Wow! You’re So Lucky!

You take a quarter out of your pocket and idly start flipping it in the air.  Fifty flips in a row and it comes up tails.   Amazing.  Unbelievable.  Assuming it’s a legitimate coin, what is the probability that the next flip will come up heads?  Seems as though the odds of a head ought to be high, doesn’t it?  On the next flip it rolls behind a kitchen cabinet.  You go on with your life.

A hundred years later your great-granddaughter is remodeling the kitchen and finds the quarter. She flips the coin. What are the odds that the quarter will turn up heads? She, of course,assumes an even chance for heads or tails. So where did your perceived probability it is more likely be a heads go.

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A 3D Printed Human Heart Is Closer to Reality

This is amazing! The University of Tel Aviv in Israel recently announced they have printed a three-dimensional heart using genetically engineered fat cells from a human patient. A CAT-scan of the patient’s heart provided a layout for the computer-controlled bio-printer. The heart is about the size of a rabbit’s heart and has cardiac muscle, heart valves, blood vessels, and all the other bio-materials needed to make a heart work.

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Free Fall and Why Astronauts Stay Afloat

On August 16, 1960 Colonel Joseph Kittinger, as part of the US Air Force Project Excelsior, made a high-altitude parachute jump from 102,800 feet (19.7 miles). Wearing a pressure suit he jumped from a gondola hanging from a helium filled balloon. At one point in his freefall he was falling at 614 mph. After falling for four minutes and thirty-six seconds he reached 18,000 feet and opened his parachute.

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The US Armed Forces Get Involved With STEM Education

It may perhaps come as no surprise to some folks (who remember the cold war) how much research was conducted by the armed forces in order to beat the U.S.S.R. to the punch. Well, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the armed forces still have something to offer to American citizens in regards to research: education.

The National Guard dropped by Pittsfield High School students last Friday and presented the students with a challenging engineering project. The project was to build a remote-controlled robot using nothing but a box of parts and a manual, with which they were instructed to only use the pages with illustrative directions (similar to putting together a piece of furniture by a certain popular furniture chain).

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