In an earlier article, I mentioned that at the heart of every snowflake is a speck of dust. After talking with some readers, it turns out that wasn’t so “common knowledge” as I had thought. I’m happy to say, there’s much more to that little tid-bit. At the core of every snowflake is a speck [...]
Drummers drum simply because that’s what drummers do. If they weren’t drumming, they would no longer be called drummers. If a plumber stops plumbing and begins drumming, I would say at that moment, he is a drummer. Now, if that plumber was locked inside a sound-proof room with no doors or windows, with a drum, [...]
In 1638 Galileo Galilei, who is called the Father of Science, published the Square-Cube Law. Frankly, it’s not particularly clever as scientific discoveries go. It’s an observation that big things are bigger than small things. However, the particular way in which objects scale does create a few interesting implications. I’m going to explain the concept [...]
Yesterday as I was writing an overview of Electromagnetic waves (which manifest as radio, heat, light, and more depending on the wavelength) but I left myself with the question of what “stuff” makes up these waves. As I discovered, I can give you two different answers that are, apparently, both correct. Now, just a quick [...]
Question: What do the following things have in common? Hearing an ad for “Armor Hot Dogs” played over the radio. Cooking some hot dogs in the microwave oven. Roasting hot dogs over a campfire. Seeing mustard stains on your shirt from that hot dog you ate. Tanning on the beach after going to the hot [...]
Hey, it’s been a while since the previous LSNED story. I hope you’ve been learning some interesting facts on your own, but here we meet again to scratch our collective foreheads and raise a glorious chorus of “Huh, neat.” The topic du jour, for no particular reason, is resonant frequency. The classic image of the [...]
Last night I lay awake trying to force myself back into a proper diurnal schedule. It’s 4 AM or so and I find myself laying on my back, throwing a white balloon towards the ceiling and watching it glide back down, gracefully curving in whatever direction the nozzle is pointing. (due to aerodynamics, I suppose) [...]