Tag: history

Copernicus

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
February 17, 1993
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This is not a great month for science anniversaries — but the one really big anniversary is a REALLY big anniversary: the 520th birthday of Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus brought forth the radical notion that the Earth was not the centre of the universe: that the Earth moved around the sun, instead of vice versa. The …

Writing

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
November 4, 1992
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Last week I wrote about paper, and how much I, as a writer, appreciate it. But even more, I appreciate writing itself: the existence of a system for conveying information by putting marks on paper. What I said about our civilization being built on paper is only half true: our civilization is really built on …

Flight

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
April 15, 1992
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In this age of 747s and Concordes and supersonic jet fighters, it’s sometimes hard to realize that airplanes have existed for less than a century. Even manned gliders, which came before powered airplanes, have only been around for slightly over a hundred years. In fact, 1991 was the 100th anniversary of the first glider flight …

Numbers

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
February 12, 1992
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“1, 2, 3, 4! What are we all counting for? “5, 6, 7, 8! Ain’t our number system great?” All right, so maybe you won’t hear thousands of people chanting it at a street demonstration–it’s still an interesting question. (The question in the first line, that is; the question in the second is rhetorical.) What …

Measurement

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
January 22, 1992
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A few weeks ago I wrote about the bicentennial of the metric system. This week I want to return to the topic of measurement because I had such an overwhelming response to that column. Our ability to measure sets us apart from, say, llamas and horned toads, because measurement is the process of counting how …

Microscopes

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
January 1, 1992
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For Christmas the year I was seven years old my parents gave me a microscope, and I’ve loved microscopes ever since. There’s nothing like your first look at a drop of water teeming with microscopic life, or for that matter your first look at dozens of other everyday things, like salt and hair, magnified a …

The metric system

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
December 11, 1991
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Two years ago, France marked the 200th anniversary of its revolution. It’s no coincidence that just one year later we marked the 200th anniversary of another kind of revolution: the birth of the metric system. Whether this is a reason for celebration or mourning depends on how you feel about the System Internationale d’Units, the …

DNA

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
November 6, 1991
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Our 26-letter alphabet often seems like a model of efficiency. Look at how much information can be encoded and passed on with it. Look at what Shakespeare accomplished with it. I’m particularly fond of it because my ability to manipulate it is what pays for my food and lodging and other necessities like new CDs. …

Lasers

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
October 23, 1991
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Last year (1990) marked the 30th anniversary of an important event that somehow did not result in any parades or speeches or days off work–and no, it wasn’t my birthday. But it was a birthday of sorts: the birthday of the laser. On May 15, 1960, a cylindrical rod of synthetic ruby placed inside a …

Nature’s first issue

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
September 22, 1991
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One hundred twenty-two years isn’t a very long time, really; certainly not on a geological scale (so, did dinosaurs live 150 million years ago, or 150,000,122 years ago?) and not even on the scale of human history, at least not for the most part. (Can you name the important advances made between 1100 and 1222?) …

Zero: much ado about nothing

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
June 12, 1991
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Several centuries ago Shakespeare titled a play Much Ado About Nothing. If I gave these columns titles, that’s what I’d call this one–not because I think I write as well as Shakespeare, but because that’s what this column is about: nothing. Nothing is very important. Um, what I mean is, the concept of nothing is …

Measuring temperature

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
June 5, 1991
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G. D. Fahrenheit, Anders Celsius and William Kelvin may sound like prospects for the Roughriders’ defensive backfield, but they probably wouldn’t work out very well. For one thing, they’re all dead. For another, they weren’t football players, but scientists–and two of them, at least, are household names, which is far less common for scientists than …