Finals week is looming, and we’re all overwhelmed. Does it feel impossible to get to school or finish your work these days? It’s worth trying the following learned argument to convince your professors that it really is. To get to school or finish an assignment, you have to complete infinitely many tasks. This assertion has…
Chances are, you’ll be drinking some of the snow that fell last week. Our developed First World society insulates us from the long process that lets us turn on a faucet and get clean water. As far as we can see, the faucet opens and the water appears; we send it down the drain and…
About nine trillion snowflakes fell on Prexy’s Pasture during the recent storm. The techniques I used to estimate this—without a calculator—are something everyone can use. Even if you don’t like math, getting comfortable with estimates and approximations can help anybody with everyday jobs like shopping, balancing checkbooks or telling politicians how ridiculous they are. First,…
Two recent announcements about university projects say a lot about our messed up priorities as a society. The School of Energy Resources got $15 million from Hess Corporation to buy equipment for research into rock physics and fluid flows. Then a few days ago, the university announced the $44 million renovation and expansion of the…
Personally, I’d be thrilled if Wyoming never saw another oil well or coal mine. To be clear: you won’t see me around campus in a tie-dyed t-shirt with flowers in my hair. I’m not a radical environmentalist, but if the state can do better, I think we should. A few years ago, I worked at…
The lawsuits over fracking have brought it back into the news; as with any controversial topic, misinformation is just a Google search away. It’s easy to find politicized commentaries with few supporting facts, but as educated college students we want something better. There are credible objections to fracking, but many attacks are exaggerated. Similarly, there…
Last night’s talk by Dave Woetzel was disappointing. His five questions for evolutionists are unconvincing, even to someone like myself who believes in God. Two of Dave’s five questions concerned subjects outside the domain of science: “Where did it all come from?” and “Why do we have a soul?” There’s evidence for the “Big Bang”…
In honor of Earth Month, which begins today, I suggest we all pledge to save money and gas whenever we drive a car. There’s an easy way to do this. Simply attach a rope to the back seat and pull on it as you drive along the highway. Physics dictates the harder you pull, the…
Time…the bane of college students. There’s never enough, especially the first week back from spring break. Between tests to take and homework to finish, many of us feel like slaves to the clock. At such moments, it may be comforting to know that there is no such thing as absolute time, and it all depends…
March 13, 1781, about 234 years ago, astronomer William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus. American scientist Ellis Miner described the process in his book “Uranus: The Planet, Rings and Satellites.” Through Herschel’s telescope, it looked like a faint fuzzy spot in the sky. He knew it wasn’t a star because it moved relative to other…
The chair you’re sitting on was once an exploding star. At least, the metal part was. We know that because most metals can’t be formed anywhere else. This includes the gold and silver in jewelry, the copper and rare earth metals in electronics and the iron in your chair’s steel fasteners. While it’s easy to…
Listen up, Science Standard debaters: Students are thinking people, not sheets of blank paper. The Next Generation Science Standards are designed to raise the bar and improve K-12 science education. A main objection in this state is that the standards aren’t aligned with “Wyoming values,” according to the interest group Wyoming Citizens Opposing Common Core….
