🧂How seawater is desalinated
#46 SEPTEMBER 2024
🥤 How to drink the oceans
🕊️ Homing pigeons throughout history
🚇 The world’s most spectacular metro stations
How Does a Black Box Work?
We often hear about black boxes from news reports about airplane crashes. The information from this mysterious object can help us figure out the cause of a crash. First, though, it must survive the accident. So, how does a black box collect data, and why isn’t it affected by fire, water, or immense pressure?
BOOKS: FROM AN IDEA OF BOOKSHELF
A book is the result of many people’s painstaking labor. All that work just so that we can crack open a book, smell freshly-printed ink, and flip through the pages where our beloved characters live. So, how exactly is a book made, and who is involved in this process besides the author themselves?
Paraglide: Fly Like a Bird
According to myth, the craftsman Daedalus, fleeing the wrath of King Minos, made wings secured with wax for himself and his son, Icarus.
“Don’t go too low, or water will weigh the wings down; Don’t go too high, or the Sun’s fire will burn them,” Daedalus advised his son. Unfortunately, Icarus, as keen as he was on flying, violated the latter part of his father’s instruction. Like any legend, this story was a mere allegory until, one day, a daredevil decided to take it literally.
I Can See You From Space: Are Satellites Spying on Us?
Somewhere, up high in orbit and invisible to the naked eye, satellites are watching us. There is nowhere to hide from this all-seeing eye: if you look here, you’ll see your friends skipping school, and just over there, someone’s spray painting a building. They even say that you can see license plate numbers and read newspapers directly with the help of the orbiting satellite! Are they right? Let’s find out for ourselves.
NASA X-planes
In the US aircraft system, “X” designates pilot projects testing new aviation tech. NASA conducts X-projects with the US Air Force at Edwards Air Force Base.
Bionics: How People Imitate Nature
The same ideas often occur to several researchers at the same time. They may also arise in the minds of different species! It’s hard to take something like this at face value, isn’t it? Take a closer look: the world around us is teeming with inventions and mechanisms! They grow under our feet, swim in the water, twitter in the trees. We only need to figure out how they work, and it can’t be done without a dedicated branch of science — bionics.
History of Coins
Why would we discuss coins today, in the age of electronic transactions, credit cards, Bitcoin, and blockchain? Such hard currency may seem outdated, but, despite their archaism, coins remain a symbol of their countries’ financial independence.
The Coming Renaissance
On November 14th, 2007, engineer Fred Simms pulled the plug on the electric supply that ran from a substation to 10 East 40th Street in Manhattan. Thus, the 125-year “War of the Currents” ended with a victory for the prominent engineers Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse: direct current electricity service was finally eliminated from local electric power distribution systems. But was this victory final?
Underwater Web
On August 16, 1858, Queen Victoria sent a telegram to James Buchanan, then-President of the United States. For the first time in history, high-ranking officials communicated via transatlantic telegraph cables. The process took almost 18 hours. Today, it would take you no more than 70 milliseconds.