Funny How the Knight Moves

By: | May 19, 2014

1024px-Los_tres_caballosThe jokers in the house are starting to learn the game of kings.  The set they play with is piecemeal, with a wooden toy horse for a white knight and a lump of rainbow-colored glass for one of the pawns. The board is metal, designed for playing checkers on the road. But still the jokers learn.

Until now, chess has always seemed like a burden, something I should have learned but never really did–like shorthand, or how to fold a fitted sheet.  I don’t think I enjoyed, let alone finished, the few games I played as a kid.

Yet decades later, I’ve now checked out a kids’ book about chess to find something that makes the game seem less daunting. This is it: there are games that you don’t need all the pieces to play. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | May 17, 2014

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May 12-16, 2014

This week’s stories covered nostalgia, the physics of scrubbing, the physics of space, the physics of candied orange peels, and earthquakes.

It has been three decades since Richard left Chicago. So why is he still dreaming of Wrigley Field? “I suppose it has something to do with the 1969 season.”

Guest Poster Hannah Hoag explored the physics behind the awesomeness of Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser and its predecessors. “There is an entire arm of physics devoted to the science of rubbing and scrubbing–and which has slipped into all aspects of life, including my kitchen.”

Helen took us “amongst spacecraft” to give us a sneak peek of a little-known NASA mission. The goal? “Study the physics where the Earth’s magnetic field and the Sun’s magnetic field meet.” Cool.

All Ann wants is candied orange peel. But sugar — that tricksy, shape-shifting siren — won’t let her have it. “Instead I get this lethal complexity, this intricate villainy.” (Ann is being charming again).

Erik thought he knew exactly where to hide to survive an earthquake, until his father-in-law set him straight. “When it hits, just try to get under something and cover your head. And if you’re not getting tossed like a rag doll, don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Enjoy the ride.”

photo of candied orange peel by Jocelyn McAuley

All Shaken Up

By: | May 16, 2014

Mexico quakeLast Saturday morning at 2:36 AM, Central Time, I woke up to the sound of my house creaking. For a split second I thought I might still be tipsy from the long night out in the La Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City, where I live. But that wasn’t it.

“Earthquake!” I yelled and hit the floor next to the bed while my wife made for the door frame.

Which, oddly enough, got me in trouble. You see, when it comes to surviving an earthquake I was following the supposed “triangle of life” principle (pictured below) while my wife opted for “hide in a doorway” approach. She was calling to me in a panic to join her in the doorway, but I refused for two reasons. First, it’s never safe to go wandering about during an earthquake once you’ve chosen your spot. But second, I knew I was right. I chose the right place. Continue reading →

The Iniquity of Candied Orange Peel

By: | May 15, 2014

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*NOW WITH UPDATE: See below

The neighbors came over, maybe a year ago now, and one of them, a Hungarian physicist, brought along candied orange peel he’d made from his grandmother’s recipe.  The physicist is the nicest human on earth, but his grandmother is the one I love; I’d love anyone who thought up those orange peels, their orangey goodness and little spike of bitter, the soft white sweet pith and the dense, bitey, red-golden skin.  I had raptures all over the dining room table.  “Yes, of course you can have the recipe,” said the physicist.  “But I must tell you, you need to be careful how you make them.”

“Oh I know about sugar,” I said, and told him about the hot fudge sauce I made once and reheated twice, and the second time, it made a standing cage over the melted ice cream and when I ate it anyway, I chipped a tooth; and the little left in the pan had bonded to the metal and the pan had to be thrown away.  So the physicist gave me the recipe and the most careful directions, and I made the orange peels and they were perfect, as good as any Hungarian grandmother’s.  Then I made them many more times until suddenly, one day, some mysterious force in the universe shifted. Continue reading →

Giant Stack of Spacecraft

By: | May 14, 2014

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On Saturday I went to the visitor’s center at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, showed my driver’s license, and got a yellow paper badge to hang around my neck.

The occasion: the friends and family day for MMS, the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission.

MMS isn’t one of NASA’s better-known missions. When I googled the acronym to double-check the full name, I had to scroll way down, past M&Ms, a middle school in Texas, and someone selling a cure-all mineral solution.

But, for NASA, MMS is a big deal. They’ve put hundreds of millions of dollars into this mission, which will study the physics where the Earth’s magnetic field and the Sun’s magnetic field meet.

MMS is also a big deal for my boyfriend, who works on it. After a few minutes of looking at MMS-related displays on tables set up in the visitors’ center, we friends and family filed onto a bus past security people who eyed every yellow badge. An Eastern kingbird watched us drive through the gate from atop a tall fence. Glyn narrated as we went. “That’s building 12. You can tell because it has a 12 on it.” (I think he also told me a fact about building 12, but I forgot it.) Continue reading →

Guest Post: Department of Household Sciences, Division of Rubbing and Scrubbing

By: | May 13, 2014

6550719685_6a7de62afb_bOn a recent quiet Sunday morning, I resolved to clean the caked-on grime on my stove. A roiling pot of pasta had overflowed one night, and in the rush to get plate to table and food to four-year-old’s mouth, the cloudy starchy water had cured onto the enamel around the burner and now refused to budge.

Two earlier attempts to remove the gunk with run-of-the-mill household cleansers had been a waste of time. It was time for the big guns. Mr. Clean’s strong biceps bulged on Magic Eraser packaging, reassuring me that the dense white sponge inside could lift all kinds of dirt off my household surfaces. He did not disappoint. Continue reading →

I Dream of Wrigley

By: | May 12, 2014

wrigleyI dream of Wrigley. All the time. More and more often. I grew up in Chicago and went to games at Wrigley Field all season long, season after season, and even though I left Chicago 30 years ago, Wrigley Field has never left me. The one-hundredth anniversary of the opening of Wrigley Field last month got me wondering why.

I suppose it has something to do with the 1969 season. Then again, what doesn’t? I turned 11 that summer, so the 1969 roster would have been a formative one for me anyway. But as baseball fans know, there’s another reason that season would leave a permanent mark on a young fan. The title of a book on my “Chicago shelf” says it all: The Cubs of ’69: Recollections of the Team That Should Have Been.

Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | May 10, 2014

6878872286_4932b03aba_zMay 5-9, 2014 was a week filled with art, dust, slug penises, elderly chickens and nothingness here at LWON.

Guest poster Sam Kean argued that the backlash against pseudoscientific notions of left brain/right brain differences has obscured fascinating data about symmetry and emotion in the world of art.

Abstruse Goose explored the difficulty of sitting and doing nothing.

Craig shared some startling photos and stories of What Dust Does in the West. (Last year, I complained that it was ruining spring skiing.)

Cassie revisited the Weird World of Banana Slug Sex and introduced us to apophallation, the scientific term for when slugs chew off of one another’s penises.

And I discussed how small-scale chicken farmers who want to do the right thing may not have the resources or infrastructure to do so.

portrait of Albert Einstein by William Pasternak,via Flickr