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π 1700 Cascadia Earthquake
The 1700 Cascadia earthquake occurred along the Cascadia subduction zone on January 26, 1700 with an estimated moment magnitude of 8.7β9.2. The megathrust earthquake involved the Juan de Fuca Plate from mid-Vancouver Island, south along the Pacific Northwest coast as far as northern California. The length of the fault rupture was about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), with an average slip of 20 meters (66Β ft).
The earthquake caused a tsunami which struck the west coast of North America and the coast of Japan.
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- "1700 Cascadia Earthquake" | 2025-03-15 | 31 Upvotes 2 Comments
- "1700 Cascadia Earthquake" | 2021-05-05 | 132 Upvotes 115 Comments
π Duck Curve
In utility-scale electricity generation, the duck curve is a graph of power production over the course of a day that shows the timing imbalance between peak demand and renewable energy production. The term was coined in 2012 by the California Independent System Operator.
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- "Duck Curve" | 2022-06-30 | 13 Upvotes 2 Comments
- "Duck Curve" | 2019-10-27 | 154 Upvotes 128 Comments
π Shot tower
A shot tower is a tower designed for the production of small diameter shot balls by freefall of molten lead, which is then caught in a water basin. The shot is primarily used for projectiles in shotguns, and also for ballast, radiation shielding and other applications where small lead balls are useful.
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- "Shot tower" | 2013-09-12 | 269 Upvotes 79 Comments
π Inner-platform effect
The inner-platform effect is the tendency of software architects to create a system so customizable as to become a replica, and often a poor replica, of the software development platform they are using. This is generally inefficient and such systems are often considered to be examples of an anti-pattern.
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- "Inner Platform Effect" | 2024-02-17 | 35 Upvotes 12 Comments
- "Inner-platform effect" | 2012-01-09 | 79 Upvotes 31 Comments
- "Inner-platform effect" | 2009-09-10 | 42 Upvotes 24 Comments
π Hair Ice
Hair ice, also known as ice wool or frost beard, is a type of ice that forms on dead wood and takes the shape of fine, silky hair. It is somewhat uncommon, and has been reported mostly at latitudes between 45β55Β Β°N in broadleaf forests. The meteorologist and discoverer of continental drift, Alfred Wegener, described hair ice on wet dead wood in 1918, assuming some specific fungi as the catalyst, a theory mostly confirmed by Gerhart Wagner and Christian MΓ€tzler in 2005. In 2015, the fungus Exidiopsis effusa was identified as key to the formation of hair ice.
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- "Hair Ice" | 2018-06-12 | 405 Upvotes 69 Comments
π List of Helicopter Prison Escapes
A helicopter prison escape is made when an inmate escapes from a prison by means of a helicopter. This list includes prisoner escapes where a helicopter was used in an attempt to free prisoners from a place of internment, a prison or correctional facility.
One of the earliest instances of using a helicopter to escape a prison was the escape of Joel David Kaplan, nicknamed "Man Fan", on August 19, 1971 from the Santa Martha Acatitla in Mexico. Kaplan was a New York businessman who not only escaped the prison but eventually got out of Mexico and went on to write a book about his experience, The 10-Second Jailbreak.
France has had more recorded helicopter escape attempts than any other country, with at least 11. One of the most notable French jail breaks occurred in 1986, when the wife of bank robber Michel Vaujour studied for months to learn how to fly a helicopter. Using her newly acquired skills, she rented a white helicopter and flew low over Paris to pluck her husband off the roof of his fortress prison. Vaujour was later seriously wounded in a shootout with police, and his pilot wife was arrested.
The record for most helicopter escapes goes to convicted murderer Pascal Payet, who has used helicopters to escape from prisons in 2001, 2003, and most recently 2007.
Another multiple helicopter escapee is Vasilis Paleokostas who on February 22, 2009 escaped for the second time from the same prison. Because of this, many prisons have taken applicable precautions, such as nets or cables strung over open prison courtyards.
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- "List of Helicopter Prison Escapes" | 2021-02-06 | 17 Upvotes 4 Comments
π Lake Agassiz
Lake Agassiz was a very large glacial lake in central North America. Fed by glacial meltwater at the end of the last glacial period, its area was larger than all of the modern Great Lakes combined though its mean depth was not as great as that of many major lakes today.
