Recent content by Keith Mackie

Many years ago Analog Magazine published a spoof on Roswell. Not only was it extremely funny, it was so good it was almost believable. The core of the plot involved an airforce base somewhere near Roswell where they were testing the then new Viking rocket - a sort of Americanised V2. It wasn't...

You will get a very nice understanding of the origins of dynamics if you go back to the very beginnings: 1. Lucretius: De Rerum Natura - The Nature of Things published about 60 BC - about the time of Julius Caesar - Chaper 2, The Dance of the Atoms, an introduction to the eariest forms of...

The reports on the collapse gave two pieces of information: 1. They were doing maintenance work on the bridge at the time 2. The collapse happened during an intense rain storm. These two together lead to a very prosaic but plausible sugestion: Bridge maintenance often includes the...

While not a classroom experiment, a great fun way to tackle the issue - you could even get the English teacher to join in - is to get a copy of Joshua Slocum's book 'Sailing alone around the world'. Slocum was the first man to sail single handed around the world back in the late 19th century and...

The delay in Newtons work has to do with a prior failure to recognise something obvious - acceleration. The Aristotilean approach only got as far as recognising "violent" motion - in effect impact or jerk and it stayed that way until Galileo. The origin of the rational approach goes back to the...

The first is taught universally (as far as I can make out) at school and university, that Galileo discovered that all bodies (at least in vacuum) fall at the same rate. He didn't. He read it in Lucretius' great work of Roman science "De Rerum Natura" published about 60 BC. Lucretius followed...