BREAKING SURF
| Sutton Hoo |
| A Core Sample of New York City |
| Windows behind the Iron Curtain |
| Vintage Trailers |
| The Year of the Blues |
| The Site of "The Blues" |
| The Guardian's Gallery of Missing Masterpieces |
| Netsurfer Recommendations |
| Milestone Documents of American History |
| Measure the Speed of Light with Chocolate |
| Materials Science for Kids |
| The Chemistry of Frozen Foods and Other Miracles |
| BOOK REVIEWS |
| LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
| Contact and Subscription Information |
| Credits |
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BREAKING SURF
How Much New Information Is Created Each Year?
Researchers at UC Berkeley have estimated how much new information we create each year. They found that the combination of print, film, magnetic, and optical storage media added about 5 exabytes of new information in 2002. That's growth of about 30% per year, based on a similar study of 1999 data. Information flows through electronic channels - telephone, radio, TV, and the Internet - contained 17.7 exabytes of new information in 2002. The published study breaks down those numbers and discusses information contributions from the Web, e-mail, file-sharing, telephony, and other areas. A handy table gives a good idea of just how big an exabyte is - 5 exabytes is equivalent to all the words ever spoken by human beings.http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/
If you shop for books at Amazon.com, you know that you can view a few pages of books. Amazon.com has just introduced an extension of that. The powerful new feature, Search Inside the Book, allows full-text searches of over 120,000 books sold by the company. You enter search terms in the usual way, but now get not only matching titles or authors but also matching book excerpts with highlighted search terms. After registering with a credit card, you can retrieve all references to the term in a chosen work and browse back and forward a couple of pages in each as well. Although the Amazon.com's intent is to sell more books, the exploration potential of this new resource is nothing short of mind-blowing. It actually offers something that Google or libraries simply can't (yet) - an electronic look deep into books. Relentless application of a clever business model can yield a superior user experience and a powerful competitive advantage. Amazon.com has sidestepped issues of copy-and-paste by the simple recourse of providing only scanned images. Copyright is, however, a separate issue. The Author's Guild is dubious, but has not officially come out against the program. Wired puts this new development in context of larger schemes, often frustrated by copyright, to provide digital libraries in which no works would ever be lost or go out of print.
Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/10197021/
Author's Guild: http://www.authorsguild.org/news/amazon_launches_full.htm
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,60948,00.html
Technologies That Deserve to Live
In NSD 9.39, we brought you Bruce Sterling's choice of ten technologies that must die. As if in response, the New York Times (NYT) has a feature in which 11 visionaries each posit one technology they want to see exist. Calling the subjects "visionaries" might be pushing it a bit. Among them, Moby wants to see non-addictive, non-harmful recreational drugs. Scott Adams wants a cat detector. William Gibson wants Mac software that would highlight lies and spin in a rainbow of tasty colors. The most practical wishes come from former pro athletes Martina Navratilova and Cris Collinsworth, who want, respectively, a robot linesjudge for tennis and a portable TiVo/DVD player.NSD 9.39: http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/sub/v09/nsd.09.39.html#BS12
NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/30/technology/circuits/30idea.html
MIT Project Offers Fully Licensed On-Demand Music to Students
Outside the glare of the peer-to-peer (P2P) music-trading wars, universities like MIT have been struggling with student bodies who use up bandwidth and expose their schools to legal consequences with their file-trading. Graduate students at MIT have come up with a potential solution based partly on technology and partly on some obscure provisions of copyright law. US law makes it easy for organizations to license the transmission of music over analog media such as cable television, so the grad students invented the Library Access to Music Project, an on-demand music-streaming service that works over the university's cable-TV lines. The system lets students listen to music but not download it. It is essentially a music-lending library, but available over cable and with a Web interface. The system is open source and is being offered to other schools struggling with the legal and technical problems posed by music file-trading.http://lamp.mit.edu/
Exceptions to Copyright Protection Cracking Provisions of DMCA
