Despite the fact that snow covers the ground as I write this, it is, in fact, spring; and spring means, among other things, the appearance of plants, sometimes from garden beds where you’d swear there was nothing but a few dry sticks. Suddenly green shoots spring up, and before you know it, flowers are growing …
Category: Science Columns
Skating
In Tulia, Texas, where I lived as a kid before we moved to Saskatchewan, when you said you were going “skating” it was understood it would be on a wooden surface with rollers attached to your feet. Imagine my shock, then, when I found out that up here, “skating” meant sliding on thin metal …
Drainage
The annoying thing about water in Saskatchewan is that we never seem to have just the right amount. There’s either too little or, more rarely, too much. This time of the year, as the snow melts, it’s usually the latter. While a lack of water is bad, a surfeit of water is often worse, as …
Saskatchewan’s ecoregions
I’m in the middle of a tour of 60-some schools with Prairie Opera, and aside from the enjoyment of performing, the best thing about the tour is the opportunity to see so much of Saskatchewan. One thing quickly impresses itself: there’s a lot more to this province than a flat, treeless plain, even if that’s …
Potholes
It’s spring in Regina, and we all know what that means: snow is melting, water and funny-looking guys in shorts are running, and the potholes are in bloom. Everyone knows that Regina has a pothole problem, and for once, what “everyone knows” is right. But don’t blame the city. Especially, don’t blame Harlan Ritchie, Manager …
The Internet
Internet this and Internet that. Everybody talks about the Internet (approximately 127,498 journalists and their dogs have already done stories on it), but there are still lots of people who aren’t exactly sure what “The Internet” is. The Internet grew out of ARPAnet (ARPA stands for Advanced Research Projects Agency), a U.S. military project unveiled …
Resistors
Recently there’s been quite a lot of talk about new high-temperature superconductors and how they may revolutionize technology. (In fact, some of that talk was mine, since I wrote a column on superconductivity a while back.) Superconductors are materials that transmit electricity perfectly–in other words, materials in which, once electrons start to flow, they never …
Salt
Okay, it’s pop quiz time. What mineral is used in greater quantities and for more purposes than any other? Give up? I’ll give you a hint: it’s the only mineral we sprinkle on both our roads and our French fries. That’s right: salt. Those innocuous little white crystals in the shaker on your table are …
Eyeglasses
I got my first pair of glasses in kindergarten. Everybody in my class wanted to try them on. By the time I was 10 my vision was 20/200, which made my classmates even more eager to try on my glasses: seeing the world through my thick lenses was a mind-blowing experience, and, hey, it was …
Perfume
Our noses may be no great shakes compared to, say, that of the average poodle, but scent is still a powerful means of non-verbal communication for humans, even if we don’t rub our noses against everyone we meet, like our canine friends. The use of scents to make ourselves smell better goes back to ancient …
DNA fingerprinting
One place science and society frequently interact is within the courtroom. Seldom has that interaction been more dramatic than in the past few days, with the exoneration of Guy Paul Morin, who had served 18 months in jail for a murder he didn’t commit, and with the start of the murder trial of a certain …
Space stations revisited
Forget cosmic radiation, the solar flares, meteorites, re-entry: the real danger facing space exploration today is red ink. As governments drown in it, some space projects have had more narrow escapes than Luke Skywalker. Consider International Space Station Alpha. A space station is a permanent inhabited base in orbit. People have been talking about …
My latest live walk and vlog
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