How can you get the highest possible range of movement on a playground swing? Kids have been experimenting with different options for generations. Now we have a carefully examined and mathematically quantifiable study on how to get the best swing on a swing.
Science Alert tells us about a recent paper published by physicists in Australia and Japan. In addition to creating theoretical models of swinging, they conducted experimental research by recruiting 10 college students to swing with different methods. The scientists concluded that the best strategy is to lean all the way forward as soon as you pass the midpoint of the forward motion and lean back on the backstroke. Get as supine as possible at the highest part of the backward motion.
Now let's go to the playground and replicate these experiments. Replication is essential to valid scientific research.
Plastic pollution has been a problem for years now, and its undesirable effects are still felt today in ecosystems across the globe. It is most destructive for aquatic species like fish and turtles. But it seems the problem does not stop there. A team of scientists led by Linsey Haram has recently found that, in the open ocean, plastic debris could serve as a makeshift habitat for coastal species. Scientists also found that they live side by side in the plastic debris with open-ocean animals. They worry that this unprecedented scenario could increase the odds of biological invasions that will disrupt surrounding ecosystems. Worse, there have been signs that these coastal species were reproducing.
"If you can reproduce, then you can spread. And if you can spread, you can invade," says marine microbiologist Linda Amaral-Zettler, who was not involved in the study.
The study, which analyzed plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, found that nearly all of this debris contained "pelagic" or open-ocean species. About 70% of the debris, however, contained at least one coastal species (like bryozoans, jellyfish, sponges, and worms).
Martin Thiel, another marine biologist not involved in the study, says this finding is another warning call for us to take action on the plastic problem.
Spanish athlete Beatriz Flamini thought she had only stayed in the cave for 160-170 days. Almost half a year ago, she agreed to participate in a study attempting to understand the effects of isolation in humans, and her estimate meant that she still had over 300 days to go. Only it wasn't half a year ago. When the support team came to retrieve her, she was surprised to hear that her time was up. She had already spent over 500 days. On April 14, 2023, Flamini finally went out of the cave with a smile (although her mind was still stuck on November 21, 2021). Imagine enduring a year and a half inside a cave with almost no contact with the outside world.
Flamini explains that she quickly lost her sense of time during her stay in the cave. But how could one lose sense of time?
We keep track of time using environmental and social cues like the rising and setting of the sun and our daily routine like work. Flamini lost these cues during her time in the cave alone, and she may have relied more on her psychological processes, specifically her memory.
As it turns out, the memories we create during certain events become our reference in tracking time. The more memories created during an event, the more we perceive said event to have lasted longer. We perceive busy days as longer compared to days when nothing significant happens.
Because Flamini had no social interaction and no schedule to follow except her own, Flamini was free to do whatever she wanted anytime. This situation may have made the passing of time irrelevant.
But we can only let go of our sense of time when we believe we have control over our own time and behavior. Prisoners who serve sentences, for example, report becoming obsessed with monitoring time.
Flamini's 500 days inside the cave provide many insights into how we perceive time. The full story is told over at ScienceAlert.
On land, when it spends its time mating and molting, the northern elephant seal sleeps for nearly 11 hours a day. But when it’s time to forage for food and it has to swim out to sea for months, the seal’s sleep pattern changes significantly.
But how does the seal sleep while in the water? Scientists also asked the same question, as these seals were always seen diving almost all the time. Could it be that they sleep while they dive?
To find the answer, scientists equipped 13 young female seals with a watertight EEG cap and sensors to monitor their brain waves, heart rates, and 3-D motion. The team, led by ecophysiologist Jessica Kendall-Bar, found that these seals do sleep while diving.
The seals first dive 60 to 100 meters below the surface. For a few minutes, they try to maintain themselves upright before REM and sleep paralysis kick in. Then they unconsciously flip upside down and gently descend in a spiral motion to depths where their natural predators do not normally go. After 5 to 10 minutes, the seals wake up from their power naps and swim back to the surface.
Scientists found that northern elephant seals sleep around two hours a day on average when they forage for food at sea.
It is worth noting that the sleeping habits of northern elephant seals are different from other marine animals like dolphins and fur seals who sleep only with half of their brains (one-sided sleep). Unlike other marine animals who try to be alert at all times, these seals leave themselves completely vulnerable.
The study of sleep behaviors across the animal kingdom is an essential step to understanding the function of sleep for all animals (including us humans).