The US Librarian of Congress, who has jurisdiction over such matters, has ruled that it is permissible, in some cases, to break digital copyright protections. The notorious Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal to break such protections, but the Librarian of Congress has carved out exemptions for four categories of information. You can crack lists of sites blocked by Net-filtering software - but not spam blacklists. You can crack computer programs protected by broken and obsolete hardware dongles. You can crack programs or video games that use obsolete formats or hardware. And, finally, you can crack e-books that prevent handicapped-access formats from functioning. The full legalese text of the ruling is available on the Library of Congress Web site.http://www.copyright.gov/1201/
This week, Microsoft took the wraps off its next generation of operating system, codenamed Longhorn. While Longhorn is not expected for several years still, Microsoft released early code samples, documents, and tools for software developers. Microsoft says Longhorn will be a total rewrite that focuses on network connectivity, security, and easier organization of large volumes of data. Given Longhorn's target release date of sometime in 2006, we question whether Microsoft's new operating system will even be relevant as a general-purpose computing platform by then. By then, Linux may well rule general and business computing, relegating Longhorn to being nothing more than a souped up and restrictive multimedia, game, and netsurfing console for the mass-market consumer.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/longhorn/
Mac Supercomputer Settles for Third Place in the World
Shortly after Apple announced the G5 Macintosh, Virginia Tech University ordered 1,100 of them. Virginia Tech computer scientist Srinidhi Varadarajan used them to build a supercomputer, one that cost a piddling $5.2 million. Major supercomputers generally cost tens of millions of dollars, but with his G5s, Varadarajan has achieved an operation rate of 9.55 teraflops, good for the third most powerful supercomputer on the planet. Wired has an article on Varadarajan, his Macs, and his newfound rock-star-like popularity among other supercomputer scientists. Varadarajan, who had never used a Mac before ordering the G5s, says he opted for the Mac because Intel Itanium II processors were too slow and AMD Opteron processors were too expensive. In a statement bound to find its way into an Apple ad campaign, Varadarajan says of Intel, "Ironically, they lost the gigahertz game. (The G5) is extremely faster than the Itanium II, hands down." The Mac Dev Center has more details, while ArsTechnica has a very geeky discussion.Virginia Tech: http://computing.vt.edu/research_computing/terascale/
Wired: http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,61005,00.html
MacDev: http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/10/29/osxcon_g5cluster.html
ArsTechnica: Discussion: http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=48409524&m=7530988285
The Elegant Universe Goes Nova
Brian Greene, the bestselling author of "The Elegant Universe", presents string theory to TV viewers in this latest offering from PBS's Nova series. Over the last 20 years or so, string theory went from obscure mathematical backwater in physics to the hottest candidate for the grand unified theory of everything. String theory's basic premise is that all forces and particles of nature are the result of tiny entities with the mathematical properties of strings vibrating in 10 dimensions, six of which are much too small to detect. What's so compelling about string theory is that it achieves the holy grail of modern physics, the unification of quantum mechanics and gravity in a consistent theoretical framework. As a bonus, it also explains the source of universal constants of nature. There's one little snag, though. Nobody has a clue how to test string theory, which prompts one of the physicists Nova quotes to ask whether it is really a scientific theory or simply an interesting philosophy. In addition to video from the program itself, the Nova Web site offers tons of information and presentations about string theory and the scientists who work with it.Nova: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/
The Elegant Universe: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375708111/netsurferdigest
The sun is acting up. A major sequence of sun spots and solar flares is taking place. Individually, the effects are not all that worrisome. If you're airborne, you may get the equivalent of an extra chest X-ray. The potential for real trouble takes place in electronics. Pilots may find their aircraft's navigation systems affected, and the ground-bound will have trouble with shortwave radio-communication systems. We've heard anecdotal reports of malfunctioning GPS devices and mobile phones. Satellites are definitely already being affected by the powerful solar storms. One benefit is that the northern lights have become visible in lower latitudes, as far south as Texas and Florida. Space.com and SpaceWeather.com offer info on the storms and their Earthly effects, while NASA provides some historical background. Next month, Nova will devote a program to magnetic storms, but the site is up and waiting.
