Tag: diagram
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Dambusters
More formally known as Operation Chastise, the Dambusters Raid occurred just over 70 years ago on 16 May 1943. That night, 19 RAF Lancaster bombers flew over the English Channel with the objective of busting open three dams to flood and cripple the electricity- and water-supplies to the all-important German Ruhr industrial valley. Canada’s National…
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Testing the Atom Bomb
The Washington Post looked at the testing of the first atomic bomb at White Sands. Nuclear weapons are a topic on which I have done some work in the past. But this piece looks more at the historic test called Trinity. Credit for the piece goes to Alberto Cuadra and Laris Karklis.
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More Cicadian Rhythms
On Tuesday I shared with you some work by Jonathan Corum at the New York Times on the 17-year cicadas now starting to emerge back east. (And as I recall from my childhood, I assure you that they are quite loud.) Today we look at an illustration of the cicada life cycle via the Washington…
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Cicadian Rhythm
Cicadas are loud. And while some are around every year, there is at least one species that lives for up to seventeen years. They mate every seventeen years. In 2013 we are witnessing the emergence of Brood II, one of the numerous clusters that are synchronised to each other. But when and where have other…
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Recapping the Boston Marathon Bombing
After the capture this weekend of the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, the Washington Post published an interactive piece that looked at the entirety of the story. It captured the bombing, looked at the investigation, then the manhunt, and finally the capture of one of the suspects. The piece incorporated static diagrams along…
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The Universe Keeps Getting Bigger
The Kepler observatory is responsible for finding Earth-like planets in distant solar systems. It was launched only in 2009, but has been incredibly successful. Earlier this week scientists announced the discovery of Kepler 62, a star system that has five planets. Two of those planets exist within the Goldilocks zone, where conditions are just right…
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How Dragonflies Hunt
Today’s post is certainly smaller, but it’s always interesting to see how infographics and information design can help us better understand science and nature. This is a piece from the New York Times that illustrates how a dragonfly hunts its prey, fruit flies. Instead of flying straight at the fruit fly, the dragonfly plots a…
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All Fracked Up
Last week a new study revealed that the injection of wastewater from oil drilling and fracking may contribute to earthquakes. Put simply, the theory is that the wastewater injected into the ground lubricates fault lines. And when sufficiently lubricated, the resistance between sides of the fault vanishes and an earthquake is triggered to release the…