All around you, and on every surface of the earth, there is radiation pummeling the atoms that make up the matter that we can see and feel. Even as you read this sentence, you are being bombarded by radiation. Pew! Pew! But fear not, it’s completely normal. This background radiation is safe. And though it […]
The following is an excerpt from Elon Musk, a biography by Ashlee Vance. Listen to SciFri on June 26, 2015, to hear Vance talk more about Musk’s life. “Do you think I’m insane?” This question came from Elon Musk near the very end of a long dinner we shared at a high-end seafood restaurant in […]
This activity is part of a Science Friday spotlight about cephalopods. Get involved using the hashtag #CephalopodWeek. Target Grades: 4th-8th Estimated time: 30 minutes to 1 hour with options to extend Subjects: Marine Biology, Engineering and Technology Topics: Animal Locomotion, Biomimicry, Jet-Propulsion, Activity Type: Engineering design challenge. Cephalopods are a diverse and versatile bunch of critters. […]
This article is part of a spotlight on silk. Check out “The Medical Wonders of Worm Spit,” part of SciFri’s Macroscope video series, and this activity involving a silkworm cocoon dissection. There’s a glass cabinet of curiosities that stands in the corner of a windowed room of the silklab at Tufts University in Boston. Among […]
This photograph captures a sliver in time—1/10,000th of a second, to be exact—when a drop of milk splashes and curves upwards to form an opalescent crown. The photographer spent two decades trying to capture the perfect milk coronet, until he snapped this color shot in 1957. He was Harold “Doc” Edgerton, a professor of electrical […]
A limpet’s life is an arduous one. Clinging to rocks with a muscular foot, these little mollusks brace against crashing waves that deliver the food they need to survive. Using a long, tongue-like appendage studded with tiny teeth, limpets scrape against the hard rock surface, gathering algae and pulling it toward their mouth. Talk about […]