Space.com: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solar_onslaught_031030.html
SpaceWeather.com: http://www.spaceweather.com/
NASA: http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/storm/storms.html
Nova: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/magnetic/
Physicist John Cramer has produced an audio track of the Big Bang. Prompted by an 11-year-old who wanted to know what the Big Bang sounded like, Cramer went to work to find out. The 100-second-long .WAV file uses sound frequencies modified to let human hearing detect them. The end result sounds something like a turbo-charged helicopter passing by. New Scientist has a brief article and a link to the sound file.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994320
Committee for Human Rights in North Korea Reports on Human Rights
North Korea is a living hell. Although many like to joke about its crazy leader and its apparent desire to possess nuclear weapons instead of food, this regime is truly evil. A report from the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) reveals the extent and character of the North Korean gulag - roughly 200,000 people kept in a variety of camps designed to kill them. In addition to the camps, another system deals with North Koreans repatriated after time as illegal refugees in China. The government commonly allows weak and emaciated prisoners to leave these camps so that they might die at home rather than become human-rights statistics. All pregnant women repatriated from China are forced to either have abortions or have their child murdered at birth. Apparently, no Korean child can have a Chinese father. The huge HRNK report contains satellite images of several of the repatriation camps. The report makes several recommendations, including that the Chinese stop deporting North Koreans, but its real goal is to make North Korea's human-rights record available to all those now negotiating with the country over its nuclear-weapons programs. After reading the report, or even the brief press release, you'll understand that sometimes there are things that are simply wrong.Report: http://www.hrnk.org/TheHiddenGulag-press.pdf
Press release: http://www.hrnk.org/pr-oct2103.html
Machinima is the art of creating films in virtual reality. Typically, this means using the tools of modern 3-D computer games to make movies, for example using the Quake game engine to render the scenes and characters. Now that you know what it's all about, you can head to the Web site that presents the 2003 Machinima Film Festival entries and awards. This is not some small-time tech-geek deal - this year's festival was hosted at American Museum of the Moving Image in New York City and several of the entries are heading to the Sundance Film Festival. It's serious film-geek stuff. You'll find links to all the films of this year's festival here, but be warned, you'll need plenty of bandwidth for most of them.
http://www.machinima.com/mff2003.php
Concorde flights have ended, done in not by environmental or safety concerns, but by simple economics. It's a banal end to the sleekest commercial airplane in history. The supersonic cruiser burned huge amounts of fuel to transport about 100 passengers at a time. Although a Concorde crashed in Paris after suffering landing gear damage, engineers fixed the problem and British Airways has been flying the type since. When Concorde launched in 1976, it was hailed as a grand vision successfully implemented by a British/French partnership. which inspired the name of the jet. Some celebrate the end of Concorde, but many more mourn the end of an era. Forbes has a short article about the retirement, but the Concorde SST site is much more comprehensive.
Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/2003/09/12/cz_jc_0912sport.html
Concorde SST: http://www.concordesst.com/
The Play Legality of Unplugging AI
Currently, in Florida, there's a legal and ethical tussle over unplugging a human from life support, but what about the ethics and legality of disconnecting an intelligent machine? In a mock trial conducted at the recent International Bar Association conference, that precise question was explored in some detail. In the scenario, Bina48, an intelligent computer installed to replace human telephone operators, has discovered e-mail that indicates that its company, Exabit, intends to dismember her and recycle her components. Bina48 has been moonlighting as a Google Answers researcher and has accumulated funds sufficient to hire lawyers to defend it against loss of awareness. You can read the transcripts of the three sessions or listen to the audio, about 90 minutes long. The debate is thought-provoking, with compelling arguments on both sides. Spoiler warning, stop reading here if you don't want to know the outcome: In the end, the judge decided against granting Bina48 the right to survive, although the jury had voted 5-1 in favor of an injunction against Exabit. The snares of biocyberethics could well arise not that far into the future if computer power increases at anything like the dizzy pace futurists envision.http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0594.html
Kids Comment on Classic Video Games
