Hobbes v. Boyle: Who Decides Scientific Facts

Hobbes v. Boyle: Who Decides Scientific Facts

In the 1600s, philoso­pher Thomas Hobbes and exper­i­men­tal sci­en­tist Robert Boyle clashed over a strange new machine, the air pump, and a dan­ger­ous ques­tion: when should soci­ety trust sci­en­tif­ic claims, and who gets to decide? Their dis­agree­ment wasn’t just about experiments … 

FLASHCARDS! The Physics of Shoveling Snow

FLASHCARDS! The Physics of Shoveling Snow

The hol­i­days have end­ed, the dec­o­ra­tions have come down, and many peo­ple have stepped out­side to find that the ground has been qui­et­ly trans­formed into a dense, slip­pery physics problem. 

Carl Friedrich Gauss: The Quiet Genius Who Transformed Math, Astronomy & Modern Science

Carl Friedrich Gauss: The Quiet Genius Who Transformed Math, Astronomy & Modern Science

Wel­come to Math! Sci­ence! His­to­ry!, Today we’re explor­ing the sto­ry and the myths sur­round­ing Carl Friedrich Gauss, the Prince of Math­e­mat­ics. This isn’t because he chased fame, he didn’t, but because his insights were so deep they silent­ly built the scaf­fold­ing of mod­ern sci­ence. Hi, I’m Gabrielle Bir­chak. I’m a sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tor with a back­ground in math, sci­ence and journalism.

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Turning Grief into Physics: Dr. Ronald Mallett’s Journey Through Time

Turning Grief into Physics: Dr. Ronald Mallett’s Journey Through Time

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTS Gabrielle Bir­chak I just fin­ished edit­ing this fan­tas­tic inter­view with Dr. Ronald Mal­lett, Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Physics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut. This episode of Math Sci­ence His­to­ry is all about explor­ing one of physics most dar­ing fron­tiers, time trav­el. Dr. Mal­lett has spent a life­time inves­ti­gat­ing whether light itself can twist space time enough to form loops

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Quasicrystals: The Strange Order That Changed Crystallography

Quasicrystals: The Strange Order That Changed Crystallography

Today, we’re explor­ing qua­sicrys­tals, what they are, how an “impos­si­ble” pat­tern was found in a lab, how it became the cat­a­lyst to rewrit­ing text­books, and why this exot­ic order mat­ters for real‑world tech­nolo­gies from wear‑resistant coat­ings to pho­ton­ics. I’m Gabrielle Bir­chak, and this is Math! Sci­ence! His­to­ry! Imag­ine hold­ing a met­al that seems to obey rules nature once for­bid. You

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