Benjamin Banneker

Today in History: November 9. Benjamin Banneker

Banneker spent most of his life on his family’s 100-acre farm outside Baltimore. There, he taught himself astronomy by watching the stars and learned advanced mathematics from borrowed textbooks. In 1752, Banneker garnered public acclaim by building a clock entirely out of wood. The clock, believed to be the first built in America, kept precise time for decades. Twenty years later, Banneker began making astronomical calculations that enabled him to successfully forecast a 1789 solar eclipse. His estimate, made well in advance of the celestial event, contradicted predictions of better-known mathematicians and astronomers.

I’ve gone geocaching in Benjamin Banneker Park, which is how I first learned of him — like many parks named after people, there was a short history on a sign.

Now My Rabbit Ears Are All Wet

Pump-Powered Antennas Could Replace Metal Communications Arrays with Fountains of Saltwater

What they came up with is little more than an electromagnetic ring and a water pump. The ring, called a current probe, creates a magnetic field through which the pump shoots a steam of seawater (the salt is a key ingredient, as the tech relies on the magnetic induction properties of sodium chloride)

I think they meant “stream.”

Physics Wins Again

It’s all about the energy balance

Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds

His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most — not the nutritional value of the food.
The premise held up: On his “convenience store diet,” he shed 27 pounds in two months.
For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub’s pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily. So he followed a basic principle of weight loss: He consumed significantly fewer calories than he burned.
His body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal. He now weighs 174 pounds.

2/3 of his calories from junk food. He improved his cholesterol, too.