We are a nation of snackers. We take our sustenance, physical and mental, in bite-sized bits. We crave instant gratification.
Articles with Research
Image by Finn Årup Nielsen (CC BY 4.0)
Mus musculus (Public Domain)
Will the day yet come when lab mice strike back?
Coming soon to a theater near you: “Attack of the Killer Transgenic Microchip Mice.”
Photo by Bjoertvedt (CC BY-SA 3.0)
The inside story on adder sex
It is time to present the Second Annual Gullible Gull Award for the most bizarre scientific research of the past year involving experimentation with animals.
Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash
Beer bubble mathematics
Back in the early 1970s a physicist named Robert March published a popular textbook called “Physics for Poets.” The name caught on. Since that time dozens of schools have offered courses called “Physics for Poets” as ways of attracting non-scientists to the study of physics.
Photo by veeterzy on Unsplash
Pruning the tree of science
More than half of scientific research contributes nothing to the growth of knowledge.
Photo by Ruslan Zh on Unsplash
If the key fits, you’ll smell it
An old vaudeville joke goes like this:
“I’ve got a goat without a nose.”
“You’ve got a goat without a nose? How does it smell?”
“Awful.”
1940s Analog Computing Machine • NASA (Public Domain)
We don’t know everything yet
Puttering about in the college library I came across a book published 50 years ago called Unsolved Problems of Science. The author is A.W. Haslett, a science popularizer who was widely read in the late 1930s.
Part of the Cassini science team (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The megamachine rolls on
Not long ago an article in the scientific journal “Physical Review Letters” listed 225 names under the title. That’s right, 225 authors for a three-page paper.
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
The invisible drones
Like most social enterprises, science is organized as a pyramid.