If you’re like me you have to know how everything works. To be honest, I don’t understand how some people stumble through life without understanding how everything works. Take Fall colors for example. In many regions the trees change every year yet most people are completely ignorant of the chemical mechanism by which this occurs.

Basically, […]

I’m well aware that Europeans generally work fewer hours and get more vacation time than American workers but this still ruined my morning.
This morning I was in a teleconference with a whole group of scientists collaborating on a project. Some of the scientists are in Europe. The meeting was in the morning central time to […]

Part 1 is here
In Part 1 I mentioned that my 7th grade science teacher had a tendency towards public humiliation. Imagine taking a quiz and your teacher reading the grades out loud the next day. How would you feel if you had the lowest grade in the class?
Well, she used to do that. Quite […]

In my school district Junior High school was 7th and 8th grade only. My 7th grade science teacher was a (possibly) bipolar ex-hippie who often acted like she would love teaching if not for the students. My 8th grade science teacher was a spectacular teacher and probably ranks in the top 5 on my “all […]

Looks like these big bastards will start showing up on or around May 22nd in northern Illinois. Maybe a week or so later in Wisconsin and Michigan.
I work with a lot of people who haven’t lived in the United States for very long who don’t realize that, in less than a month,  in some areas […]

This question came to me some years ago while I was working at my old job. My job at that company was to test finished product for microbiological defects. The company manufactured sweeteners that were, for the most part, microbiologically clean. It was rare that we would find a count of mold (that’s one mold […]

FDA Urgently Warns Consumers about Health Risks of Potentially Contaminated Olives The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is alerting consumers to possible serious health risks from eating olives that may be contaminated with a deadly bacterium, Clostridium botulinum. C. botulinum can cause botulism, a potentially fatal […]

The 30 degree temperature swing this week in Chicago has me thinking of extreme or unusual weather events. Two days ago people were sitting in short sleeves at U.S. Cellular field saying “too bad the Sox are getting owned but at least the weather is perfect.” Today it’s snowing.
The 20th century alone has had its […]

From Ananova
Solved after 120 years!A team of maths experts has cracked a 120-year puzzle - even though many boffins do not even understand what it’s all about.
The solution is so complex that the handwritten solution would cover Manhattan island in New York, reports Sky News.
And when stored in highly compressed form on a computer hard […]

If everyone on Earth stood on one continent and everyone jumped at the same time, would the resulting impact be enough to knock the Earth out of Orbit?
According to my calculations, no.
The resulting impact would accelerate the Earth about 0.0000000000017 meters per second per second. To put this in perspective there are about 31,500,000,000,000 seconds […]