While I was browsing for another Olympic-themed column idea (as promised last week) one story particularly caught my eye: a Reuters piece by Kate Kelland headlined (in the Regina LeaderPost, at least) “Scientists skeptical as Olympic athletes get all taped up.” It caught my eye, not because it had a picture of female beach volleyball …
Tag: Science Columns
Olympic throwing sports
Just in time for the Olympics (and just in time for this science column), COSMOS Magazine has run an interesting online piece by Richard A. Lovett on the history and physics of the Olympic throwing sports. It is customary, in the column-writing biz, to be up-front about any direct personal connection you have to your …
Auroral sounds
There are few more awe-inspiring sights in the sky than the northern lights. Probably everyone who lives in Saskatchewan has seen them multiple times, and those who live further north are even better acquainted with them…but that doesn’t mean we know everything about them. One mystery associated with the northern lights is the claim by …
Edison’s Battery
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/07/Edisons-Battery.mp3[/podcast] Thomas Edison gave us many wonderful inventions, mainstays of 20th century life. However, since he died in 1931, you might be forgiven for asking, “What has he done for us lately?” Him personally, not so much, what with being dead and all: but one of his inventions has just taken on new life, thanks …
No need for gas-price conspiracy theories
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/07/Gas-Price-Conspiracies.mp3[/podcast] There’s a public perception that somebody must be pulling the strings on gas prices, that somewhere in some shadowy secret lair mustache-twirling oilmen are gleefully conspiring to raise prices across the board just in time for summer holidays. It’s such a popular perception that it has sparked any number of public inquiries around the …
Where the germs are
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/06/Hotel-Room-Germs.mp3[/podcast] Ah, vacation time! Relaxing by the beach or in the mountains, retiring at night to a filthy hotel room, crawling with germs… Wait, what? Okay, that might be a slight overstatement of the hygienic challenges of hotel rooms, but the fact remains that hotel rooms are, ultimately, public spaces, inhabited by hundreds of different …
Seeking for life in all the wrong places
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/06/Seeking-for-LIfe-in-all-the-Wrong-Places.mp3[/podcast] “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it,” was never actually said in the original series of Star Trek (in fact, it’s from The Firm’s popular parody song “Star Trekkin’”), but it still sums up the notion that we might not recognize extraterrestrial life when first we encounter it because it’s so different …
The Transit of Venus
I’m writing this on June 4, the eve of one of the rarest events in the solar system: the transit of Venus. In astronomical jargon, a “transit” is what happens when a smaller body passes in front of a larger one relative to an observer…in this case, us. The Sun, Venus and Earth actually line …
The SpeechJammer
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/04/The-SpeechJammer.mp3[/podcast] As a writer, freedom of speech is near and dear to my heart. It’s one of the basic principles of the democratic form of government. And yet it seems to be constantly under attack, for one simple reason: it’s easy to say you believe in free speech when people are saying what you agree …
The QWERTY effect
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/04/The-QWERTY-effect.mp3[/podcast]I took to typing like…well, like a writer to a keyboard. In high school I was always the fastest typist in typing class. Possibly it was genetic: my mother, who worked as a secretary, was a very fast typist. Possibly it was because I was highly motivated: my handwriting was (and is) atrocious. Anyone who …
Pop! goes nutrition
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/03/Popcorn-Nutrition.mp3[/podcast] There’s nothing quite like the smell of popcorn. It makes you think of movie theatres, the circus, the midway. It makes you long for a handful. Or two. Or better yet, a whole bucket. And best of all, just this week some research results were released that indicate popcorn is also a very healthy …
Salt-tolerant wheat
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/03/Salt-Tolerant-Wheat.mp3[/podcast] Having grown up on the prairies, first in Texas, then in Saskatchewan, I’ve seen, my whole life, the patches of white where nothing grows, out in the middle of the fields. And like most other prairie folk, I’ve tended to call them “alkali.” Fact is, though, that most of them, at least in Saskatchewan, …