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Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Krulwich Wonders...

The Miracle Of The Levitating Slinky

Derek holds the Slinky from atop the roof deck.

September 11, 2012 A Slinky falling in slow motion doesn't move the way you'd expect; the top of the Slinky falls normally, while the bottom seems to float in midair. The physics of that weird Slinky movement can also represent how we use signals to interact with the world around us.

Summary

Friday, September 07, 2012

Krulwich Wonders...

Volcano Shoots Geyser Of Water Up Into Space

Enceladus, shooting geysers of water into space.

September 7, 2012 Nobody imagined that the rings around Saturn might be fed by geysers. But some of the water vapor shot out by one of Saturn's moons actually makes it into orbit around the planet.

Summary

Thursday, September 06, 2012

Krulwich Wonders...

Noah's Face Is Now 6 1/2 Years Older

Noah Kalina, 2000

September 6, 2012 Photographer Noah Kalina has been taking a picture of himself every day for the past 12.5 years.

Summary

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Krulwich Wonders...

What's With Frosty? Why Isn't He Showing Up On Time?

Winter cabin

September 5, 2012 Over the 20th century, America's "growing season," a proxy for warmer temperatures, has been getting longer. And scientists say the trend is exactly what they expect to see as greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increase.

Summary

Monday, August 27, 2012

Krulwich Wonders...

Neil Armstrong Comes Home

Front page of the Wapakoneta Daily News

August 27, 2012 "I am, and will ever be, a white-socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace and propelled by compressible flow," Neil Armstrong said in 2000.

Summary

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Krulwich Wonders...

The Eulogy That Wasn't: The Fate Neil Armstrong Evaded

Neil Armstrong casts a shadow in a photograph he took of the lunar lander Eagle near the end of his historic moonwalk.

August 26, 2012 The Apollo 11 moonwalkers were to be remembered as "epic men of flesh and blood" had disaster stranded them on the moon.

Summary

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Krulwich Wonders...

Designing Yourself

Robert Krulwich delivers the commencement address at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, on June 2.

August 14, 2012 In Robert Krulwich's 2012 commencement address to the College of the Atlantic, he says it's important to know your insides, know your pleasures, and create a version of yourself boosted and buoyed by others to maximize happiness in your life.

Summary

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Krulwich Wonders...

Weekend Special: Underwater Torpedo Adopted By A Group Of Traveling Mammals

Dolphins

August 11, 2012 Four guys fishing for tuna off the coast of Santa Cruz came across a pretty amazing site. And they just so happened to have an underwater camera to capture it.

Summary

Friday, August 10, 2012

Krulwich Wonders...

Giant Crumpled Paper Drops From The Sky, Lands On Hill In New Zealand

Neil Dawson Sculpture

August 10, 2012 You are standing in a park in New Zealand. You look up at the top of a hill, and there, balanced on the ground, looking like it might catch a breeze and blow away, is a gigantic sculpture that looks like a wrinkled piece of paper.

Summary

Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Krulwich Wonders...

Discussing The Mars Landing With My 137-Year-Old Grandfather

Percival Lowell's drawings of "canals" on Mars.

August 8, 2012 Krulwich's grandfather read, as did many others in 1907, of alleged "canals" and alien life on the red planet. How would he feel about Curiosity's successful landing on and future exploration of Mars?

Summary

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Krulwich Wonders...

The Worst Way To Stay Alive Forever

Computer and human.

August 7, 2012 If machines could one day duplicate a human brain, connections alone won't be enough. A brain has (and a machine needs) something else.

Summary

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Krulwich Wonders...

Are Butterflies Two Different Animals in One? The Death And Resurrection Theory

Butterfly.

August 1, 2012 Moths and butterflies radically change shape as they grow, from little wormy caterpillar critters to airborne beauties. Why are they born this way? Could they actually be separate organisms?

Summary

Monday, July 30, 2012

Krulwich Wonders...

Embarrassed By Your Olympic Javelin: Did Cavemen Do It Better?

Detail of javelins during day eight of the 13th IAAF World Athletics Championships at Daegu Stadium on Sept. 3, 2011 in Daegu, South Korea.

July 30, 2012 After German Uwe Hohn threw his javelin nearly out of the stadium in 1984, a move that spooked officials with its potential deadliness, the flying spears were changed to fly shorter. But people have been throwing sticks for 400,000 years, and some of these ancient spears might have been able to fly far farther than modern javelins.

Summary

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Krulwich Wonders...

Weekend Special: The Miracle Of The Felt-Tipped Pen

A CT scan showing a pen in a woman's stomach.

July 28, 2012 Things get swallowed all the time, but one tale from a hospital case study in Devon, England, tells us something extraordinary about felt-tip pens.

Summary

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Krulwich Wonders...

Which Is Bigger: A Human Brain Or The Universe?

Brain cloud

July 24, 2012 You can fly with me across vast distances, go to impossibly faraway places because you have the tool that lets you — that hunk of flesh in your head. But can the universe outwit us?

Summary

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