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POPSAn Open Letter to Michael Mann, Disgraced Victim of Climategate If you possessed but a modicum of honesty, you would simply admit your crimes. Oh -- are you familiar with Archimedes? When ice melts, water levels actually fall. It has to do with displacement and the density of ice versus water. Claiming that sea levels will rise because glaciers melt is either ignorant or fraudulent. Can you pass that along to your buddy-slash-current Science Czar John "Mass Sterilization" Holdren? He's actually been wrong about, well, pretty much everything over the years. Maybe you could help him out. Mr. Mann, the best thing you could do would be to come clean and seek forgiveness. Such an act would be both humbling and liberating. You should try it. It's an option that's always available. And it's never too late to free yourself. Would you agree that humility and contrition are noble endeavors? Regards, Ben Barrack Walk towards the light, Michael. Doug Ross Blog http://bit.ly/5lUgHN
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POPS10 ancient Greek writers you should know Archimedes was a mathematician, engineer, inventor, physicist and astronomer. He is known for the invention of The Archimedes’ Screw, a mechanism for moving water that is still in use today. He also calculated the value of pi very precisely. Archimedes discovered how to define the volume of irregular objects by submerging them in water. According to legend, this discovery made him run out on the street naked (he was so excited that he forgot to get dressed) and cry “Eureka!” – I have found it.
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POPSMinds and myths "..Other sciences certainly do have their own myths – just think of the story of Newton and the falling apple or Archimedes leaping out of the bath following his Eureka insight. Perhaps myths just seem more prominent in psychology because we tend to talk and write about our science in terms of studies rather than facts."
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POPS2300 Year Old Model Airplane Did anyone actually build a large version of this thing? Well, no one could have come this close to the real shape of flight without working on a larger scale. This little wooden model could hardly exist unless someone had worked with large, light models, or even with man-carrying versions. Archaeologists have looked in vain for a prototype. A large model light enough to fly would be too delicate to stand the ravages of 2300 years. The original -- if it ever was -- has long since joined the desert dust. Whatever form this Egyptian airplane might have taken, it has long since returned to the world of dreams and imagination from which it first came.
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POPSEdison vs. Archimedes... Alph Bingham, founder of Innocentive, has been writing an extended series on this... takes time to work through, but interesting.
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POPSThe Ancient Mechanics and How They Thought He also majored in astronomy as an undergraduate, and about nine years ago, feeling science-deprived, he joined a multinational research endeavor called the Archimedes Project, based at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. The Archimedes team studies the history of mechanics, how people thought about simple machines like the lever, the wheel and axle, the balance, the pulley, the wedge and the screw and how they turned their thoughts into theories and principles. The textual record begins with “Mechanical Problems,” moves to Rome and then through the medieval Islamic world to the Renaissance. It ends, finally, with Newton, who described many of the basic laws of mechanics in the 18th century. By following the historical record, the Archimedes researchers have discovered that the evolution of physics — or, at least, mechanics — is based on an interplay between practice and theory.
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POPSπ Pi(π) appears where you least expect it. Coincidentally, Pi Day is also the birthday of Albert Einstein, who no doubt knew more than a little about pi. Pi Day celebrants, usually children with an enthusiastic teacher and a varying degree of personal interest in the subject, learn about pi, circles, and, if they're lucky, eat baked pies of various sorts.
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POPSUseful Open Source Some useful free open source software which can be used as alternatives to expensive software.
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POPSEureka! A Prayer for Archimedes Archimedes wrote his manuscript on a papyrus scroll 2,200 years ago. At an unknown later time, someone copied the text from papyrus to animal-skin parchment. Then, 700 years ago, a monk needed parchment for a new prayer book. He pulled the copy of Archimedes' book off the shelf, cut the pages in half, rotated them 90 degrees..... More on this interesting find at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20071006/mathtrek.asp http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20071006/mathtrek.asp
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POPSAncient Blueprints of Calculus Uncovered in Archimedes Text Details have been released from the nine-year-long reconstruction project to recover the Greek mathematician's writings from this one-of-a-kind find and the results are fascinating. Buried beneath the surface of this gilded palimpsest, researchers discovered more extensive demonstrations of concepts such as infinite series, approximations, limits, and integral calculus than had been known to exist in ancient times. Archimedes wrote The Method almost two thousand years before Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz developed calculus in the 1700s. Reviel Netz, an historian of mathematics at Stanford University who transcribed the text, says that the examination of Archimedes' work has revealed "a new twist on the entire trajectory of Western mathematics."
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