CATCH A FALLING STAR
PITY THE poor meteorite researcher. To catch a falling star is a complex task indeed. The challenges and rewards of studying such extraterrestrial objects are described in “All eyes on … Continue reading
THE TRAIPSING ROCKS OF RACETRACK PLAYA
A MYSTERY for more than 70 years has been solved: What prompts rocks, some weighing hundreds of pounds, to move across Racetrack Playa of Death Valley? Racetrack Playa is a … Continue reading
PRIMAL FUN
PRIME NUMBERS, those divisible by no others than 1, are the building blocks of the natural number system, so let’s have some primal fun. In doing this, I celebrate the … Continue reading
SAE TIDBITS
SAE INTERNATIONAL, what used to be called the Society of Automotive Engineers, continues to be the premier assemblage of the world’s engineers devoted to transportation. Years ago, 1976 – 1978, … Continue reading
ON UNITS OF MEASUREMENT
WHAT DOES the U.S. have in common with Liberia and the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (aka Burma)? These are the only three countries in the world that continue … Continue reading
STILL OFF-SCALE AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
AUTOMOTIVE ENTHUSIASTS of a certain age (and retentive memory) still celebrate the Tapley Meter. This British piece of instrumentation thrilled us no end when it measured that a car’s performance … Continue reading
HAPTICS—A TOUCHING TOPIC
ROBOTS DO a great many things better than their human counterparts, but they have yet to achieve our sense of touch. “Brainy, Yes, but Far From Handy,” by John Markoff, … Continue reading
NETWORKING ALONG KÖNIGSBERG’S SEVEN BRIDGES
“THE SEVEN Bridges of Königsberg” sounds like a romantic novel set elsewhere than Iowa. In fact, though, it’s a classic problem of mathematics, one that led to modern mathematics’ graph theory, … Continue reading
COMMON CORE MATH
LET’S begin paradoxically with a summary: Old Math is rote memory and recitation of facts. New Math is rigor describing what numbers are. Common Core Math is intuition describing what … Continue reading
SCIENCE TIDBITS
CHERRY-PICKING SCIENCE can lead to deception. That is, sharing an interesting tidbit that stresses a single aspect of a complex matter obviously does not tell the full story. But it … Continue reading
