Filtered for four easy pieces

11.30, Saturday 27 Dec 2014

1.

The different euro banknotes are illustrated with bridges. To avoid favouring any particular member state, the bridges are fictional.

Except that a new housing development in the Netherlands has gone and built them all. Classic.

2.

From before Google, questions received by the New York Public Library.

Is it possible to keep an octopus in a private home?

What does it mean when you dream of being chased by an elephant?

How do you put up wallpaper?

In the early 1900s, physics was regarded as a solved problem. It was all figured all, all just a matter of cranking the handle, bar one or two loose threads. One loose thread - the ultraviolet catastrophe - is solved by quantum theory, which unpacks into the story of physics over the 20th century.

Gotta pull those threads.

Can mice throw up?

3.

Written in 1983, and released last year under the 30-year rule, the Queen’s speech in the event of a nuclear war.

4.

Legendary physicist Richard Feynman on magnets (video) – and the power of asking why something happens.

But I really can’t do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else you’re more familiar with, because I don’t understand it in terms of anything else that you’re more familiar with.

Transcript.

More posts tagged: