With Ken Burns’s epic documentary Jazz airing on PBS, millions of people who never really gave much thought to this musical form before are suddenly learning all about its fascinating history—and more than once, they’ve heard that for music to be jazz, it’s got to swing. Or, as Duke Ellington put it, “It don’t mean …
Category: Science Columns
It’s 2001! Where’s our space odyssey?
Ever since 2001: A Space Odyssey appeared in 1968, 2001 has been one of those years, like 1984, that somehow represented “the future.” Well, guess what? 1984 came and went, and now 2001 has arrived–and with it, a spate of news stories comparing the “predictions” in the film with the reality. I think that’s a …
Calendars (2000)
It’s almost 2001, which means it’s time to take down your old Star Trek: Voyager calendar and put up your new one. Okay, so maybe you have a Teddy Bears calendar instead, or an Everybody Loves Raymond calendar. The point is, for us, a calendar is a much an aesthetic and/or advertising medium as it is a way to see what …
Christmas chemistry
The Physics of Christmas is a very good book by Roger Highland. But there’s more science to Christmas than just physics; there’s chemistry, too. Consider those popular Christmas spices, ginger and cinnamon. Ginger has been used for thousands of years. Greek bakers were making gingerbread more than four thousand years ago (though probably not in the …
Science gifts for Christmas: 2000
Of all my Christmases as a small boy in Texas, the one I remember best is the one when I was seven, which is when my parents gave me my first microscope. Asked what I would recommend in the way of holiday gifts for children, then, a microscope–or something similarly scientific–is always at the top …
A shortage of sleep
Are you feeling sleepy? If you are, you might think it’s the busy time of the year, but sleepiness isn’t limited to the holidays. According to scientists, around two thirds of North Americans are sleep-deprived all the time. Over the past century the average amount of sleep people get has shrunk by more than 20 …
Nanopropellors
One of the first science-fiction movies I can remember seeing was Fantastic Voyage, in which a submarine and its crew are shrunk to microscopic size and injected into an injured man. Their mission: to vaporize a life-threatening blood clot in his brain. Among other things, the movie featured Racquel Welch in a wetsuit. In a …
Contract bridge is the best medicine
Most of us assume that, when it comes to resisting infectious diseases, are pretty fatalistic. In the absence of a vaccine, we may try whatever currently popular substance is supposed to “boost our immune system,” but we figure that’s about all we can do. Yet, there has always been tantalizing evidence that some people seem …
Beethoven’s hair
Ludwig van Beethoven was known for being both a brilliant composer and a difficult human being. For most of the almost two centuries since his death, his tendency toward irritability and depression has been put down to the fact he was a genius, since there’s a common perception that genius and eccentricities go hand in …
Fuel cells
In twenty years, will you still be driving a car with an internal combustion engine? Not if the future unfolds the way auto industry experts expect it to. The car of 2020, it seems increasingly likely, will be fueled with methanol or hydrogen and driven by an electric motor powered by fuel cells–most likely, fuel …
Of bats and balls
The Subway Series is not, as a non-sports-fan might be forgiven for thinking, an exciting new lineup of sandwiches from a popular restaurant chain. It is, instead, this year’s World Series of baseball between the New York Yankees and the New York Mets, and even if you’re not interested in watching New Yorkers battle each …
Robots
Once upon a time, robots existed only in science fiction.. In fact, the word itself originated in a science fiction play. It comes from the Czech word “robota,” meaning “work,” and was coined by Czech playwright Karel Capek in his 1920 play R.U.R., which stands for “Rossum’s Universal Robots.” In Capek’s words, a robot was …
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