-
Elnoraydl03mr
-
davidroberts63
-
AlanHogan
-
JustinSAdkins
-
-
DavidChung1
-
ChoiceZnewZ
-
Avisq3tyhgph31
-
shishondia
-
WhatIfWeDigDeep
-
http://www.schoolanduniversity.com/ online degrees
Commentary Ticker
- When in Rome… Make Better Concrete: How An Ancient Mix Beats Today’s Best
June 18, 2013 | 10:40 pmFrom the Hoover Dam and the Burj Khalifa to the Panama Canal, concrete underlies the greatest of modern architectural achievements. But modern concrete, it seems, doesn’t hold a candle to Ancient Rome’s. A little history for you: the Romans were the first to engineer concrete in mass, and it was upon this concrete that they [...]
- Google Wants Balloon Internet for Everybody
June 15, 2013 | 11:06 am“Balloons. That’s right. Balloons,” says the voice of a young girl in a video for Google’s latest endeavor: bringing the world online with massive balloons. The initiative, called Project Loon, comes from Google X, the experimental lab within the company whose sole purpose is to dream up big, borderline insane, ideas. Google X created self-driving [...]
- Watch Researchers Discover a Sunken Egyptian City
June 13, 2013 | 9:36 pmThonis, the legendary port city that served as an entryway to the Egyptian empire, was long considered to be a myth. The tales of its immense power and vast riches conflicted with the evidence of its existence—mainly that there was none. Cities of such grandeur do not typically disappear off the face of the earth. [...]
- “I Am The Nucleus” and Other Bizarre Quotes By Kanye West
June 12, 2013 | 10:06 amKanye West says the darndest things. On his unrelenting quest to become his own species of hip-hop artist, he has established a reputation as irreverent, controversial, and unapologetic. Though he makes time for public grandstanding by claiming a US President “doesn’t care about black people” or interrupting the VMAs, he remains mostly quiet when it [...]
- 50 Charities, 10 Years, $1 Billion Wasted
June 11, 2013 | 12:38 pmIn Holiday, Florida, sits a warehouse. From the outside, it looks like nothing special, but as a joint investigative report from the Tampa Bay Times and the Center for Investigative Reporting uncovered, inside is one of the most useless charity in America: Kids Wish Network. For every dollar it raises, a mere 3 cents goes [...]
-
Archive for Commentary Ticker »


The Flame Explained
Three months ago Alan Alda issued a challenge to the world scientific community to explain the flame in a way “that an 11-year-old would find intelligible, maybe even fun.” Stony Brook University’s Center for Communicating Science administered the challenge, collecting entries and employing 6,000 11-year-olds to evaluate them. The winning entry, from 31-year-old American PhD candidate Ben Ames, was announced a little over a week ago.
Alda, best known for his role on TV’s M*A*S*H*, was instrumental in the creation of the Center for Communicating Science and traces his interest in the flame question to a disappointing answer he received when he himself was 11. (“It’s oxidation,” he was told.) Now 76, he hopes he can help a newer generation find the answer he was searching for. “So here I am—I’m 11 years old and looking up at you with the wide eyes of curiosity,” he wrote in the Science guest editorial that initiated the challenge, “What is a flame? What’s going on in there? What will you tell me?”
Ames’s 7-minute explanation–full of color, wit, and helpful labels–details the process to an imaginary prisoner in a hellish landscape and culminates in a song he wrote to solidify his message. He told the Center for communicating Science:
When not explaining complex scientific concepts to children, Ames studies quantum optics at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.
Attribution:
The Flame Challenge