Ding Dong! What is Sound? Everyday, we’re bombarded by all sorts of sounds, a lot of which we can’t actually hear. Humans’ hearing ranges from 30 hertz up to 19,000 hertz, making us have one of the widest range but dogs, for example can hear up to 50,000 hertz and elephants can hear pitches as low as 17 hertz. As a fun exercise, try using a tone generator to determine your upper and lower ranges of hearing. (I can reach from 30 hertz to 18,384). But what exactly are hertz…
What Even Is It? Eugenics In 1883, Sir Franic Galton coined the term eugenics, the idea of forced sterilization to eradicate “unfit” traits. From the beginning of the 20th century up until the 1960s, politicians accepted this oversimplified version of genetics as a fact, excusing the actions of Germans leading up to World War II, as well as blatant racism in the states. To understand the origins of eugenics, let’s brush upon the understanding of genetics in the 1880s. The…
What Even Are They? Food Deserts All across the United States, about 23.5 million people do not have readily available access to healthy and affordable foods, largely because of lack of nearby supermarkets. In many cities, for example, grocery stores are sparsely scattered, leading to residents needing to catch multiple trains and buses to get to those stores. For many people, this takes too much time, so they resort to convenience stores where there usually aren’t fresh…
What Even Is It? CFCs and the Ozone Hole After being discovered for its ozone layer-depleting properties in the 1970s, Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) triggered one of the most successful and unified worldwide planet-awareness movements. Though President Ronald Reagan praised efforts to restrict its use as “a model of cooperation” and a “monumental achievement,” the fact that almost every country at the time agreed to ban it hints at the severity of this issue. Indeed, despite…
History Lesson: Reformation vs Rome's Demise What is the correlation between the Reformation and Constantine’s relocation of the capital of the Roman Empire? At first glance, nearly nothing. The two events occurred about a thousand years apart, and one centered around religion while the other sprouted from cultural and political affairs. Yet the two crises are far more similar than what meets the eye. In Rome, ineffective rulers forced the proceeding Roman emperors to make…
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