Scientific World

While science is a serious business, it is not immune to practical jokes. Everyone thinks of science as some sort of "no-fun" industry, but this couldn't be farther from the truth. In honour of April Fools Day and to demonstrate what I'm talking about, let's take a look at some of the most memorable pranks by scientists in history. 4. Richard Feynman Being A Troll During the Manhattan Project  In case you weren't listening during grade 10 history, I'll remind you that this was the project that was going on in Los Alamos, New Mexico during World War II where the goal was to build an atomic bomb before the Nazis did. This was obviously very serious business… Well, serious business to everyone except Richard Feynman, one of the most genius, yet eccentric physicists of all time. While in Los Alamos, the scientists working on the project were barely allowed communication from the outside world. As a result, the young Mr. Feynman got bored and deci...

We've all heard of the Big Bang. The theory goes that the universe started at an extremely dense and hot point and rapidly expanded from there and is now still expanding to this day. Here's the thing though: The "Big Bang" occurred over 13 billion years ago. In case you haven't figured out, it's really hard to look this far into the past and that is why it is has been so hard to conclusively say what the universe was like at its birth. Except maybe not! Physicists are a clever bunch and have found a way to validate the theory of the rapid expansion of the universe at an early age called Inflation (by early age, I'm literally talking about a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a millionth of a second….that's seriously early). What many physicists theorized was something called "gravitational waves". These were kind of like ripples that should have been left over from Inflation. If we could detect these, that would prove that Infla...

The pursuit of knowledge is an important and noble quest. Unfortunately, the history of scientific inquiry is plagued with numerous examples of experiments that went unbelievably bad - sometimes bordering on the line of absolutely tragic. That's not to say that this is "science's fault". After all, human beings are the ones who conduct the science and unfortunately, we're not that great sometimes, as illustrated by 5 tragic experiments. This is the first of 5 articles highlighting awfully tragic experiments.  5. The Wild Child: The Story of Genie  Let's start with the background story: Genie was born in 1957 and had a horribly abusive family who confined her to a tiny, dark room for her entire youth. For whatever reason, she was ostracized from a young age by her family and was often tied down to a potty that was in her room, unable to walk around. She was also severely underfed and abused both physically and mentally. After a social worker discove...

Hmmm....Pie. Oh, I mean Pi! Sorry, but we're here to talk about the mathematical constant, not the scrumptious desert you see above (sadly, there is no national day for apple pie...yet). Anyways today, we're going to highlight the intriguing history of Pi and some interesting facts about it!  A History Unlike most numbers, Pi is special (hopefully  √2 isn't reading).  The Babylonians were some of the first to recognize Pi, approximating it to about 3.125 (not bad for a civilization that just learnt how to write). Now of course, we know literally billions of digits of Pi and computing new digits of Pi has actually become a test to challenge a computer's computing power. Also, it's given irrational number enthusiasts (read: nerds) across the globe a new hobby (trust me: chicks dig decimal recitations of numbers with no recurring patterns :).  But seriously, Pi is pretty awesome. Besides giving us the ability to impress people at parties (yes, I'...

Happy birthday Albert Einstein! On this day, 135 years ago (jeez, has it been that long?!), one of the greatest thinkers to ever walk the earth was born. Raised in Switzerland, he initially prepared to become a physics teacher, but was denied a job and decided to eventually settle on a position as a patent clerk. That's right folks. Einstein was not some sort of prodigy growing up. If his plans unravelled the way he expected, it is very likely that he would have lived his entire life as just another regular school teacher having to deal with little rascals throw spitballs at him all day. The school system may have said he was merely a "good student", but this just goes to show that no single number and no standardized test can measure true intelligence. Every kid out there has something special and the potential to do something; the hard part is harnessing that and getting it to show. Sadly, it's not something that everyone can achieve. This is something Einstein ...

Brains studying brains. That's basically what psychology boils down to. It's a subject that attempts to answer some of the most fundamental questions in regards to how we think and why we behave the way we do. Throughout the years, numerous experiments have opened our eyes to how we act. The results are usually informative, but sometimes absolutely shocking. Here are a couple of psychology experiments that I consider the most shocking in what they tell us about ourselves.  5. You Probably Can't Multitask  Have you ever tried to do classwork while listening to music, only to have your teachers complain that you can't possibly multitask like that? Well...they may be onto something. An experiment by two psychologists  involved showing a group of subjects a video that tested multitasking. Here, why don't you try it yourself?  How did you do? If you successfully noticed everything, congrats - you're a superhuman. But if not, don't worry about it. Stu...

Y2K. 2012. A couple hundred other dates that people have predicted to be the end of planet earth. Humans love to contemplate their eventual demise in the most fantastic ways possible. While most people think of sic-fi and alien invasions when apocalypse comes to mind, here are a couple of very realistic apocalyptic scenarios that could seriously wipe us off the planet in the near future. 4. Super Volcano Eruption Because scientists want you to be scared, the title of "Super Volcano" is given to absolutely massive volcanoes. Compared to regular eruptions, Super Volcano eruptions are exponentially worse. Mt. Saint Hellen's is a volcano that erupted in 1980 and it was so big that it killed 57 people. That's pretty bas, right? Well, the last time the super volcano at Yellowstone National Park (Wisconsin, United States) erupted (1.3 million years ago), it created a blast that was approximately  25000 times larger ! According to Bill Bryson's "A Short Hi...