Have you ever seen a t-shirt that changes colour when it is in direct sunlight? Or perhaps new colours become visible? Maybe you have some of those fancy prescription glasses that become tinted sunglasses as you step outside. All that falls under the name Photochromism. Photo being light, and chromo being colour. It’s a minutely [...]
Have you ever seen a photograph that makes the world look tiny? Even through you know it’s real, you can’t help but see it as a close-up of a miniature model train village in a retired-person’s basement. Have a look at this video of my city, Calgary, to see the illusion in action. “Moving Calgary” [...]
I have a friend who teaches a grade six class. Yesterday she began explaining how the moonlight is really just light reflected from the sun, when the whole class erupted into a volcano of curiosity. She couldn’t keep up with all the great questions they were asking, and had them write them all down. She [...]
Back about 2000 years ago, the Greek scientists were becoming fascinated with magnetism when they stumbled upon lodestones, a naturally occurring magnet. Lodestone is a piece of magnetite, an iron oxide, which produces a strong magnetic field. Now, to be clear, not all magnetite is magnetic (it won’t stick to your fridge by itself) but [...]
A plane zips across the sky, leaving in its wake a long line of white cloud. There is a conspiracy theory that swears this is the government spraying the world with “mind-control agents” for nefarious means. A little bit of science reveals the truth. The white line, called a condensation trail, or contrail, is made [...]
The brightest star that we can see in the night sky has been named Sirius, an ancient Greek word for “glowing”. It’s one of the closest stars to earth, about 8.5 light years away, and we can look forward to it getting brighter for the next 60,000 years as it inches ever closer to us. [...]
Alas, it has been a while since I’ve written a new LSNED article. There are only 24 hours in a day, you know! Twenty-four seems like an arbitrary number to choose for hours in a day. Consider that somebody along the way had to decide how long an hour was, and how many could squeeze [...]