Tunnelling through the Atlantic
Bridges go over water. Tunnels go under water. How about the Archimedes bridge, a hypothetical tunnel design that goes through water instead?
Category: Technology
Ghost in the painting
Artists sometimes change or improve paintings by painting over old versions. Through careful examination or special imaging, we can sometimes see these ghosts of lost art again.
Remote control animals
Something creepy for your Friday: attaching electrodes to animals’ brains so their movements can be controlled remotely.
Protect the train
According to the North American train whistle code, one long whistle then three short whistles means only one thing: it’s time to jump off the train and attach the torpedoes.
Left and right countries
Most of the world drives on the right side of the road, but some countries drive on the left. What happens at the borders between right and left countries?
Moving bridges
How many ways can you move a bridge to let boat traffic through? Well, you can lift it, fold it, curl it, retract it, tilt it, swing it, or submerge it.
Burning runway
What do you do when a plane cannot land because of heavy fog? In WWII Britain, you set the runway on fire.
Thousand shoulders
How do you build a highway flyover without closing the road directly below it? In Indonesia, you build the pylons sideways and then rotate them into position.
Fastest things
What’s the fastest object ever made by humans? In 1957 a 900kg steel plate may have been launched into space by a nuclear explosion, but it has since been eclipsed by far faster things.
Gliding home
In 1983 a Boeing 767 with 61 passengers ran out of fuel while twelve thousand metres off the ground. The metric system was to blame.
Defection by jet
In 1953 No Kum-Sok defected from North Korea. He brought a MiG-15 Soviet jet fighter with him.
Tyre code
Car tyres have a long stretch of letters and numbers embossed on them, something like P215/65R15 95H M+S . Let’s decipher them together.
Accidental 3D film
Georges Méliès accidentally created 3D film in 1903, nineteen years before the première of the first deliberate one.
Highest helicopters
In 2005 a French helicopter pilot landed on top of Mount Everest. In 1972 another French pilot flew more than 12,000 metres up… and then his engine stopped.
Simultaneity
This is the 300th regular post on this site. Time to talk about simultaneous scientific discovery, starring Edison, Newton, Darwin, and many many others.
Electric speed
Up until 1902, every fastest car in the world was electric.
The Generalist Academy 