to me were the word “thunderclouds” and “all I need is one”. Thunder clouds are full of energy that can be released by emitting lightning, just as electrons emit photons to release their excess energy. An electron needs a photon to go to the excited state which can be related to the lyric “all I need is one”! 

 

Listen to "Thunderclouds" on Youtube and think about the electron and photon interactions!

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• Samantha Buczek (PhD, MSE, Drexel), "Madiba Riddim" by Drake:

The song I chose for my presentation was Madiba Riddim by Drake and the lyric that caught my attention was “my heart is way too frozen to get broken”. Although we all understand what this line means figuratively, I wanted to show why it does not make sense from a material science perspective. To do this I referred to a property known as the glass transition temperature (Tg). The Tg describes the temperature region where a polymer, such as a collagen (Tg ~ 35°C) that makes up your heart, transitions from hard, glassy material to a soft, rubbery material. There are a lot of proteins and fats that will increase its thermal capacity and make it harder to freeze than pure collagen; however, at low enough temperatures it will freeze and become more susceptible to fracture. Therefore, I took the liberty of revising the lyrics for Drake: “my heart is way too…above the glass transition temperature of collagen to fracture brittlely.” 

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• Kathleen Maleski (PhD, MSE, Drexel), "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons: 

Radioactivity is often viewed with a negative connotation in the scientific world due to the adverse health effects it can impose. In my Music Festival presentation, I chose the song “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons. In my opinion, the lyrics portray two significant ages: the Old Age (the unstable age) and the New Age (the stable age). The Old Age lyrics are degraded, signifying the unstable quality of this time and supporting the negative meaning of the word "radioactivity". The lyrics are made of words such as ash, dust, chemicals, and apocalypse. In contrast, the lyrics transform throughout the song to words that are alive, bright and motivating, suggesting the birth of something new from the ashes of something old. 

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• Patrick Urbankowski (PhD, MSE, Drexel), "Crystalline" by Björk: 

This song came from Björk album Biophilia, and each song on this album is related to science (biology, physics, geology, astronomy, and in this case, materials science). In this song, the lyrics, she mentions crystals growing, in Earth's core, and later mentions quartz. 

So, with this presentation, I aimed to investigate whether quartz is growing in Earth's core. The core must have cooled by 1000 °C since its formation 4.5 billion years ago, an amount of cooling that would be necessary to sustain the geomagnetic field unless there was another source of energy available. The composition of  Earth's core is mostly iron and nickel, however, researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology have also predicted trace elements of other elements, including silicon and oxygen, to be present. 

Researchers have simulated the pressures and temperatures at Earth's core to determine if phases like quartz, SiO2, can exist in the core. Determining that quartz can be present could solve the paradox of an energy source of  Earth's magnetic field. 

This album is a great example of fusing together art and science, and it was the artist's goal to educate listeners about different branches of science through these tracks. Furthermore, each song on the album was released as an interactive iPad app with a related science demo for each track, the first album to ever do such a thing.