Tag: technology

Superconductivity

  You’ve probably heard of “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.” Well, now there’s something else that’s coming in from the cold: superconductivity. Superconductivity is not something that orchestra directors aspire to; it refers to a discovery made 80 years ago at the University of Leiden (Holland) by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who was …

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Flight

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 …

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Green technology

There is a tendency for people to see “technology” and “environment” as mutually exclusive terms. Technology is sometimes portrayed as the cause of the world’s environmental problems, and the abandonment of technology as the cure. Well, it might be true that the world’s overall environment would be in better shape if we’d all stuck to …

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Rise of the cyberbooks

Don’t look now, but here come the cyberbooks. No, cyberbooks aren’t the villains in an episode of Dr. Who, but it’s true their arrival may well signal a kind of revolution–and the first shot in that revolution has already been fired in (where else?) Japan, in the form of a new high-tech gadget called the Data …

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Microscopes

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 …

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How Does Your Garden Grow?

Part of the Saskatchewan Science Centre’s mandate is to demonstrate that it is possible to excel in the world of science “even” in Saskatchewan. The quotation marks are intentional: it’s the attitude embodied in the use of that word we would like to dispel. The fact is, top-notch, world-class science and Saskatchewan are not mutually …

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Fusion

Nuclear fusion as an electrical power source is rather like some people’s plans for after they win the lottery. They’re sure it’s coming, and they’re sure it’s going to be great, but somehow it never seems to happen. Actually, that’s not a very fair comparison, because nuclear fusion really does seem to be on the …

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Lasers

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 …

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Digitization

There are certain words these days that are being used to sell just about everything. “Light” (or, horrors, “lite”), is one of them, appearing on everything from beer to slightly-less-greasy-than-usual potato chips; “cholesterol-free” is another; “green” is a third, and afourth, and the one I want to talk about, is “digital.” Digital dashboards, digital TV, …

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IMAX

The space shuttle towers above you, gleaming white in the early morning sunshine. The familiar calm voice of the NASA announcer counts down the final seconds to launch. Billowing white steam and smoke explode around you, and as the shuttle majestically rises on a brilliant pillar of flame the thunder of the rockets shakes… the …

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Telescopes

People have been gazing at the stars for as long as there have been people. The Babylonians and other ancient civilizations had sophisticated observatories from which they plotted the movements of the stars and planets. However, just looking at the stars and planets with the naked eye will never tell you much about them–they’re only …

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Modems

There’s a rather standard science fiction situation, based loosely on some of the oddities of quantum physics (the quirks of quarks, one might say), that postulates a whole other universe co-existing with ours, sharing the same space, but unseen. Well, in a sense this “parallel” world is already accessible, though not as a science-fictional “alternate …

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