Notebook

Humans

Einstein’s Vision

Accompanying the Einstein exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, this Web site offers a captivating portrait of the most famous scientist of the 20th century. Several online essays probe Albert Einstein’s theories, providing insights into light, time, energy, and gravity. Others explore aspects of his life and times. Go to: http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/

Humans

From the June 14, 1930, issue

1,500,000,000 YEARS OF LIFE PORTRAYED IN GREAT HALL OF PAINTINGS Fifteen hundred million years of life on this planet will be unrolled as a single connected epic in a series of three majestic new halls planned for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Fossils, rocks, mounted plant and animal specimens, paintings, and statuary […]

Earth

Disaster Pix

If you’re one of those people who need to see the extent of intense weather events and great natural disasters–preferably as they are developing–this Web site is for you. Satellite images, provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Operational Significant Event Imagery division, portray hurricanes, dust storms, snowfall, forest fires, volcanic plumes, and much […]

Humans

From the December 10, 1932, issue

CALVES RETAIN PART OF WILD THINGS’ CHARM Cows are prosaic. Like all the rest of us who have grown into maturity and (alas!) responsibility, they have their workaday jobs in a workaday world, seeing to it that we get butter and, eventually, beefsteaks. But calves still have something reminiscent of the long-lost wild freedom of […]

Humans

From the December 3, 1932, issue

“QUICKER’N A WINK” Quick as a wink is a great deal too slow. This proverbial epitome of speed is beaten a dozen times over by the newest trick in scientific high-speed photography, which can take 13 “frames” of motion pictures of a human eye during the fortieth of a second it spends in getting shut. […]

Humans

From the June 7, 1930, issue

COMET MAY CAUSE METEORIC DISPLAY If you watch the sky during the nights of early June, you may be treated to an unusual display of meteors, or “shooting stars.” For comet 1930d, as the astronomers call the new visitor to the heavens discovered by the Germans Schwassmann and Wachmann, is expected to cause a meteoric […]

Health & Medicine

Food Forays

Ever wonder what the Vikings ate on their lengthy voyages to new lands? What pioneers cooked on their treks along the Oregon Trail? Who invented the potato chip? The fascinating answers to these and many other food-related questions can be found at the Food Timeline, a collection of links to related Web pages, compiled by […]

Humans

From the November 26, 1932, issue

BOYS WORSE OFFENDERS To aid the harassed parents of temperish youngsters, Dr. Florence L. Goodenough of the Institute of Child Welfare, University of Minnesota, has made a scientific study of anger in young children–what are the immediate causes of outbursts, what are the underlying causes, what methods are commonly used to suppress it, and what […]

Humans

Moon Trees

In 1971, astronaut Stuart Roosa brought hundreds of tree seeds with him on the Apollo 14 flight to the moon. Known as “moon trees,” the resulting seedlings were planted throughout the United States and elsewhere. This Web site chronicles that project and documents what happened to those seedlings. Go to: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/moon_tree.html

Humans

From the May 31, 1930, issue

A PHARAOH’S TOMB The picture on the cover of this week’s SCIENCE NEWS-LETTER shows how an archaeologist masters the “human fly” trick when he must measure the stones that form the sloping walls of a pharaoh’s tomb. The scene is the famous pyramid at Meydum, Egypt, supposedly built by King Snefru. The Museum of the […]