Young people generally have little respect for classics of the past, and Electronic Gaming Monthly's transcripts of ten to 13-year-olds playing Tetris, Donkey Kong, Pong, and Super Mario Brothers add more evidence to that. The kids' comments are quite funny, though, and devastatingly unsentimental. "Which button do I press to make the blocks explode?" just about sums it up. Some of us older folk still revere these things, remembering fondly the impact these games had, but these kids are not impressed, to put it mildly. What was cutting edge not really all that long ago is now impossibly dated and found to be clunky and boring. The kids' comments are cruel and funny at the same time: "I'm sure everyone who made this game is dead by now." Well, not quite.http://www.egmmag.com/article2/0,4364,1338730,00.asp
Pew Finds That Way Too Many Americans Buy Spam Products
The Pew Internet and American Life Project produces high-quality research into the effect of the Internet upon individuals, families, and communities. Its latest American survey indicates that spam is annoying and is beginning to undermine the integrity of e-mail. No surprise there, but enlightening data pops up further down in the read: it appears that a full one-third of American e-mail users are essentially mobile advertisements for aggressive birth control measures - they have clicked on a link in a spam message to get more information. Seven percent have demonstrated complete brain-death by actually ordering a product or service through an unsolicited e-mail. Evidently, a lot of people fail to grasp the concept that sending money to spammers just encourages them, yet likely wonder why they get all this e-mail. That's just the overview; you'll need to go through all 31 pages to cover the full scope of the problem, but it's well worth the time.http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=102
Blogs really are hot, hot enough to attract spammers. That's right, spammers are attacking the comment sections of blogs. The popular Moveable Type blog software doesn't require posters to register, so anyone can leave comments, including anonymous spammers. Apparently, the posting spammers believe that the content they add to a blog will increase their rankings in Google. It doesn't work, but that doesn't make removing the spam any easier. While the Moveable Type team is working to fix the problem, some bloggers who use that software have already come up with their own workarounds. This Wired article describes the problem and points out why a simple solution is elusive. Wired concludes that this sort of spamming fails as a long-term strategy, so bloggers may be rid of this problem in the near future.
http://wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,60912,00.html
Linus Torvalds: Symbol, Caretaker, and Dull
Wired has a great six-page article that brings readers up to speed on Linus Torvalds and the development and implementation of the Linux operating system he gave birth to. Linux, and Torvalds, are in the news more frequently than usual these days as a result of the SCO lawsuit over IBM's alleged inclusion of Unix code in Linux. Torvalds doesn't expect SCO's legal maneuvering to amount to much at the end of the day; a perspective that is shared by many. In general, Wired seems to accurately portray the man, who has recently accepted the first fellowship offered by the Open Source Development Lab headquartered in Beaverton, Ore. He can work from home, without interruption, and, for the most part, without nosey people poking into his life. It's a quick, informative, and fun read.http://wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/linus.html
Using Honeypots to Trap Internet Worms
This has been a particularly bad year for Internet worms, making it all the more urgent for researchers to study them in their natural environment. Laurent Oudot adds to the researcher's toolkit by proposing the use of honeypots to trap them. Honeypots are a standard computer security tool whereby a sacrificial machine is exposed to attack by hackers in order to study their methods. At SecurityFocus, Oudot extends that function by suggesting how honeypots can be used to ensare worms for study, and perhaps even to inoculate other computer systems by automatically launching countermeasures.http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1740
ONLINE TRAVEL
Sutton Hoo is not part of a knock-knock joke. It ranks right up there with Stonehenge as one of Britain's most significant archeological sites. The 254-acre estate harbors the burial grounds of the pagan Anglo-Saxon kings of East Anglia, and the virtual tour - entirely too brief - yields some spectacular photos. Due to the acidic composition of the substrate, buried items such as bodies and ships were completely dissolved; leaving behind only stained and compacted sand. Despite this, a painstaking excavation yielded amazingly detailed shapes. Inorganic artifacts, such as the iron helmet with tinned-bronze overlay, better survived the eons. The online views of these are awesome, and controllable. The Web site and the archeological site are both run by the National Trust, and it would be nice to see additional materials added online. As it stands, the place is still worth a few minutes of your life.http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/places/suttonhoo/
A Core Sample of New York City
