Josh Eastburn.com » Science

Fun to Imagine

Josh — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:36:37 +0000

Manhattan Project physicist Richard Feynman had a series on the BBC in 1983 called “Fun to Imagine.” Some of the topics include Fire, the Mirror, and how trains stay on the track.

Top 100 Hubble Telescope Images

Josh — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 14:15:50 +0000

Here is an excellent collection of images taken by the Hubble Telescope.

Web Page Nearly the Size of our Solar System

Josh — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 19:18:28 +0000

This page is 9 quadrillion pixels wide by 9 quadrillion pixels tall. Thus it contains a large number of pixels: 8,100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 otherwise known as 8.1 nonillion.

Futhermore, at 77 pixels to the inch, this page takes up 3.4e18 square miles and is 1.844 billion miles on a side– an area roughly equivalent to a section of the plane of our Solar System with the sun at the center and the orbit of Saturn on the outside edge (a square 22 AU on a side).

The 10th Dimension

Josh — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 20:48:12 +0000

Here is a great illustration for imagining the 10th dimension. See if you can comprehend it all the first time through.

The Chainsaw-Mimicking Lyrebird

Josh — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 18:49:49 +0000

For naturalist David Attenborough’s 80th birthday, a poll was taken for his best television moment. The winning clip is of the Australian Lyrebird. In order to attract a mate, it mimics other birds, but also has an uncanny ability to reproduce man-made sounds, such as the shutter of a camera or a chainsaw.

Ligers, Tigons, and Bears, oh my!

Josh — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 17:16:32 +0000

In Napoleon Dynamite, Jon Heder’s character describes a Liger, “It’s pretty much my favorite animal. It’s like a lion and a tiger mixed…bred for its skills in magic.”

While not typically bred for its skills in magic, it is quite an amazing animal, descending from a male lion and a female tiger. Hercules, a liger at the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species, in Miami, Florida, stands 10 feet tall on his hind legs and weighs over 1,000 pounds.

Ligers are not to be confused with Tigons, which are the offspring of a male tiger and a female lion and are much smaller in size. Link