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 [...]
I’ve been wanting to work more video content into my LSNED blog, but I’ve been having enough trouble finding time to write and illustrate articles, let alone write, rehearse, record, edit, and post videos. Fortunately Steve from the Calgary International Children’s Festival offered to do all the hard work for me! So, BEHOLD! The first, [...]
I was talking with an amateur astronomer this morning who, in reference to another astronomer and blogger I mentioned, said “He’s great… except that he believes in black holes.” The comment caught me off guard. Up until that moment I had no idea that “black holes” was a topic of controversy. I dug into research [...]
There is a lot of hub-bub about a neutrino that was witnessed moving faster than the speed of light, a feat which was deemed impossible by Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. The science community is working overtime to figure out if the experiment can be repeated and confirmed, as it would have a major impact [...]
Dear LSNED, Why do I always burn my mouth when eating potatoes? Why do they stay so hot? -Hot Tater Dear Ms. Tater, It is true that, long after the asparagus has gone cold, your baked potato will be deliciously, or perhaps dangerously warm. The reason behind this is the high heat capacity of a [...]
It’s easy to shrug off electricity as a mundane part of life, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like magic. Electricity is the passing of electrons, the tiniest part of an individual atom, down the line from one atom to another like a hot potato. This electron flow is what [...]
When you mix regular off-the-shelf cornstarch with regular from-the-tap water you get yourself a physical anomaly. A substance that can be both a liquid and a solid at the same temperature. It’s called a non-Newtonian fluid because it doesn’t behave according to the what Sir Isaac Newton discovered about the viscosity (flow) of liquids. In [...]