Category: Experiments

No Starch Press Manga Guides Make Science Fun

Marziah Karch

Have you ever read a textbook cover to cover? I’m in grad school. I’ve had to do it more than once. It usually requires massive amounts of caffeine and re-reading a lot of pages. Well, there’s some good news. No Starch Press has The Manga Guide series on textbook topics, such as statistics, electricity, and molecular biology. The manga books are written by Japanese subject matter experts. They have been translated to English and (thankfully) rearranged to read from left to right.

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Severe Weather Preparedness Week: Be a Force of Nature

Patricia Vollmer

Are you a “Force of Nature”? Take the pledge to be one during National Severe Weather Preparedness Week from March 3-9th. This is the week that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has joined forces with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to educate and inspire Americans to be ready for this year’s severe weather. They have adapted the catch-phrase “Be a Force of Nature” to help Americans remember to be proactive and ready.

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The Sky is Falling! Asteroids and Meteors on the Same Day!

Helene McLaughlin

So maybe the sky isn’t falling, but it’s quite the coincidence that an asteroid and a meteor both descended upon our little plot of the universe within about 15 hours of one another. While many skywatchers have been anxiously awaiting the close approach of Asteroid 2012 DA14, they were completely taken by surprise when a 500-ton meteor that streaked across the Russian Ural sky earlier the same day.

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5 Ways to Sneak Math Lessons into Baking Christmas Cookies

Patricia Vollmer

Recently, I’ve acquired a couple of elves to help me bake Christmas cookies. My sons, ages 7 and 10, are old enough to do just about everything in the cookie baking process (with plenty of adult supervision). My youngest son loves cracking eggs, which is just the beginning of the educational value of this annual tradition. I offer to you five small math lessons that can pay dividends for any young person to have a fruitful future in cooking and baking.

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Have you registered for the 19th Annual Great Moonbuggy Race?

Helene McLaughlin

Dreaming of being an astronaut is a phase just about everyone goes through at one point in their lives. It’s a much smaller amount of people who decide to peruse that dream when they grow-up. While not everyone might go into space, everyone has the opportunity to race on the moon…. well almost. For the last 19 years, NASA has given high school and college teams from across the globe a chance to compete against each other for the title of “Greatest Moonbuggy of the Year”.

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Plastic Found on Mars… And Five Other Famous Hoaxes

Helene McLaughlin

Have you heard, Mardi Gras has made it to Mars!!! Yesterday there were rumors flying about the internet about a massive discovery of plastic found on Mars. With only a quick glance it seemed to be a legit press release from Jet Propulsion Lab in California. However, for anyone that looked at the article for more then 30 seconds it was obvious that this was a nicely executed hoax. Phil Plait from Bad Astronomer wrote a great post last night listing all of the ways that this hoax outed itself. The prankster obviously wanted to take advantage of the “earthshaking” announcement from last week that something was found on Mars. Its been later determined that even that previous press release was an over exaggeration by a reporter after an interview with a Curiosity team member.

Massive scientific hoaxes aren’t new, they have been around for ages. Sometimes they are a lot harder to spot then this one, and cause a lot more confusion then this little prank. One of the greatest achievements of the scientific method is the ability for correction over time. No matter how elaborate the hoax, science will be able to eventually prove or disprove a skeptic. There are times that hoaxes almost get by without detection, and as a reminder to stay ever vigilant to the proof here are five of the greatest scientific hoaxes of all time.

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