Archive
Science & Space: every article
21 articles, newest first.
23 September 202621 pieces
- Science & SpaceThe Small Planes Worth Learning On and Worth Owning AfterA used Cessna 172 is the safe answer, but it isn't the only one. What each trainer costs to fly, what breaks, and what to check before you buy.
- Science & SpaceHow the Power Grid Works and Why It Goes DarkElectricity is made the instant you use it, which explains almost everything about why the lights stay on and why they sometimes don't.
- Science & SpaceThe Women Who Changed Science and the Work That Did ItGrace Hopper handed out pieces of wire 11.8 inches long to make a point. Eight discoveries, explained well enough to repeat at your own dinner table.
- Science & SpaceNuclear Power Is Just a Very Fancy Way to Boil WaterA uranium pellet the size of a pencil eraser, a steam turbine older than the automobile, and the reason utilities are restarting reactors they already closed.
- Science & SpaceHow to Fly Your First Model Rocket Without Losing ItFresh batteries, a field bigger than you think, and a plan for the one tree that eats rockets. Everything the instructions leave out.
- Science & SpaceHow Artificial Intelligence Actually WorksStrip away the marketing and the doom, and what's under the hood is a very large prediction engine that has never seen a chair.
- Science & SpaceRooftop Solar and the Numbers That Actually Decide ItA panel is honest physics. The contract is where people get hurt. Here's how to run the math yourself before anybody knocks on your door.
- Science & SpaceWhat Holds a Bridge Up and What Eventually Takes One DownEvery bridge ever built solves the same two problems. Learn to read them, and a boring commute turns into a rolling engineering lecture.
- Science & SpaceWhy Your Phone Dies at 30 Percent and EV Batteries Don'tThe same chemistry sits in your pocket and under an electric car, so why does one quit after two years and the other last a decade?
- Science & SpaceThe Night Sky Runs on a Schedule and You Can Learn ItMeteor showers repeat on the same dates every year, eclipses come in seasons, and almost everything you need costs nothing but a lawn chair.
- Science & SpaceWhat Your Brain Is Actually Doing While You SleepSleep isn't the body shutting off. It's a scheduled maintenance window, and there's a chemical clock deciding when it opens.
- Science & SpaceHow Weather Forecasts Are Made and When to Stop Trusting ThemBalloons, supercomputers, and chaos theory go into the number on your phone. Knowing where the skill runs out is the useful part.
- Science & SpaceWhy Your Blue Dot Jumps DowntownAtomic clocks 12,550 miles up, a database of Wi-Fi router names, and a guess about your walking speed. That's your location.
- Science & SpaceWhy Airplanes Fly and Why Turbulence Won't Break OneThe wing throws air downward, the air pushes back, and the bumps that terrify you're nowhere near what the structure was built to shrug off.
- Science & SpaceMost of the Seafloor Has Never Been Properly MappedPressure at the bottom of the Challenger Deep runs about eight tons per square inch, and that's the easy part to explain.
- Science & SpaceHow the Hoover Dam Actually Holds Back Lake Mead582 miles of pipe buried in concrete, four tunnels blasted through a canyon wall, and a wedge of rock-hard math that hasn't budged since 1936.
- Science & SpaceFive Saturday Science Projects That Actually Teach SomethingThe baking soda volcano is a dud. These five take an afternoon, cost almost nothing, and give your kids something they can change and test again.
- Science & SpaceYour First Telescope Should Probably Be an 8-Inch DobsonianAperture and a steady mount beat everything else. Skip the 675x box-store special and buy the thing you'll actually carry outside.
- Science & SpaceHow a Car Engine Actually Works, Stroke by StrokeFour moves, a few thousand times a minute, and a gallon of gas becomes forward motion. What's happening, and what actually kills engines.
- Science & SpaceFive Things You Can Find in the Night Sky Without a TelescopeTwenty minutes in the backyard, no gear, and you can pick out a planet, a star cluster, and a galaxy two and a half million light years out.
- Science & SpaceThe Real Story Behind SpaceX, NASA and the Race to the MoonStrip out the hype and the space race comes down to one number, one unproven maneuver, and one country moving faster than most Americans realize.