Author Archives: alguth

A hot cup of tea

There are times when you can look back, and recognize the folly of your relative youth. Times when you didn’t realize the fleetingness of existence and proceeded with your life, careless that the world around you may forever change. In particular, pertinent to this day and this post, I keep kicking myself for passing up a chance to see Douglas Adams when he came to speak at my university. That was April 25, 2001. He died May 11, 2001 of a heart attack. I had thought to myself, that surely, I would have a chance to hear this great man again, and that missing this one university event wouldn’t matter too much to me.

So. To honor the anniversary of the birth of Douglas Adams, our first science experiment regards, in part, the thermal properties of a cup of tea.

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Philosophy Statement

i.e. what the heck is this blog, and what are we doing here?

Let’s start with a definition.

Science: noun. “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment”. (New Oxford American Dictionary)

We, your blog writers, are scientists. We interact with the world through a scientific lens. If we have a question about something, and it is in our capacity to do so, we test it. After doing this for fun, for ourselves, a friend demanded that we start a blog for her entertainment. And really, why not? Through the course of doing an experiment, which we would have done anyway, we have already done most of the work.

So, gentlefolk, the purpose of this nook of the interweb is to chronicle our experiments regarding the world around us. Hopefully it will entertain, educate, and spur more people to investigate the world around them in scientific fashion.

Cheers!