Posts

May 06, 2013

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12:09 PM | A Decade of Explosions: What ‘Mythbusters’ Taught Me

When the first episode of Mythbusters aired in 2003, I couldn’t drive a car. I couldn’t see a R-rated movie. I was 14-years old and I couldn’t do much of anything. But Mythbusters taught me that I could do science. Raised on Bill Nye videos, LEGOs, and CD-ROMs of dinosaurs, I was a lump of [...]

April 29, 2013

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12:54 PM | How Many People Could You Kill With All the Caffeine Consumed on Friends?

In a cup or two a day, the caffeine in coffee tweaks us out enough to be the driving force behind the workforce. Ingest all the coffee that they did on Friends, however, and you’ll be asking yourself, “could I be…any more dead?” No TV show exemplified our love of coffee more than Friends. An [...]

April 24, 2013

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9:44 PM | Could the Boston Bomber Have Fled From Infrared?

Late last Friday a terrible week that began with the bombing of the Boston Marathon came to a satisfying, if somber, conclusion. The last alleged perpetrator of the horrific events at the marathon and MIT was arrested after a most dangerous game of hide and seek. To help bring Dzhokhar Tsarneav to justice, we took [...]

April 22, 2013

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4:03 PM | The Physics of Fred Flintstone’s Flaming Feet

I hope that the father of the “modern Stone Age family” has thick skin, or else he is going to lose his legs. Let’s put aside the fact that Fred Flintstone basically runs to work and therefore doesn’t really need his wheels (or that he would need the quads of a god to get them [...]

April 18, 2013

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9:35 PM | What Mushroom Clouds Can Reveal About The Waco Explosion

On Wednesday night a fertilizer plant in Waco, Texas, caught fire and exploded. The violent rupture shook the earth for miles around (the explosion was picked up by seismographs in Oklahoma), set fire to the surroundings, and collapsed nearby buildings. Tragically, as you might suspect with an explosion this size, there are many suspected fatalities [...]

April 12, 2013

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11:30 AM | The Coroner Report: Weekend At Bernie’s

Nearly 25 years after Bernie Lomax was killed, a new coroner’s report sheds light on how his body endured so much trauma, and why the two responsible violated the Geneva Convention. What follows is the coroner’s report for Lomax, employee of a large New York insurance firm, whose body was in the possession of witnesses [...]

April 10, 2013

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4:16 PM | The Animals Hiding in a T. Rex’s Roar

Instead of producing the terror you may suspect, cinema’s most famous roar would probably just confuse a lot of animals. If you made it to the recently re-released 3D edition of Jurassic Park, you’re going to hear a dreadful sound that terrified audiences two decades ago. Tramping through the rain and the mud, the tyrant [...]

March 25, 2013

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11:50 AM | The Komodo Dead: What Really Kills in The Walking Dead

You don’t need a gun. You don’t need a knife or a machete or an axe. If you find yourself in a post-apocalyptic world filled with shambling swallowers of human flesh, what you really need is good hygiene. The resurgence of zombies into pop culture has tickled our morbid curiosity, but has also sparked many [...]

March 18, 2013

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11:16 AM | Superman Explains Why He Didn’t Destroy Russian Meteor

FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE—After more than a month of attempts to contact the reclusive hero, reports are coming in today from the icy home of global do-gooder Superman that he intentionally let the meteor that impacted Chelyabinsk, Russia on February 15th enter the atmosphere and explode. Residents of Chelyabinsk were baffled by how a sworn protector [...]

March 14, 2013

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11:49 AM | The Mechanics of the Pull-Up (and Why Women Can Absolutely Do Them)

As a former rock climbing instructor, I have seen many contorted struggles to raise a chin over a bar. The pull-up for many is a sort of “test piece” of fitness—an indicator of athletic prowess—that is a cornerstone of a good workout (or a good showing-off). Most either never try a pull-up after they leave [...]

