How We Learned That Frogs Fly
There are places where frogs could be — but aren't.And places where frogs could be — and are.Ninety years ago, scientists were debating the question of animal dispersal. How come there are kangaroos in...
View ArticleLights, Lights, Lights, Action! A Crazy New Light Projector
What can you do with a spotlight?You can light a spot.But what if you give yourself more options and invent a tool that lets light spill, splash or tighten into a beam as thin as a pencil line — a beam...
View ArticleWrong! Deconstructing 5 Famous History Stories
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYzfKiIWN4ghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLvBCR1ZOVo
View ArticleTwo Glorious Science Experiments: One About Sex, The Other About Lunch
Done right, a good science experiment is simple, clear and revealing. Done splendidly, it's a tale you don't forget. Let's do the sex one first. It took place in Italy, in the 1760s, when a Catholic...
View ArticleWhat Not To Serve Buzzards For Lunch, A Glorious Science Experiment
OK, I'm doing great science experiments. We've done sex (see previous post). On to lunch!This is the story of a bird, a puzzle, and a painting. The painting, curiously, helped solve the puzzle, which...
View ArticleHer Baby Is At Risk; Lauren's Story
They're odds. That's all they are. Not fate, just probabilities. Lauren Weinstein, cartoonist, is having a baby, and she's told — out of the blue — that she and her husband are both carriers of the...
View ArticleTell Me, Wave, Where Did You Come From? Who Made You?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qQQXTMih1A
View ArticleA Tough Little Droplet Fights To Stick Around
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbGz1njqhxUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtlgI34y3Wc
View ArticleThe Most Astonishing Wave-Tracking Experiment Ever
I'm standing on a beach and I see, a few hundred yards out, a mound of water heading right at me. It's not a wave, not yet, but a swollen patch of ocean, like the top of a moving beach ball, what...
View ArticleNeil Whosis? What You Don't Know About The 1969 Moon Landing
Forty-five years ago, this week, 123 million of us watched Neil and Buzz step onto the moon. In 1969, we numbered about 200 million, so more than half of America was in the audience that day. Neil...
View ArticleWhat's Better Than A Total Eclipse Of The Sun? Check This
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyZoD7BRTtg
View ArticleAn Animal Makes A $10,000 Deposit, But Not At The Bank
It's a highly specialized category to be sure: "Longest." But that's what the auctioneer is selling. According to the catalog of I.M. Chait Gallery, in Beverly Hills, "This truly spectacular specimen...
View ArticleWhere The Birds Are Is Not Where You'd Think
This is a trick question. Where would you expect to find the greatest variety of birds?Downtown, in a city?Or far, far from downtown — in the fields, forests, mountains, where people are scarce?Or in...
View ArticleGuess Who's Been Waiting In The Lobby For A Hundred Million Years?
Sometimes the quiet ones surprise us.Take moss — those fuzzy green pads you see on the sides of old trees, or hanging onto rocks. Who notices moss? It's just ... there, doing whatever it does — so...
View ArticleHow To Cross 5 International Borders In 1 Minute Without Sweating
So many nations are breaking up. Ukraine is in pieces. Moldova is teetering. Libya has no government to speak of. Sudan broke in two last year; now both sides are fighting. Yugoslavia is seven...
View ArticleWhat A Balloon Shouldn't Do, But For Some Reason Does
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8mzDvpKzfY
View ArticleElemental Storytelling
There's a photograph I know that shows a kid's bicycle lying on its side, one wheel turned upright, a smear of blood tracing its path on the concrete. There's a little package still latched to the...
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