This summer, people will flock to lakes, oceans, rivers and “concrete ponds” for the express purpose of plunging themselves into the water and flailing around madly. It’s called swimming, and it’s pretty strange behavior, considering the human body is not at all designed for water locomotion. Nevertheless, it’s been going on for a very …
Category: Blog
Hobart’s Funnies
Necessity is the mother of invention, as the old saying goes; and in warfare, necessities can be urgent indeed. As a result, many technological innovations occur during wartime. The First World War brought us huge advances in aircraft design; the Second World War brought us atomic energy. But on a less grandiose scale, technical innovations …
IndyCar racing
You can keep your hockey, your baseball, your lacrosse–this week, my favorite sport is in the spotlight, as 33 drivers contest the Indianapolis 500. No other sport involves as much science and technology as automobile racing. Public fascination with technology first made it popular: at the first organized race in France 100 years ago, the …
Tennis, anyone?
It’s summer, and love is in the air…also, love-15, love-30, game, set, and match. Yes, it’s tennis time, and the air is filled with the distinctive “thwock” of balls hitting racquets and balls hitting courts, plus the occasionally equally distinctive sound made by a player who just missed an easy return. Of course, being the …
May 1994 science anniversaries
“What hath God wrought?” is one of those famous quotations associated with great historical events, like Neil Armstrong’s “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” But “What had God wrought?” wasn’t spoken: it was sent as a series of dots and dashes from Baltimore to Washington over the first public telegraph …
Pimples
Beauty, the old saying goes, is only skin deep. Unfortunately, so are pimples. The difference is that while very few of us can claim to be beautiful (certainly not I, as a glance at my column photo will attest), almost all of us have had pimples. Our skin contains two kinds of glands: sweat glands …
Three fathers of technology
This month, we celebrate the birthdays of three important scientists, each a “father” of a technology that has shaped this century. First up: April 9, the 75th birthday of John Presper Eckert, the father (well, one of the fathers) of the digital computer. While a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania in the mid-1940s, …
Memory
What’s the biggest single difference between you and a dandelion? Think about that for a moment. You both take in nutrients, air and water; you both grow, you both age. So what’s the difference? Remember the last time you saw a dandelion? An argument could be made (and in fact I’m going to make it) …
Flowers
It’s a warm, it’s sunny, it’s spring, and the ’60s musical Hair is coming to town. What better time to celebrate flower power? The use of flowers for gifts and decoration has a long, long history (the ancient Romans and the ancient Chinese were both wild about roses, for example), but to a plant our infatuation might …
Snoring and yawning
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about dandruff, bad breath, growling stomachs and body odor. Aside from the fact that none of these things are ever likely to be the subject of a blockbuster TV movie, they have something else in common: they’re all likely to embarrass us. That segues nicely into this …
March 1994 science anniversaries
This March seems to be a month for important scientific birthdays, beginning with March 4, the 600th birthday of Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal. Prince Henry began sending out expeditions along the Atlantic coast of Africa in 1418, motivated as much by hatred of the Muslims and a lust for gold as by a …
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