Heavy Metal: The Physics of DIY Instruments
Composer and instrument builder Paul Rudolph makes music from garbage. John Powell, physicist and author of How Music Works, chimes in with an explanation of how Rudolph’s modifications to the instruments helps transform noise into notes.
Desktop Diaries: Temple Grandin
“I’m pure geek, pure logic,” says Temple Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State University. We spent an afternoon with Grandin in her office in Fort Collins.
Desktop Diaries: Oliver Sacks
Writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks explains what his desk means to him. From lumps of metal to lemurs, Sacks describes some of his treasures.
Sandy’s CT Scan, and Other Vital Images
Satellites looked at Sandy this week, and they also looked in.
Plunge Into the Science of BASE Jumping
BASE stands for the objects the practitioners of the sport jump from: buildings, antennas, spans, earth. Wingsuits are sometimes involved; parachutes, always.
Geek My Pumpkin
Maniac Pumpkin Carvers Marc and Chris carve hundreds of pumpkins each fall, which go for a few hundred bucks and rarely end up on stoops. They gave us some tips for how to bring our pumpkins to the next level this Halloween.
Step Into an Optical Illusion
In Demon Hill, the rules of gravity don’t apply as you expect them to. Down is not down, exactly. The room, created by Los Angeles artist Julian Hoeber and on display at the Harris Lieberman Gallery in New York, is modeled on a stock roadside attraction.
This Beetle Puts the ‘Extreme’ in Extremity
The horn of a Japanese rhinoceros beetle (Trypoxylus dichotomus) can grow to be two-thirds the length of the rest of its body. And size matters.
Wild California Condors Made Here
By 1982, fewer than two dozen California condors lived in the wild. By 1985, only one wild breeding pair was known to exist.
Printing Solar Panels in the Backyard
Imagine what you might do if you could print your own solar panels. That’s kind of the dream behind Shawn Frayne and Alex Hornstein’s Solar Pocket Factory.