“Hey, aren’t you somebody?” the teenager queried as I got into the elevator. While I was pondering an appropriate answer to this deeply philosophical question, his crony spilled the beans,...
Read More >>The ancient Romans, of course, didn’t have washing machines. But they had the next best thing. They had fullonicae, laundries where servants called fullones washed clothes. Don’t picture some sort...
Read More >>Dead mice don’t get headaches. So why are scientists on the island of Guam stuffing them with acetaminophen, the widely used painkiller? The hope is that the acetaminophen will give...
Read More >>The Redcoats are coming, the Redcoats are coming!” Well, Paul Revere could hardly have missed them. And if he were observant, he could even have distinguished the officers from the...
Read More >>The term “hermetically sealed” derives from the name of the Greek god Hermes, who conducted souls into the afterlife. When the Greeks learned that the Egyptians had a god Thoth,...
Read More >>Say acetone, and what comes to a chemist’s mind? Washing laboratory glassware is a good bet. Actually, the prime use of acetone is to produce polymethyl methacrylate, better known as...
Read More >>On my last visit to London, England I made a point of going to Waterloo station. I wasn’t interested in taking a train, I just wanted to stand at the...
Read More >>The price of guar gum, produced from the seeds of the guar plant, has been skyrocketing recently. While it has long been used in the food industry as a texture-modifying...
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