Recalling Experiments Past – Reciting poetry to a flame to see what happens

Somewhere round or about the late 1850s, John Tyndall FRS [* see note below] was developing and perfecting his experiments with “Sensitive Flames”. He describes one such experiment in his book ‘Sounds’ (p. 238). In which he reads a passage of poetry from Edmund Spenser’s ‘Belphœbe the Huntress’ to the flame (which he calls The Vowel-flame) […]

Justin Bieber’s opinion on the Big Bang – inconsequential, or not? (new study)

“The vast majority of scientists believe that humans have evolved over time (98%; Pew Research Center, 2015). However, recent public opinion polls indicate much more variability in the views of the general public; only 65% of Americans (Pew Research Center, 2015), 61% of Canadians (Angus Reid Public Opinion Polls, 2012), and similar amounts of British […]

Smiling intensity among scientists is related to greater scientific achievements (new study)

“Using a sample of 440 scientists from a social networking site for researchers, multiple raters coded smile intensity (full smile, partial smile, or no smile) in publicly available photographs. We found that scientists who presented a full smile had the same quantity of publications yet of higher quality” See: Lukasz D. Kaczmarek, Maciej Behnke, Todd […]

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