A Geek and Freelancer Writing About the Awesomeness of Science
July 20 marks the fiftieth anniversary of humankind’s first steps on the Moon. Apollo 11—crewed by Neil Armstrong, Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin and Michael Collins—left Earth four days earlier, travelling 384,400 kilometres to make the historic landing. In a feat of engineering and accomplishment that had never been seen before, the landing was a climactic symbol... Continue Reading →
Scientist Dorothy Hill was hugely influential in Australian geology. She was a crucial part in the first major studies of the Great Barrier Reef and was the first woman to become a professor at an Australian university. A lot of her work took place at the University of Queensland (UQ). The Engineering and Science Library... Continue Reading →
Racial segregation affected the lives of every black American during the middle of the 20th century. Mamie Phipps Clark was a pioneering social psychologist who investigated its influence on young black children’s self-esteem and identification. She was also the first black woman to graduate from Columbia University, in New York, with a doctorate in social... Continue Reading →
Russia sent the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, into space onboard Vostok 6 in 1963. It would take America another twenty years before it would send its first female astronaut, Sally Ride, skywards. Besides being the first new group since 1969, the astronaut class of 1978 was special because of its diversity, notably for including Black... Continue Reading →
The digital age has brought the world closer together than ever before. Fibre optics is responsible for a large part of that connectivity. Data—in the form of light photons— transverses a network of glass and plastic cables at the speed of light (300,000 km/s or 186,000 mi/s) to its destination where it is reassembled into... Continue Reading →
Rockets have made it possible for humans to travel into space. The technology has taken us to the Moon and sent robotic probes to every planet in the solar system. They’ve helped us to better understand the universe and our place in it. The concept dates back nearly 2000 years and was originally conceived as... Continue Reading →
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, that all life on Earth is related and that it changes to better suit its environment over time, is just as important to science today as it was when it was first introduced over 150 years ago. All plants and animals (humans included) experience small genetic changes with each new... Continue Reading →
People have been looking up at the night sky for thousands of years but radio astronomy was new in the 1950s. One of the first fully functioning radio telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere was the one at Parkes Observatory. It is located 20 kilometres (12.4 miles) north of the town of the same name and... Continue Reading →
Radioactivity was first witnessed in 1896 and can be extremely dangerous to living tissue. All matter is made up of tiny building blocks called atoms. An atom is made up of protons and neutrons at its centre (the nucleus) with electrons orbiting. Different combinations of these particles make up different elements. Some atoms are unstable... Continue Reading →
In 1903, the Wright brothers became the first to successfully fly a heavier-than-air powered winged aircraft. The two were not aeronautical engineers by trade, or had degrees in the field, but they had a passion for the concepts and turned theory into reality. Wilbur was born on April 16th, 1867, and Orville on August 19th,... Continue Reading →