Life's Little Mysteries Tech Archives
How Is Crowd Size Estimated?
September 3 , 2010, by Remy Melina, Life's Little Mysteries Staff Writer
Reports of the number of people that attended Glenn Beck's Aug. 28 rally have varied wildly –from 78,000 to 800,000 people. How is crowd size estimated – and who does the counting?
For large outdoor… View Full Article »
What's a Gumby Suit?
September 2 , 2010, by Remy Melina, Life's Little Mysteries Staff Writer
The Mariner oil platform explosion off the Louisiana coast created a mile-long oil sheen into the Gulf of Mexico and forced 13 crew members to jump into the water wearing protective Gumby suits. Just what… View Full Article »
How to Write Strong Computer Passwords
August 25 , 2010, by Stuart Fox, Lifes Little Mysteries Contributor
Some people use the name of their first pet as their default internet password. Some use their wedding date. Some just use "12345." And all of those people might as well have no password at all, experts… View Full Article »
What's the World's Biggest Airplane?
August 10 , 2010, by Michelle Bryner, Life's Little Mysteries Contributor
With a wingspan of 290 feet (88.4 meters) – almost the length of football field – and a maximum take-off weight of 1.3 million pounds (600,000 kilograms), the Antonov-225 is the world’s largest… View Full Article »
What's the Biggest Dam in the World?
August 2 , 2010, by Lauren Cox, Life's Little Mysteries Contributor
At 50 stories high and with a span of more than a mile, one of the world's largest feats of modern engineering is not a skyscraper. It's a hydroelectric dam.
The Three Gorges Dam in Hubei Province, China,… View Full Article »
What's the Best Way to Kill Mosquitoes?
July 30 , 2010, by Michelle Bryner, Life's Little Mysteries Contributor
Mosquitoes can turn a pleasant summer barbecue into a somewhat miserable experience. They’re also responsible for spreading malaria to 250 million people around the world each year.
Common mosquito… View Full Article »
Why Do Computers Crash?
June 21 , 2010, by Michelle Bryner, Life's Little Mysteries Contributor
It turns out that humans are to blame for computer crashes. These involuntary shutdowns typically result from glitches in software – code written by human programmers.
“This code can contain many,… View Full Article »
How Does an Atomic Clock Work?
June 21 , 2010, by Adam Hadhazy, Life's Little Mysteries Staff Writer
Timekeeping can be as simple as counting "one Mississippi, two Mississippi . . ." prior to blitzing in backyard football, or tracking the back-and-forth swings of a pendulum in a grandfather clock.
In… View Full Article »
What Does the 'i' in iPod, iPhone and iPad Stand For?
June 18 , 2010, by Michelle Bryner, Life's Little Mysteries Contributor
Apple has created a brand of i-products that are arguably unparalleled in function and design. So much so that customers haven’t had time to stop and ask, "What does “i” really mean?"
When Apple… View Full Article »
What's Genetic Engineering?
June 15 , 2010, by Remy Melina, Life's Little Mysteries Staff Writer
Genetic engineering is the process of using technology to change the genetic makeup of an organism - be it an animal, plant or a bacterium.
This can be achieved by using recombinant DNA (rDNA), or DNA… View Full Article »
