The Physics of Launching Fireworks From a Drone
Can you launch fireworks from your drone? OK, before I answer this question I have my own question: Why? Guys, why would you want to put fireworks on your drone? I mean, I get it. Fireworks are cool and drones are cool. Therefore fireworks on drones are cool to the power of two, I guess.…
My Two-Week Edible-Insect Feast
The insects appeared at my Chicago doorstep in swarms. Crickets, grasshoppers, locusts, mealworms, ants—all of them dead on arrival, entombed in resealable bags and glass jars. Before long, my apartment was overrun with bugs, and soon all of my meals would be too. I had summoned this infestation, ranging from whole dried insects to bug-based…
WHO Calls Gaming Disorder an Illness. Experts Say Not So Fast
Troubling news for Fortnite-obsessives: The World Health Organization this week included "gaming disorder" as a new mental health condition in the 11th edition of its International Classification of Diseases. The WHO previously added the disorder in the draft for the ICD-11 earlier this year. Now it's official. The revision comes at a time when public…
The Tricky Ethics of the NFL's New Open Data Policy
Since 2015, every player in the National Football League has been part cyborg. Well, kind of: Embedded in their shoulder pads is an RFID chip that can measure speed, distance traveled, acceleration, and deceleration. Those chips broadcast movement information, accurate to within six inches, to electronic receivers in every stadium. Even the balls carry chips.…
Why Do You Feel Lighter at the Top of a Ferris Wheel?
Here is what I like to do (for fun). Take a classic physics problem and go over the solution. After that, I take it just one step further to see what happens. Today, let's start with this problem (you can find a version of this in just about every physics textbook). Of course the first…
A Major Victory for the Impossible Burger, the Veggie ‘Meat’ That Bleeds
The Impossible Burger seems too good to be true—an entirely plant-based “meat” that looks and smells and tastes like beef (at least, according to some folks). Hell, it even bleeds like meat. That’s thanks to a yeast modified to carry genes for the soy leghemoglobin protein, which you’d normally find in the roots of soy…
Why Scientists Turned This Taxidermy Bird Into a Robot
This would be a whole lot harder if biologist Gail Patricelli didn’t have an excellent sense of humor. Because I’m expected to sit here like a professional and not guffaw at her invention: A real-life fembot, which is probably not what you’re imagining but instead a taxidermied bird stuck on wheels. It tears around a…
The Physics—and Physicality—of Extreme Juggling
Among the (many, many) things you probably do not know about juggling is the fact that it is, at times, a physically grueling act. It's something I certainly failed to appreciate before meeting Alex Barron. We recently met at a squash court in Burbank, California so I could watch him practice his craft. There, the…
An Anti-Aging Pundit Solves a Decades-Old Math Problem
In 1950 Edward Nelson, then a student at the University of Chicago, asked the kind of deceptively simple question that can give mathematicians fits for decades. Imagine, he said, a graph—a collection of points connected by lines. Ensure that all of the lines are exactly the same length, and that everything lies on the plane.…
What Is Meat, Anyway? Lab-Grown Food Sets Off a Debate
You don’t typically find philosophical bickering at an FDA public meeting. But then again, this was no ordinary public meeting. On Thursday, the agency convened a scrum on so-called cultured meat—animal tissue grown in a lab, derived from just a handful of cells taken from a cow or chicken or fish. Experts, lab-meat companies, and…