On April 20, 8:33 AM (Local Texas Time), SpaceX’s first-ever integrated Starship rocket — currently the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built — left the ground and soared high in the Texas sky. The rocket’s flight was short-lived, however, lasting only under four minutes before meeting an explosive end. During its short journey, Starship was able to reach a max altitude of 24 miles (39 kilometers).
Starship’s explosion seems to be a failure for us not involved in the project. But for the SpaceX staff, the first test flight was a huge success. While the goal is to get Starship outside and back into the Earth’s atmosphere, and finally land on the Pacific Ocean, this test flight was more “about gathering data and responding properly to whatever ended up happening,” according to SpaceX representatives.
Kate Tice, for example, remarked during the webcast that “everything after clearing the tower was icing on the cake.”
John Insprucker, the company’s Principal Integration Engineer, described the test as “incredible.”
The Starship’s upper stage was supposed to separate from the Super Heavy first stage three minutes after liftoff. Unfortunately, the two remained connected, so the rocket was ordered to self-destruct. (Yep. The explosion was intentional.)
SpaceX explained that the rocket experienced multiple engines out, which caused it to lose altitude and tumble, thus the command for a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” (their term for the self-destruction process).
Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass noticed they had a lot of food-themed song titles, and decided to put them together for their sixth album, Whipped Cream & Other Delights. Photographer Peter Whorf had a vision for the album cover, and hired Dolores Erickson for a photoshoot in which she appeared to be covered with whipped cream (actually shaving cream, except for the fluff on her head). When Whorf presented the images to the band, Alpert thought they were too racy and would never go over. When Erickson saw them months later, she was appalled, and hid them from her husband.
But the band decided to use one of the pictures, and the album Whipped Cream & Other Delights sold six million copies. The only hit single from the album was "A Taste of Honey," which peaked at #7 in the US, but everyone wanted the full album when they saw the cover. Read the story of the picture that sold the album and became a classic at Vintage Everyday. -via Strange Company
As a bonus, continue reading to see some of the recreations and parodies of the album cover I found while looking for an illustration for this post.
Don Powell and his wife moved into a new home in Orchard Lake, Michigan five years ago. They ordered a custom-made mailbox that is larger than a standard mailbox and resembles their home with windows and everything. It even has a solar powered interior light. Cool huh? But it got much cooler last August, when Powell opened the mailbox to find two dolls and a note that said, “We’ve decided to live here. Mary and Shelley.” They were sitting on a miniature couch.
Powell asked his neighbors, but no one admits knowing anything about the dolls. He left the dolls in the mailbox, because there is still plenty of room for mail. Later on, the dolls collected more miniature furniture and accessories, including a dog, Halloween decorations, and a Christmas tree. At some point, the dolls' cousin Shirley moved in to recuperate from a broken leg. Powell has been documenting the dolls' shenanigans on his Nextdoor neighborhood group, and keeping the other members enthralled with the saga. Read the full story and see more pictures at Hometown Life. -via Metafilter
In the Star Wars TV series The Mandalorian, the catch phrase is "This is the way." The words were uttered 24 times during the first season and 11 times during season two, so we already knew that's just what Mandalorians say. But that wasn't enough for Disney/Lucasfilm, who are obviously wanting to make every Star Wars fan use it as a greeting. During season three, there are 187 instances of "This is the way." Auralnauts took notice, and also saw how it was almost always said it in a particularly rhythmic way, just perfect for an electronic slow march beat mashup. The total count for the series so far is 222, but there is a bonus clip at the end where it might be another instance. This could be today's earworm; apologies in advance.
I had cultivated a habit over the past few years of responding to "May the Force be with you" with "And also with you." I will be changing that now, to "This is the way." -via Laughing Squid
The title of the list is "5 Math Battles That Ended in Death," but that is a little misleading. Yes, there were math battles during the 16th century, but the consequences of those were more on the level of betting, they weren't deadly. The accounts of the five deadly incidents include one duel that may or may not have anything to do with math (but left a talented young mathematician dead), one possibly natural death, and three tragic cases of gifted mathematicians who suffered from obvious mental illness. One killed his family because it was the mathematically logical thing to do. One was so paranoid that he wouldn't eat anything unless his wife prepared it, and when she was hospitalized, he starved to death. Another committed suicide because he was afraid he would lose his math abilities due to cancer. Read all these mathematically sad tales from history at Cracked.
