The great stones stand gaunt against the sky in the countryside of Wiltshire, England. What is their origin? There are many theories. One of the earliest recorders of this stone system was Henry of Huntingdon, who died in 1154. But the stones are older than that. Some people thought that Boadicea, a queen of the ancient Britons was buried there. …

You get into an elevator (or a lift, as we sometimes call it) and for a second or two, just as the elevator moves down, we feel weightless. On the other hand, if we go up in an elevator, we suddenly feel heavier just as the elevator lurches upwards. To understand this feeling of weightlessness, we need to understand a …

The Scopes Trial brought about a prosecution in 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee. The prosecution was of a high school biology teacher who taught the theory of evolution. The teacher, John T Scopes, was accused of having violated the Butler Act, a Tennessee law that forbade the teaching of the theory of evolution in public schools because it contradicted the account …

The Schwarzschild Radius is a characteristic radius associated with every quantity of mass. It is a radius of a sphere in space, that if containing a corresponding sufficient amount of mass, the force of gravity from the contained mass would be so great that no known force or pressure could stop the mass from continuing to collapse in volume into …

For Camp Fires All of you who love camping will find this simple piece of apparatus of consideration use. It consists of three long strap hinges, such as can be bought cheaply in the multiple stores. Each hinge is bent outwards to form a right-angle and, then, the three tips are held together by means of a flat bolt. This …

The Saros Cycle is an eclipse cycle with a period of nearly 18 years, 11 days and 8 hours. The earliest discovered historical record of the Saros Cycle is by the Chaldeans (ancient Babylonian astronomers). It is very useful for predicting the times at which nearly identical eclipses of the sun and moon will occur. A complication with the Saros …

New research shows that hair turns grey as a result of a chemical chain reaction that causes hair to bleach itself from the inside out. The process starts when there is a dip in levels of an enzyme called catalase. Catalase shortfall means that the hydrogen peroxide that naturally occurs in hair can’t be broken down. So hydrogen peroxide builds …

Albert Einstein considered the idea of quantum entanglement, like much of quantum physics, to be ridiculous. The phenomenon asserts that two particles can be connected so that changes in one are instantly reflected in the other, even if those two particles are light-years apart. Despite its strangeness, reports of entanglement have been well-documented. Known as ‘the God effect’, entanglement is …

Making A Crazy Path in the Garden A crazy path gives your garden an old-world appearance which is very pleasing. Most people construct such paths out of odd-shaped pieces of flag-stones; but the varying thicknesses of the pieces gives the path an uneven tread, which makes walking not at all easy. In fact, a surface of this character is positively …

Catching a Spider Web Few things are more fragile than a spider’s web and most people would think it was nonsense to try and keep one for any length of time. As a matter of fact, we have one that was made last autumn and it is as perfect to-day as it was when the spider wove it. How did …