Long celebrated for its savoir faire, its insouciant elegance, and its bloody habit of guillotining aristocrats, Paris, France is also the undisputed world leader in scissors research. Since its founding more than two-hundred years ago, scientists at the Institut National de Recherche en Ciseaux have made an impressive number of discoveries about the physics, sociology, […]
A new sport is vying for attention on the world scene, and its proponents are challenging The Powers That Be to include it, rather than Curling, in the next Winter Olympics. The sport is called Flailing, and, like Curling, is normally played on ice, with special shoes (coincidentally called “ice shoes”). However, some players practice […]
You may, possibly, have heard rumors that, according to the Mayan—or perhaps the Egyptian or Babylonian—calendar, the world was to have ended a couple of years ago. You may also have concluded that these claims, predictions, or whatever-you-want-to-call-them were probably false. After all, the supply of beer hasn’t given out, interests rates have stayed low, […]
Given the enthusiastic response of our readers to our recent article on the psychology of large appliance repair, we decided to see if physics has anything interesting to say about the matter. As you no doubt recall, the issue discussed in the earlier story was the statistical correlation between the hours separating midnight and 2:00 […]
Have you ever noticed that large appliance repairs usually happen in the middle of the night? If you have noticed this, you have probably wondered what it is about the smallest hours of the night that causes you to find yourself with your stove or dishwasher scattered around your kitchen in fifty-seven pieces? Ever tireless […]
One of the highlights of this week’s International Conference of the International Union of International Human Phalangology, Midwest Division was a paper called “Confirmation of the Prevalence of Podiatric Phalanges in Homo sapiens: Humans Usually Have Toes.” Scientists at the State University of Northern South Dakota reported the findings of an extensive, multi-year study of […]
Loading ...