New York Underground is at once very cool and very disturbing. National Geographic provides a fascinating look at what's under the surface of the Big Apple. You can get lost down there. Bet you didn't realize that the water levels in the city's sewers drop dramatically at night, enabling sewer professionals to get in there and work before the morning flush hour hits. National Geographic claims that the albino-alligator-in-the-sewer story is a myth, but we'll leave that to you to decide. Some kids did find a 125-pound gator down there, once, but it wasn't albino. National Geographic claims there are no more alligators lurking in the sewers, but the virtual tour seems a safer bet in any case. This is basically an enhanced version of an article published in National Geographic magazine, and interesting as it all is, we couldn't help but wonder if the US Department of Homeland Security knows about the site. You should have RealPlayer, Shockwave, and QuickTime (yes, all three, really) installed for best results.http://www.nationalgeographic.com/nyunderground/
Windows behind the Iron Curtain
In the West, shopping is part of who we are. "Consumption is my cultural responsibility and patriotic duty," states photographer David Hlynsky. "This cornucopia is my birthright and I understand it well." From 1986 to 1990, Hlynsky took about 8,000 color photographs in Communist Europe. He has posted maybe 100 of them at Windows through the Curtain, a gallery sure to surprise or astonish many who never traveled behind the Iron Curtain. His Hasselblad camera reminds us of the pitifully few choices many shoppers had as they stood in line to buy groceries or housewares during the waning years of Communism on the continent. Compare commercial signage at your local supermarket with the three loaves of bread in the display window of a city bakery, or the picture of a weeping rooster that announced the presence of a poultry shop in Budapest. Imagine drinking from the communal glass that stood in a juice-vending machine in Moscow. "Pop magic video supplies", in the Pedestrians gallery, encapsulates the arrival of "high tech" in Krakow, Poland in 1988 amid crumbling walls and expectations.http://www.photoarts.com/journal/Hlynsky/hlynskyindex.html
There was a time when the trailer home did not conjure up images of meth labs, mullets, and domestic violence, but rather summoned the spirit of the open road. Let vintage travel-trailer enthusiast Craig Dorsey be your tour guide as he takes you on a trip to a bygone era. Dorsey is a confessed trailer-nut who devotes all his waking hours to hunting down and restoring vintage trailers, and it is hard not to be impressed by his determination and enthusiasm. It's also easy to understand his obsession - these vehicles really are something else in terms of design beauty. In addition to the countless photographs of the trailers of the '40s, '50s, and '60s, Dorsey's Web site offers resources on restoration, want ads, magazine articles, and scans of old trailer brochures. Site users can even send in pictures of their own trailers in the hope of winning the coveted Trailer of the Month award, or sign up to the mailing list for information on vintage trailer rallies and events.
http://www.vintage-vacations.com/home_base.htm
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
In 1903, bandleader W.C. Handy "discovered" the blues when heard a fellow traveller playing the slide guitar on a train platform in Tutwiler, Miss. Of course, blues can be traced back much further; generations of slaves and their descendants preserved the rhythms of western Africa in work chants, field hollers, and spirituals, but Handy's discovery was significant and no doubt played its part in the US Congress's official proclaimation of 2003 as the Year of the Blues. The Year of the Blues 2003 site marks that centenary and celebrates the blues for the national historic treasure that it is. There are links to online galleries and exhibitions here, together with a calendar of events that gives information on blues festivals and performances. Not to be missed is the online home of "The Blues", a series of 13 hour-long radio programs presented by Grammy-winning bluesman Keb' Mo'. Week by week, Mo' charts the history of America's greatest roots music and features an exclusive performance by a modern blues legend, as well as historic recordings of the giants of the past. Once broadcast, the shows are archived online here in RealPlayer format.http://www.yearoftheblues.com/
One link at Year of the Blues 2003 leads to the site for "The Blues", a seven-part PBS series of feature length films that explore the history and influence of blues music. Martin Scorsese is the executive producer of the project, six years in the making, and is one of the seven directors involved - others include Wim Wenders and Clint Eastwood. The series premiered on Sept. 28, and here you can see a summary of each of the films together with a playlist, and watch a preview in QuickTime or RealPlayer format. You'll want to browse the exhaustive biography section of the blues musicians featured in the series as well as a Blues Classroom with background essays and resources for teachers. You can also take a Blues Road Trip where you can follow how the work chants and field hollers of the plantations of the Mississippi delta spread north through Memphis and St. Louis up to Chicago and Detroit and even over the Atlantic to the UK.
