This blog post, by microbiologist Erin Bromage, just appeared in my inbox. The author goes into detail, in plain English, about how Covid-19 infection happens and how likely it is to occur in a variety of environments, including restaurants, sanctuaries, stores, and outdoors. The Risks – Know Them – Avoid Them Here is a typical […]
Where You Get Your News Affects Global Warming
What you read might make the earth warmer. To be more precise, what you read will have an impact on the laws that your government passes to regulate business and environmental concerns. Public support for fixing the problems causing climate change is plummeting while scientific consensus about the problems and solutions is coalescing. The “big […]
Are Psycho-Active Drugs Ineffective and Dangerous?
There seems to be mounting evidence that psycho-active drugs are no more effective than placebos; that they may cause real harm; and that the belief that many mental illnesses are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain has never been proven but has been forwarded by the drug manufacturers. I was most persuaded by Irving […]
Last Shuttle Launch
Robert Scoble got a beautiful photo of Atlantis’ final launch, STS-135 I am very proud of what we have done and sad to reach the end of this era.
Highlights of 350 Years of Science
The Royal Society, as in The Royal Society of the UK, has been around for 350 years and is celebrating, in part, by making available highlights of scientific papers on its Trailblazing web site. It is a nicely done Flash timeline giving you easy access to papers such as Capt. James Cook’s report on preventing […]
Safety Drivers
The reactions to the mid-air collision last month between an airplane and a helicopter over the Hudson River in New York City have me thinking about safety in airplanes and safety in cars. For those unfamiliar with the details, just before noon on August 8, a six person airplane and an eight person helicopter came […]
Programming Feeds the Mad Scientist
I have been writing a new program, having a ball doing it, and it has brought to consciousness something which I have not thought about for years: There is a bit of Dr. Henry Frankenstein in me. I love to create things which do stuff autonomously and, when I create these things, bigger is definitely […]
Cool Science: Ruben’s Tube & Non-Newtonian Fluid
Science is just plain cool. Check out the Ruben’s Tube (a surefire favorite if you are into flame and music) and the Non-Newtonian Fluid (if you are worried about burning down the garage).
Benjamin Franklin’s Electrical Kite
We all know the story of Benjamin Franklin flying a kite in an electrical storm. I always thought that it was kind of fanciful, along the same lines as the myth about George Washington cutting down a cherry tree. Guess what: I was wrong. Franklin not only flew the kite in a storm, he held […]
All About the CERN LHC
Welcome to today’s world. Physics isn’t just about the things thar normal human beings can understand but you can watch YouTube to catch up on the latest. My hat’s off to Geeks Are Sexy for finding and collecting these two videos, one educational and the other fun and educational. Enjoy. Is your head hurting? Well […]
Shut Up and Let Me Drive
We all know that distractions make driving significantly more difficult and dangerous. Cell phones top the list, at least from lawmakers’ perspectives, and we now have laws in several states which limit cell phone use while driving. Sadly, lawmakers have not found a way to make children stop bugging their parents during car trips. “She’s […]
Photographs of Mercury
This morning the Gee Whiz department brings us photographs of the planet Mercury, taken by the MESSENGER probe on its first fly-by. I don’t know about you but I grew up in the stone ages, when seeing a planet meant looking at a bright spot in the sky. As a child, I never imagined being […]
What a Job!
You’ve got to see this to believe it. And even then, you might not believe it. glumbert.com – High Power Job I was dubious until another member of a forum where this video appeared wrote, My neighbor works for Santee Electric in the transmission line area and he does this. He is 60 year old […]
Bacteria Use Radioactive Uranium Instead of Energy from the Sun
Were you looking forward to another boring day on this run-of-the-mill planet Earth? Researchers from Indiana University Bloomington and eight collaborating institutions report in this week’s Science a self-sustaining community of bacteria that live in rocks 2.8 kilometers below Earth’s surface. Think that’s weird? The bacteria rely on radioactive uranium to convert water molecules to […]
What happens when lightning strikes an airplane?
What happens when lightening strikes an airplane? According to Edward J Rupke, senior engineer at Lighting Technologies, Inc., not much. (Image courtesy of Edward J. Rupke and borrowed from Scientific American.com.) Although passengers and crew may see a flash and hear a loud noise if lightning strikes their plane, nothing serious should happen because of […]
Amazing Space Shuttle Video
I’m a space junkie so I was thrilled to read in Slashdot Jivecat writes: “All those extra cameras NASA has added to the Space Shuttle to watch for debris impacts have yielded what may be the coolest Shuttle launch footage ever. The forward-facing view from the right-hand SRB shows, at about the 2:58 mark, booster […]
Geometric Whirlpools
Nature.com reports, in Geometric whirlpools revealed – Recipe for making symmetrical holes in water is easy, that it is surprisingly easy to make “holes” in a bucket of water that have all kinds of interesting shapes. The researchers found that once the plate was spinning so fast that the water span out to the sides, […]
National TBIS Key Exchange Program
This is really important and the last day of the program. See the web site for complete details. National TBIS Key Exchange Program
Breaking News
Exciting, Breaking News, from the Weizmann Institute. Scientists have finally figured out how a material cracks: Physicists attempting to find a formula for the dynamics of cracking, to allow them to predict how a crack will advance in a given material, have faced a serious obstacle. The difficulty lies in pinning down, objectively, the fundamental […]
Deciphering The Mystery Of Bee Flight
ScienceDaily reports in Deciphering The Mystery Of Bee Flight that scientists have finally figured out how bees fly. Their wings beat over a short arc of about 90 degrees, but ridiculously fast, at around 230 beats per second. Fruit flies, in comparison, are 80 times smaller than honeybees, but flap their wings only 200 times […]
