My son, Rob, is a mechanical engineering major at Clemson. My husband and I were chatting with him about classes, specifically one called Heat Transfer. “How can there be an entire class on heat transfer?” I said. “Who are you to talk?” my husband said. “You got a theology degree…
Category: Blog
Dying Phone Battery
My phone battery is dying. I just got an alert from the iPhone battery health department. “Your battery’s health is significantly degraded.” You’re in good company, Cell Phone Battery. I’m 52 years old, and parts of me are significantly degraded, too. The question is, What do I do with my…
Shoot the Moon
My new life goal: find things I’m bad at and use them to my advantage. Take card games. In the house I grew up in, several decks of cards with rubber bands around them were kept in a big steamer trunk in our den along with other games like Battleship…
Snakes See in the Dark
This is the fifth and final installment in the series my cat has dubbed, “The Many Ways Humans are Inferior.” We have covered hummingbirds, sea turtles, elephants, and bumblebees. Each of these animals has some ability that humans do not, such as perceiving magnetic fields, hearing infrasonic sounds, and balancing…
What an Elephant Can Hear
In my previous emails we have discussed hummingbirds who can see colors that humans can’t, bumblebees who detect electrical charges, and sea turtles’ ability to perceive magnetic fields. My cat has dubbed this series, “The Many Ways Humans Are Inferior.” Today we will hear about elephants and infrasound — soundwaves…