Creating sculpture with math
When he was growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, teachers and parents told Helaman Ferguson he would have to…
Writings
Resurrecting the Riverkeepers
Under cover of darkness, thieves dove into the inky waters of Tennessee's river sanctuaries and scooped up endangered washboard mussels…
Predicting the whirlwind
In more than 20 years as a meteorologist, Joshua Wurman had seen – and chased – more than 150…
Auto-focus eyeglasses rely on liquid lenses
With round lenses set in super-thick frames, these new eyeglasses look like they belong on a cartoon character. But what…
How Bose–Einstein condensates keep revealing weird physics
A Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), the first of which was shown experimentally 22 years ago, isn’t your garden variety state of…
Seeking a Second Opinion
In November 2012, when she was 52 years old, Shannon Semple was diagnosed with a disease she didn’t have. She…
How nonequilibrium thermodynamics speaks to the mystery of life
In his 1944 book What is Life?, Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger argued that organisms stay alive precisely by staving off…
Solving a math problem to create art
Optimization is the mathematical quest for the best way to do something, from finding the shortest distance between two places…
The Internet of Things wants to link all facets of our world
A 94Fifty looks like an ordinary basketball. You can inflate, dribble, pass, shoot, swoosh and slam-dunk it. But there’s more…
When your stuff spies on you
In October 2016, hackers hit a company called Dyn. Hackers are people who write computer programs that can break into…