In 1781, astronomer William Herschel discovered a new planet. He wanted to name it Georgian Sidus (George’s Star) after King George III, but all of the other planets in the solar system were named after Roman gods. Fellow astronomer Johanne Bode suggested the name Uranus (a Greek god) would be […]
The JavaScript Framework That Puts Web Pages on a Diet
Websites are too damn big. The average web page is about 2 megabytes, according to HTTP Archive, a site that tracks the performance of websites and the technologies they use. Sure you can download 2 megabytes in less than a second on a good 4G mobile connection. But today’s web […]
The Physics of an Elephant-Powered Slam Dunk
From the coefficient on the x2 term, -0.1816, I can find the initial velocity v0 (assuming this elephant jump takes place on Earth, with a gravitational field of g = 9.8 N/kg, which seems like a safe bet). Illustration: Rhett Allain If you don’t have a good feel for velocities […]