Science for people who never knew it could be interesting
July 3rd, 2009
It’s always fun to see how things we now take for granted were first perceived. From Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, here’s an early report by Tom Brokaw on the internet:
H/T: Ezra Klein via The Daily Dish
June 29th, 2009
I thought this shot pretty well sums up the technological progress made during the 1960’s race to the moon:
On the left is a Mercury Redstone rocket (with Mercury capsule mockup), much like the one that launched Alan Shepard on his suborbital flight in 1961. On the right is an F-1 rocket engine, built for the first stage of the Apollo program’s Saturn V rocket (five F-1 engines were needed for each rocket) and still the most powerful liquid-powered rocket engine ever built.
You can see this for yourself at the Johnson Space Center “Rocket Park,” on the southern edge of Houston, Texas.
June 26th, 2009
OK, a lot of people these days are concerned about too much mercury in the fish they eat. So it’s probably appropriate that when Theo Gray went to make some small, cast metal fish, he made them from mercury.
Hint: it helps to have some liquid nitrogen on hand.
Just remember, kids — the behavior of materials depends on their melting point. Materials that are liquids at room temperature can behave very differently when they’re chilled enough…
Thanks to BoingBoing and PopSci.com for the video!
June 24th, 2009
The last week’s crop of science-related blog carnivals:
All Things Eco Blog Carnival Volume Fifty Six
Carnival of Space #108: Solstice Edition!
June 22nd, 2009
From the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington, models of Sputnik and Explorer I — the first (ever) artificial satellite, and the first U.S. satellite:
It’s amazing to think how far we’ve come in 50 years, at least in technological terms. From two little gadgets weighing only a few pounds each, to massive satellites the size of a bus.
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