Science and delight, in the blink of an eye
Bend a piece of raw spaghetti, and in the blink of an eye it will break, most often into three pieces. The scientists who explained why earned the 2006 tongue-in-cheek Ig Nobel Prize. Hundreds of children who recreated the experiment last weekend took home something else: a new topic for dinnertime conversation. Sharing the wonder of scientific discovery with local children and their parents is a holiday tradition at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), which hosted its 12th annual holiday lecture on Dec. 7. Delivered as always by Howard Stone, a veteran of physics education and an authority on fluid dynamics, the morning and afternoon lectures dazzled families with technology, small explosions, and the simple beauty of seeing nature in a new light. Stone is a former member of the SEAS faculty and now Dixon Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. In 2000, he was...