First postulated in 1823 by William H. Keating, it was named by Warren Upham in 1879 after Louis Agassiz, when Upham recognized that the lake was formed by glacial action.
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- "Lake Agassiz" | 2020-05-05 | 53 Upvotes 21 Comments
π Srinivasa Ramanujan
Srinivasa Ramanujan FRS (; listenΒ ; 22 December 1887Β β 26 April 1920) was an Indian mathematician who lived during the British Rule in India. Though he had almost no formal training in pure mathematics, he made substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems then considered unsolvable. Ramanujan initially developed his own mathematical research in isolation: "He tried to interest the leading professional mathematicians in his work, but failed for the most part. What he had to show them was too novel, too unfamiliar, and additionally presented in unusual ways; they could not be bothered". Seeking mathematicians who could better understand his work, in 1913 he began a postal partnership with the English mathematician G. H. Hardy at the University of Cambridge, England. Recognizing Ramanujan's work as extraordinary, Hardy arranged for him to travel to Cambridge. In his notes, Ramanujan had produced groundbreaking new theorems, including some that Hardy said had "defeated him and his colleagues completely", in addition to rediscovering recently proven but highly advanced results.
During his short life, Ramanujan independently compiled nearly 3,900 results (mostly identities and equations). Many were completely novel; his original and highly unconventional results, such as the Ramanujan prime, the Ramanujan theta function, partition formulae and mock theta functions, have opened entire new areas of work and inspired a vast amount of further research. Nearly all his claims have now been proven correct. The Ramanujan Journal, a scientific journal, was established to publish work in all areas of mathematics influenced by Ramanujan, and his notebooksβcontaining summaries of his published and unpublished resultsβhave been analyzed and studied for decades since his death as a source of new mathematical ideas. As late as 2011 and again in 2012, researchers continued to discover that mere comments in his writings about "simple properties" and "similar outputs" for certain findings were themselves profound and subtle number theory results that remained unsuspected until nearly a century after his death. He became one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society and only the second Indian member, and the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Of his original letters, Hardy stated that a single look was enough to show they could only have been written by a mathematician of the highest calibre, comparing Ramanujan to mathematical geniuses such as Euler and Jacobi.
In 1919, ill healthβnow believed to have been hepatic amoebiasis (a complication from episodes of dysentery many years previously)βcompelled Ramanujan's return to India, where he died in 1920 at the age of 32. His last letters to Hardy, written in January 1920, show that he was still continuing to produce new mathematical ideas and theorems. His "lost notebook", containing discoveries from the last year of his life, caused great excitement among mathematicians when it was rediscovered in 1976.
A deeply religious Hindu, Ramanujan credited his substantial mathematical capacities to divinity, and said the mathematical knowledge he displayed was revealed to him by his family goddess. "An equation for me has no meaning," he once said, "unless it expresses a thought of God."
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- "Srinivasa Ramanujan" | 2019-12-22 | 22 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "Srinivasa Ramanujan" | 2009-10-29 | 77 Upvotes 48 Comments
π Go Away Green
Go Away Green refers to a range of paint colors used in Disney Parks to divert attention away from infrastructure. It has been compared to military camouflage like Olive Drab.
Imagineer John Hench wrote about developing such colors, "We chose a neutral gray-brown for the railing, a 'go away' color that did not call attention to itself, even though it was entirely unrelated to the Colonial color scheme."
Large attraction buildings visible either inside or outside a park such as Soarinβ at California Adventure or Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland are often painted a muted green. Necessary in-park infrastructure like speakers, lamp posts, fences, trash cans, and the former entrance to Club 33 are also painted various shades of green.
This concept also extends to grays, browns, and blues for spaces with less greenery or buildings that extend above the tree line, such as Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind.
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- "Go Away Green" | 2025-02-09 | 93 Upvotes 31 Comments
π The Third Place
In sociology, the third place refers to the social surroundings that are separate from the two usual social environments of home ("first place") and the workplace ("second place"). Examples of third places include churches, cafes, clubs, public libraries, gyms, bookstores, stoops and parks. In his book The Great Good Place (1989), Ray Oldenburg argues that third places are important for civil society, democracy, civic engagement, and establishing feelings of a sense of place.
Robert Putnam addressed issues related to third place, but without using the term, in Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital (1995, 2000).
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- "The Third Place" | 2023-10-11 | 82 Upvotes 75 Comments