27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Tadpole and Fish Fable of Comprehension
Michael Dickmann: Here's what the story is. There was this little tadpole and a fish that grew up in a pond, and they were always intensely curious about life outside the pond. And then, eventually, the tadpole grows into a frog and discovers that, because he's an amphibian, he can go out and see what life is like. So he comes back and tells the fish what he's seen.
He says, "Well, look, one of the things is that there's neat creatures called birds that can actually fly in the air, and they ... 1 
notes
notes30 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
The Sensation of Pressure
We feel pressure on our skin, when we place our hand over the outlet of
a bicycle pump, for example, as a kind of springy push. Actually,
pressure is the summed bombardments of thousands of molecules of air,
whizzing about in random directions (as opposed to a wind, where the
molecules predominantly flow in one particular direction). If you hold
your palm up to a high wind you feel the equivalent of pressure -
bombardment of molecules. The molecules in a confined space, say, the
interior of a... 1 notes
notes24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Warm-Blooded Plants: Zero-g, Zero-T, and Zero-P
There are three principal obstacles to be overcome in adapting a terrestrial species to life in space. It must learn to live and be happy in zero-g, zero-T, and zero-P, that is to say, zero-gravity, zero-temperature, and zero-pressure. Of these, zero-g is probably the easiest to cope with, although we are still ignorant of the nature of the physiological hazards which it imposes. To deal with zero-T is simple in principle although it may be complicated and awkward in practice. Fur and feather...
1 22 MAR 2014 by koo5
getting water from air
in 2011 an Australian inventor won the James Dyson Award for a device that cools the air using underground coils, so you only need enough energy to pump the air down a pipe.
Another low energy technique is that used in the Atacama Desert in Chile, and is basically just a piece of mesh strung between two poles, with a trough under it. They get a fog too, and as it flows through the mesh, drops of water condense and run down into the trough.
But NBD Nano claim that the beetle’s skin is sev...Folksonomies: water
Folksonomies: water
lostinscience.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/how-to-make-a-self-filling-water-bottle/
13 MAR 2014 by ideonexus
The Composition of Planets
As to your reasoning of the inconvenience that a centre would become further removed from another centre than from the circumference of his own globe, though centres are of the same species while the centre and circumference are of contrary nature and should therefore be furthest removed from one another, I reply as follows: Firstly, that contraries need not be at the furthest distance one from another, inasmuch as one may influence the other or may be patient of influence therefrom; as we se... 1 notes
notesAnd why we do not see them orbiting other suns.
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Environmental Variation Improves Creativity
It also suggests, at least to me, that creativity can be enhanced deliberately through environmental variation. Two techniques seem promising: varying what you learn and varying where you learn it. I try each week to read a scientific paper in a field new to me—and to read it in a different place.
New associations often leap out of the air at me this way. More intriguing, others seem to form covertly and lie in wait for the opportune moment when they can click into place. I do not try to ...Folksonomies: cognition creativity
Folksonomies: cognition creativity
Jason Zweig describes how new experiences prompt new associations.
19 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
If a Scientist Wrote the Book of Genesis
In the beginning was the singularity, and the singularity was infinitely dense and infinitely hot, And the singularity expanded and the singularity cooled and there was chaos, And of the primeval atom was born the Universe. And the Universe was matter and antimatter, and baryogenesis was violated and matter annihilated antimatter until only matter remained, And matter resolved into hydrogen, and after hydrogen came helium and deuterium and all elements, And with elements came mass and with ma...Opening chapter of genesis written in science.
23 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
An Elegant Complex Description of Fire
The atoms like each other to different degrees. Oxygen, for instance in the air, would like to be next to carbon, and if they get near to each other, they snap together. If they’re not too close though, they repel and they go apart, so they don’t know that they could snap together. It’s just as if you had a ball, it was trying to climb a hill and there was a hole it could go into, like a volcano hole, a deep one. It’s rolling along, it doesn’t go down in the deep hole, because if it...From Richard Feynman, making the process of burning wood seem wondrous.
17 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Life in a Nebula Evolves to Maneuver into It
"Tell me what happened!"
"The tree came apart.
"Why?"
"Maybe the fire set it off, but it was ready. Clave, everythiiing in the Smoke Ring has some way of getting around. Some way to stay near the median... middle, where there's warater and air. Where do you think jet pods come from?" The hanand relaxed a little, and the Grad kept talking. "It's a plant's way of gettmg around. If a plant wanders out of the median, t too far into the gas torus region--"
"The what?"
Alfin asked, "What o... 1 notes
notesThe integral tree has just broken in half, and the scientist explains this is a survival mechanism because it was moving to far out of the nebula to survive.
23 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
A Better Future for Our Children
Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter. ... Transmutation of the elements, unlimited power, ability to investigate the working of living cells by tracer atoms, the secret of photosynthesis about to be uncovered, these and a host of other results, all in about fifteen short years. It is not too much to expect that our children will know of great periodic famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under the an...Our children will experience a world made better through science.
