256bits's latest activity

I don't really collect time pieces and clocks. I just don't throw them out after they stop working. I have about 8 clocks of no value, 1...

The point of the study is not to propose that birds can navigate via earth's magnetic field - that would be indeed trivial. Rather, the...

Vikings were purported to use sunstones (Iceland spar, which has polarizing properties) for navigation at sea when clouds obscured the sun.

As a wise man once said, Confusuous perhaps, or it could have been Sydney Sweeneey, I forget. "A man who asks can only be fool for a...

Hi there Sandra Jane. Have you tried some sites in the internet such as an introduction to differential equations with some neat real...

Oh, don't worry. Safety goggles was a part of the package. Also, I bought some ISO-certified ones that block pretty much all wavelengths...

Tried it and it works! Interesting.

It's possible to learn to see the polarization of light. This has been known since 1844. I've done it. The traditional method was...

don't cut your finger(s) off, let alone scorch your eyeballs in 0.01 seconds. You order some laser goggles too!

Any more Hams around, or have they all left the arena? Way back on the '70's on a short wave radio in Sask, we could set our clocks with...

Animal navigation, long mysterious, may about to become better understood. An unexpected mechanism in homing pigeons appears to sense...

I can't read the SA article without a subscription - seems I went over my free limit reading articles in seismographs.

A more recent idea is that proteins in the retina, called cryptochromes, react to magnetic fields; this would allow migrating songbirds...

For any system where it's computationally intractable to predict its behavior using physical laws, yes, if it can be modeled as an...