LightGramsApril 24, 2025Volume 29, Number 14 Did you think “cheetah” when you read the title of this article? Cheetahs deserve honorable mention as “one of the fastest animals” on earth. They have been clocked going 75 miles per hour as they pursue their prey. But there’s an animal that more than doubles that speed. The…
'Creation' tagged posts
LightGramsJune 27, 2024Volume 28, Number 17 In my childhood I was introduced to Mr. Potato Head. Introduced in 1952, the toy was originally designed to use an actual potato. It was the first toy to be advertised on television, I learned from a Wikipedia article. After all these years it remains a popular toy for…
LightGramsMay 6, 2021Volume 25, Number 17 Any day now things should get noisier here where I live. It won’t be just in my community, but large sections of the U.S. will notice an evening chorus that cannot be missed. Brood X of cicadas will begin emerging from the soil as temperatures warm. This particular brood…
LightGramsMarch 11, 2021Volume 25, Number 10 A story carried by Reuters last month caught my attention. Kit Yates, a math expert at London’s Bath University, projected the number of COVID-19 virus particles in the world at the height of the pandemic. I won’t list all the steps he went through, but the bottom line of…
LightGrams December 3, 2020 Volume 24, Number 44 A piece of technology history is scheduled to be auctioned next week. An Apple-1 computer, one of only 200 that was produced in 1976, will have a starting bid of $50,000, and who knows how high the bidding will go? Making this item especially valuable is that…
LightGrams January 30, 2020 Volume 24, Number 4 “Prosthesis” is the name given to the world’s largest “tetrapod exoskeleton” (officially recognized by Guinness World Records). “Tetrapod” means it has four legs; “exoskeleton” refers to the fact that a person inside it pilots the movement of this robot. It stands just over twelve feet high, and…
LightGrams December 19, 2019 Volume 23, Number 40 Gingerbread houses are edible and visual treats that we commonly see around the holidays. Popularized by the fairy tale “Hansel And Gretel”, millions of children have had the thrill of building their own version of these delicious houses. And so has Canadian researcher Travis Casagrande; he has…