Have you ever been in a discussion, online or in meatspace, when someone makes a pop culture reference and you have no idea why everyone is laughing? Sometimes that's a mention of a fictional company, like when a coworker refers to your own workplace as Dunder Mifflin, or someone says they ate at Los Pollos Hermanos because they couldn't recall the name of the restaurant. Yeah, that happens to me, too. While I am aware of popular movies and TV shows, I don't actually watch them. But you can quickly learn about the fictional businesses and government agencies made up for TV and movies at the Fictional Brands Archive.
It's a database of these companies listed in alphabetical order, with the pop culture world they come from. Click on an entry, and you'll be taken to a page with more information, like a description, logo, backstory, and pictures. Read up on the businesses of your favorite franchise, or bookmark the archive so you can refer to it in the future. -via Kottke
What we have here is a dad performing his best dad joke. You can't help but laugh because he's really putting his heart into selling the silly scenario. The fact that he looks so "dad" with his mullet, knee socks, dad shorts, New Balance shoes, and Advil shirt only pushes our appreciation for him to new heights. He has discovered that there is no greater joy than making a baby laugh. That will continue for very young children, then turn into groans for adolescents and eye rolls from teenagers. By then, dad will take great joy in causing his kids embarrassment. That's how dads evolve. Still, even though dad gets the attention in this video, the greatest thrill for us is the baby's laughter. With an audience like that, you are impelled to put on a great show.
Suspension bridges are an engineering marvel, allowing access across water in all parts of the world. But they have their drawbacks. They must be somewhat flexible to avoid breaking apart, but if they move too much, they will break apart anyway. And strangely, a bridge full of pedestrians moving slowly puts more weight on a bridge than normal vehicle traffic. When soldiers march across a suspension bridge in unison, they can cause a bridge to sway rhythmically, called a "mechanical resonance." The Broughton Suspension Bridge in Manchester, England, was built in 1826. But in 1831, a unit of soldiers marched across the bridge in cadence, causing it to sway more than usual. They found this amusing and marched even harder. Then the bridge fell in. No one was killed in that incident, but the British army afterward enacted a policy to break cadence when crossing a bridge. Then in 1850, a French bridge fell under the same circumstances, killing 226 people!
The effect of marching on a suspension bridge became known, but it doesn't have to be a military unit marching in cadence to produce the effect, as other bridges have failed due to the natural cadence of crowds experiencing swaying while crossing a bridge. Read about this effect and the harrowing examples of what can happen at Amusing Planet.
You probably know the basics of how Anne Sullivan changed an almost feral blind and deaf child into the highly educated Helen Keller, especially if you've seen the movie The Miracle Worker. But the movie (and play) only showed the most dramatic parts of a lifelong story. There's a lot more to learn about it, like how Anne Sullivan came to have the skills she would need to take on such a challenging job. She had overcome her family's poverty, learned how to deal with the world as a blind person, and worked alongside both blind and deaf students at school, including one who was both deaf and blind. Besides the unique experiences that armed Sullivan for the task of educating Helen Keller, she also possessed a combination of stubbornness and patience that led to great things for Keller later in her life. She took a very difficult job and saw it through, because she knew that success would be worth the effort.
The phrase “420” was almost certainly invented in the Bay Area in the early 1970s. But who said it first? That’s a controversial question.https://t.co/sfoxv6mckr
Today is April 20, or 4/20, as Americans shorten it. That's become somewhat of a stoner holiday, as "420" is a code for smoking marijuana. When I was young, there were an awful lot of euphemisms for smoking pot, but 420 was unknown in my neck of the woods, because in the 1970s we didn't have instant communication via internet. However, today it's pretty much universal. Where did the number come from?
It more than 50 years ago at a high school in San Rafael, California. But there are two stories, from two different groups of high school friends, who both claim to have originated the number. They have been squabbling over it for years, and each has evidence to back up their stories. So was it the Waldos or the Beebs who coined 420? The Waldos have a more exciting story, but the Beebs story is earlier and simpler. Read the accounts of both sides from those who were there at SFGate. -via Boing Boing
Twitter user The Made Maker is a committed geek of the highest order. He's a Dungeons & Dragons streamer and 3D printer of fantasy art mugs and a rather clever set of dice that serves as a random name generator. In general, he's very creative, so it's fitting that it would occur to him to make this pun-driven dessert.
Din Djarin, the titular character of the space western series The Mandalorian is made of flan, a custard dessert. He's the Flandalorian.
