Enter the world of science + magnets! Warning: You won’t be able to look away. May cause you to stare for several seconds/minutes. 1.) This is a demonstration of quantum locking. Pushing a frictionless dash around a magnetic track. 2.) Ball bearings and rare-earth magnets. The incoming ball is accelerated by the magnet. The first...

It’s easy to think of the modern world as timeless. We don’t want to think about how fragile our existence is, or how many generations of things and people have come before us that are now nothing but dust and bones. Sometimes, though, we run across images of just that that can’t be denied, and...

Do you enjoy shows like 20/20 and Dateline? Especially when they send folks undercover to expose some corrupt organization? Then you should take a second to think about Nellie Bly, because those shows owe a serious debt to her. Nellie Bly essentially invented modern investigative journalism with an embedded 10-day investigation inside an insane asylum....

When I started writing four years ago, I had no idea the level of proper grammar that lay beneath simple and complex sentences. Sure, I could write paragraphs, knew about subjects, verbs, and punctuation, but to know the intricacies within the study of grammar was beyond me. It wasn’t until I met my editor for...

Have you ever been wedged between two full-grown adults on a three-hour flight? Or how about trying to get comfortable with less leg room than the back seat of a Mini Cooper? No matter what the circumstance, nothing is worse than getting stuck with a bad seat on an airplane. While pinpointing the worst seat...

Do you think it’s condescending for someone to use flash cards to get their point across? I mean, not including when you use them to quiz and teach someone about a subject? Yeah, you can see how that wouldn’t go over so well. So did this guy act like an a**hole to his brother and...

At the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum in Washington, D.C., is a piece of Japan’s history that dates back to the 17th century. It’s a bonsai tree, gifted by master Masaru Yamaki to America on its bicentennial. The 392-year-old white pine is the oldest tree in the collection – it was planted in 1625, cultivated...