Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

Andy Walsh

Science Corner: Improper Names

The bird formerly known as Say’s Phoebe. (Image by cristian zuriel Vargas Rios at Pexels)

The Pythagorean theorem. The Archimedes’ screw. Hubble’s Law. Numerous ideas and inventions carry human names as a way to honor their discovers or inventors. Plants and animals can be anthropomorphized in this way too: Grévy’s zebra or Hirst’s panic grass, for example. Well, just as with libraries and university buildings and any number of other eponymous entities, sometimes we reconsider on whom we wish to bestow naming honors. And so plans are forming to change the common names in English of roughly 80 bird species from North America.
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Science Corner: Blind Dates?

White Sands National Park, just not the footprint fossil bit. (Image by Caleb Jack at Pexels)

Earlier this month, Simone Biles became the first person to land a Biles II (nee Yurchenko double pike) vault in international competition, securing the right to have it named for her. Based on the Chicago marathon results, we may not be too far from the first competitive marathon run in under two hours. (Eliud Kipchoge has already run the distance in that time, but in an event designed for that purpose where the other runners were providing pacing not competition.) Firsts are exciting, which makes them memorable. But eventually, some firsts do get forgotten. Such is the case when it comes to the first people in the Americas; we don’t know when or how they got here. Timed nicely for Indigenous Peoples’ Day, there are now new results reinforcing a finding that they may have been here earlier than previously inferred.
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Science Corner: Back to Math Class

(Image by Monstera Production at Pexels)

It’s back to school season, and at my house that’s already meant a lot of math. Both of my kids are taking quantitative science courses along with math courses, so every few nights I’m getting to help with math-related homework of one sort or another. It’s an interesting opportunity to see what I remember and don’t remember from when I took those classes, and what comes easier with more experience and what doesn’t. Fundamental principles seem to stick better than specific techniques. For example, I helped my son with a physics problem by setting up a system of five equations with five unknown quantities. Was that the simplest way to solve it, or was there some shortcut I was forgetting? I don’t know, I just knew my way would work.
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Science Corner: There’s Science in Those Hills

LK-99 is so new, I don’t have a picture of it. Please enjoy this generic mineral photo instead. (Image by Pixabay at Pexels)

Probably the biggest (or at least buzziest) science news of the moment is the possibility of a room temperature superconductor. You may remember we went down this particular road a few years ago. At that time, superconductivity was achieved at not-quite-but-close-enough-to-room temperature but with radically impractical pressures. This time, the candidate material (LK-99) is a superconductor at warmer-than-room temperature and ambient pressure. The catch for the moment is some uncertainty about confirmation and reproducibility.
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Science Corner: It *IS* a question of where he grips it!

Interestingly, some hummingbird feeders (like this one) require hovering while others offer a chance to rest and sip. (Image by AS R at Pexels)

Something has been pulling the fake flowers off of our hummingbird feeder. Raccoons are the primary suspect. Hummingbirds don’t seem strong enough, and don’t need to tug at petals to feed. Also, the vandalism occurs overnight. Oh yeah, and there are the incriminating raccoon paw prints all around the feeder. Seemed pretty cut and dry. But then a headline about how “some hummingbirds are flower robbers” caught my eye. Maybe hummingbirds do engage in more than nectar sipping.
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