March 03, 2013

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6:16 PM | The Ocarina of Time Travel, Extra Dimensions, And Branching Universes

One of the most critically acclaimed videogames of all time had a core mechanic that bends everyday physics. Borrowed and adapted to countless tales of science fiction, the time travel in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was fairly novel for a videogame. It allowed us to age or regress the protagonist, Link, seven [...]

February 07, 2013

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2:42 PM | The God of Thunder, and Momentum

Thor—Norse god, Marvel superhero, and Hollywood eye candy—presents those of us living in the real world with a few problems. Thor is a “demigod,” and any attempt to scientifically explore his otherworldly abilities can be dismissed as such. But with his resurgence in The Avengers last year, and seeing that today is Thor’s Day, the [...]

January 28, 2013

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1:00 PM | The Last Thing the Squirrel Saw

We have to assume it was a squirrel, but we know how it died. It died squirming and convulsing in the talons of an owl, locked in by the bone ratchets the owl shares with other raptors. Based on what was left behind, we also know that the attacker was likely a Great Horned Owl [...]

January 10, 2013

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1:58 PM | Saving Lives in Serenity: Can a Fanboy and Physics Change a Movie?

I was late to Firefly. Nearly ten years after the show first aired and then was subsequently cancelled, I holed up in my room, coffee and external hard drive in hand, aiming to blaze through one of the most beloved sci-fi series. A mix of science fiction and “spaghetti-western” genres, Firefly was wonderful. It certainly [...]

December 21, 2012

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12:39 PM | Edward, Bella, and McGurk: Why Bad Lip-Synching Is So Funny

“You slapped a fiiiish. Why would you do that?” “I wanted some seafood.” At nearly 16,000,000 views at the time of this writing, this “bad lip-synching” of Edward and Bella is objectively hilarious. Funny lip-synching videos litter the Internet, putting ridiculous words in the mouths of everyone from Mitt Romney to Bane. A shared love [...]

December 03, 2012

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5:50 PM | The Death of “Near Death”: Even If Heaven Is Real, You Aren’t Seeing It

You careen headlong into a blinding light. Around you, phantasms of people and pets lost. Clouds billow and sway, giving way to a gilded and golden entrance. You feel the air, thrusted downward by delicate wings. Everything is soothing, comforting, familiar. Heaven. It’s a paradise that some experience during an apparent demise. The surprising consistency [...]

November 14, 2012

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1:16 PM | How Long Will A Lie Last? New Study Finds That False Memories Linger for Years

True memories fade and false ones appear. Each time we recall something, the memory is imperfectly re-stitched by our brains. Our memories retain familiarity but, like our childhood blankets, can be recognizable yet filled with holes and worn down with time. To date, research has shown that it is fairly easy to take advantage of [...]

October 18, 2012

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11:39 AM | Dangerous Optimism: Risk, Bias and Smoking

Trails of acrid grey mist hang in the air. I use the front of my shirt as an impromptu gas mask as I cough out my drink order to the bartender. Passing through one of these repulsive clouds is an irritating game of “try not to breathe.” The saturated air inside has made it almost [...]

October 02, 2012

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11:53 AM | Of the Creation Persuasion

The Earth is flat. A full moon leads to more crime. Humans were created less than 10,000 years ago. If you made your way through even the most general of science educations, the above statements should strike you as suspect. Having a Copernican worldview challenged by such a statement, for example, may encourage you to [...]

September 11, 2012

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12:52 PM | This is Your Brain on the Internet (Maybe)

Headlines like “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” or “Is the Internet Making Us Dumber?” quite clearly show that people are concerned about what the Internet is doing to our cognition. Some have speculated that the Internet has become a kind of external hard drive for our brains, eliminating our need to really learn or process [...]

September 02, 2012

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9:18 PM | Bill Nye is Not a Businessman

Bill Nye, the nerdy supernova that fostered my childhood love of science, has recently gone viral in a video highly critical of the teaching of creationism to children. The video (seen below) has now been critiqued in a recent article on this site by a professional business communicator for its wording and presentation. The critique [...]