http://www.pbs.org/theblues/
The Guardian's Gallery of Missing Masterpieces
The Guardian is hosting a unique online art exhibition in which all the exhibits have been stolen, looted, lost, or burned. The usual exhibition criterion is whether the owner will loan the piece to the gallery, but none of these artworks are available so instead the Guardian offers reproduced images, from faded black and white photographs to copies by other artists. The works include masterpieces by Rembrandt, da Vinci, and Michelangelo among others. Some vanished centuries ago but many have been stolen in recent years. Cimabue, the great medieval Florentine painter who is credited with lighting the spark of the Renaissance, is particularly unfortunate as his masterpieces seem fated to attract destruction by natural disasters. There is even a theory that artworks do not vanish - by theft, for example - because they are famous, but that they become famous because they are missing, and hence can claim to be more perfect than reality.Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/arttheft/story/0,13883,1034951,00.html
Gallery: http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/arttheft/page/0,13883,1034155,00.html
BOOKS & E-ZINES
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Items our staff likes and you might too. Click on the image or title to order at a hefty discount from our affiliate Amazon.com, and send a few pennies our way as well.
For more selections, check out: Netsurfer Books: http://www.netsurf.com/nsb/ Netsurfer Library: http://www.netsurf.com/nsl/ |
Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950
Mars on Earth: The Adventures of Space Pioneers in the High Arctic
Break a Leg!: The Kid's Guide to Acting and Stagecraft
Verve Unmixed 2Milestone Documents of American History
As many adult Americans will remember from their school days, documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are at the heart of American society. You don't have to be a history major to recognize the usefulness of Our Documents, an educational site that chronicles an important elite: 100 milestone documents that helped shape duties and freedoms of generations of Americans. Teachers will see immediately that this is a great resource for lessons in civics. Starting with the Lee Resolution of 1776 and ending with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, each document comes with a brief history, a high-resolution PDF of the original, and a transcript. This collection will ring many bells among American citizens who have forgotten, or never learned about, expository monuments such as the Bill of Rights, Gettysburg Address, and Treaty of Fort Laramie. Can't recall the latter? How about the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Monroe Doctrine, or the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916?http://www.ourdocuments.gov/
SURFING SCIENCE
Measure the Speed of Light with Chocolate
"Star Trek" aside, nothing is known to travel faster than the speed of light. Measuring the speed of light has got to be a tricky, geeky scientific project involving lots of high-tech, sensitive measuring devices - or so you'd think. You'd be wrong. The first reasonably accurate guess at the speed of light came in 1676, and used only a telescope and some analysis. You, at home, can also come up with a reasonable guess at the speed of light, using only a microwave oven, a chocolate bar, and a ruler - oh, and some math. Amazing! Besides telling you how to measure the speed of light in the comfort of your kitchen, this About.com site briefs you on the history of lightspeed measurement and has links to many matters physic, from acoustics to weather.http://physics.about.com/cs/opticsexperiments/a/290903.htm
Strange Matter is a traveling science exhibit that moves from center to center around North America. It's also a Web site geared toward teens and teachers. The site offers guides for teachers and families, but the emphasis is on the games and experiments involving the structure, properties, processing, and performance of various representatives of materials science. Links to other resources are also provided. Take a look - it's not often that you run across an ice-cream recipe that involves liquid nitrogen. The site is Flash-enabled, so as is the case with an increasing number of sites these days, the fatter the pipe to your system, the better the results.
http://www.strangematterexhibit.com/
The Chemistry of Frozen Foods and Other Miracles
Frozen foods are a staple of the North American diet. Many of us take for granted the scientific process behind these quick meal fixes. The American Chemical Society Web site lets you browse the National Historical Chemical Landmark pages for an overview of the history and significance of frozen foods. Clicking on the National Historical Chemical Landmark banner takes you home, from where you can find other miracles of technology, but we like the frozen foods pages the best. Start by reading about methods of preservation in ancient societies and how they kept meat, fruit, and dairy free from spoilage. As you continue, you'll read about the chance discovery of flash freezing, and how this discovery evolved in the early 1900s to eventually produce our modern method of freezing foods. Your read will continue to inform you of the evolution, testing and production of the foods that enable the modern family to still eat nutritionally, while saving time in the kitchen. What would life be without fish sticks?http://center.acs.org/landmarks/landmarks/frozen/fro.html