CHEERS, PROF!
AN ITEM in a recent Science magazine, Vol. 338, 9 November 2012, had a great opening line: “Biodiversity has driven doctoral candidates from Trinity College Dublin to drink.” Having once … Continue reading
EV GLOSSARY
THIS IS a bit longer than the usual mini-essay, but for completeness it’ll be a single item. I’ll not fancy it up with photos or charts; it’s a glossary, pure … Continue reading
FORD OVERDRIVE
RECENTLY IT was May 22, 1949, and I was listening to an ad for Ford Overdrive. (Such are the wonders of Sirius XM and its Radio Classics channel 82.) Despite … Continue reading
SPACE FRONTIER 1952
DESCRIBED AS “the story of the greatest adventure awaiting man,” Across the Space Frontier is a wonderful book written by top space scientists in 1952. A good many of their … Continue reading
A NEED FOR (COMPUTER) SPEED?
MY FELLOW tweeters (see @simanaitis) recently received one derived from my reading Turing’s Cathedral, George Dyson’s wonderful book about the post-WWII emergence of the digital age. What’s more, the October … Continue reading
CATAPULTING INTO SCIENCE
ARTICLES IN The Orange County Register, Sunday, Nov. 11, 2012, seem to counter each other. One laments the apparently low priority in the U.S. given to mathematics and science. The … Continue reading
SOLAR HYDROGEN
THE PROMISE of a hydrogen highway populated by highly efficient fuel-cell vehicles depends on readily available—and inexpensive—H2. The electrolysis of water is one source of this hydrogen: Applying an electric … Continue reading
TRINOMIAL CUBE
I FIRST encountered a Trinomial Cube—as opposed to its purely algebraic and possibly intimidating namesake, (A+B+C)3—when I lived in the Caribbean in the 1970s and daughters Suz and Beth went … Continue reading
THE COMPUTER: A PHOTO ESSAY
UBIQUITOUS THOUGH it is, the digital computer is a relatively recent thing. Plenty of us remember our first significant encounter with its wonders—mine, an IBM 1620 at Worcester Polytechnic Institute … Continue reading
WHAT’S A SLIDE RULE, GRANDPA?
THERE ARE blessedly few of us these days who remember the slide rule, and fewer still who understand its workings. So why not join this hardy band and learn some … Continue reading
