A Stormcloud of Bees Throw out the word “electricity” today and one clear connotation rules. The juice that runs the world, coming to us through hanging power lines or buried cables. The electricity that runs computers, televisions, appliances, and, increasingly, automobiles. This type of power is current electricity, a stream of charged particles that travels […]
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Transylvania and the Count In 1897, Irish author Bram Stoker unleashed Dracula upon the world. The titular Count was not the first vampire in literature – that trend extends at least to the first half of the 18th century – but he is the most famous. Because of Stoker, we have dozens of adaptations of his
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Gravity Hills If you’ve ever taken an extended, curvy driving tour through mountainous, rural America – Hatfield and McCoy country or deeply forested Oregon, perhaps – you might have encountered a sign much like this one: Mystery Hill in Blowing Rock, North Carolina Known as gravity hills, mystery hills, magnetic hills, mystery spots, and a slew of other catchy
Aye-Aye, Captain Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Chladni Plates by Deborah Stout I recently watched The Rings of Power, the prequel series to The Lord of the Rings. As the first episode fired up, the opening sequence rolled and I saw something that was only recently familiar to me. A still from the opening credits of The Rings of Power For the last several
The Countess of Lovelace The Hallowed Halls of Woman Crush Wednesday today garner a new occupant, in the form of one of history’s intriguing confluences of art and science. Few genealogies intersect in a more intriguing way than that of Ada Lovelace, an English mathematician revered by computer programmers. Born on 10 December 1815 in
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Plants Can Hear As humans, we are experts at anthropomorphology. We easily identify aspects in other organisms that match our own. For example, we understand the eyes of animals, which appear largely similar to our peepers, provide the critters with sight. In art, a long tradition of attributing human traits to non-human entities has provided
Pico da Neblina – Brazil’s High Point The Andes and Aconcagua, in particular, dominate the conversation about South America’s mountains. And rightly so, as the chain is the world’s longest, while the continental high point is the second-tallest of the seven large tracts of land. Yet, a continent as enormous as South America undoubtedly contains other mountainous
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Pileus Clouds We’re constantly amazed around here when it comes to the seemingly unending fodder that clouds provide to the project. Way back in Issue #49, we took an intro-level class on clouds. Before we even consider some of the rarer types of water vapor, the amount of variation in the everyday sky is incredible. Earlier
It’s All Mustard Today, we connotatively view mustard as a yellow condiment we might slather on sandwiches. It’s easy to forget that delicious spread comes from the seeds of plants known as mustards. In the grand genealogical tree, mustard plants fall into the Brassicaceae family. This demarcation not only includes mustards but also cabbages