Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
. . . and here’s the animated Google Doodle. Fortunately, I’ve never witnessed these celebrations close up, which would involve you getting your clothes permanently ruined with dye! Read more about the holiday here and here.
Today’s Google Doodle involves a 5-question quiz about Komodo dragons. (Click on screenshot to begin the quiz.)
I won! (See below; so did Greg Mayer, who called this to my attention.) You can learn more facts by going on with the Doodle after you get your score. Why a Komodo dragon Doodle today? Because it’s the 37th anniversary of Komodo National Park. I won’t tell you where that is, because it’s the basis of one of the quiz questions.
Report your results below, and I hope all the readers get at least 4 out of 5.
Now that you’ve taken your quiz, you can read about these big lizards ((Varanus komodoensis) here and watch this nice video:
If you want to see one attacking (and killing) a deer, go here.
Today’s Google Doodle is a Valentine’s Day animation—and a game. It features a Philippine pangolin (Manis culionensis), an at-risk species. The object of the game, as described by Google, is to get the animal home to the Philippines to find love. It’s been a four-day Doodle, and you can see the description of today, the last day, here. You play using your keyboard.
This didn’t appear on my Google screen, but reader Dennis tells me that yesterday Google in Canada posted a Doodle honoring the 155th birthday of Carrie Matilda Derick (1862-1941).
Derick, a geneticist specializing in plants, was in fact the first female professor in any subject in a Canadian university. She was also the founder of the botany department at McGill University, but wasn’t made a professor for three years after she’d been running the department! (See below.) The Library and Archives Canada recounts some of her achievements, which were not only in botany, but in popularization of science and political activism:
As well as teaching and doing research, Derick published numerous articles on botany, including “The problem of the ‘burn-out’ district of southern Saskatchewan,” “The early development of the Florideae,” and “The trees of McGill University.” Many articles were aimed at the scientific community, earning her the respect of colleagues around the world and the distinction of appearing in the 1910 edition of American men of science. Others were intended to bring an understanding of nature to a general audience. In addition, she wrote biographical sketches and political essays.
At the same time that she was leading a busy and sometimes difficult academic life, Derick was deeply involved in social activism. Her main interests were women’s suffrage and education, but she worked for many causes throughout her life. Her energy and commitment are reflected in a partial list of the organizations she was involved with: the Local Council of Women (Montreal); the Protestant Committee of the Council of Education; the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the Montreal Suffrage Association; the National Council of Education; the Federation of University Women of Canada; and the Montreal Folklore Society.
Sadly, this Doodle is seen only in the blue places below, i.e., Canada. It’s the first one-country Doodle I’ve seen, and that’s a shame. It does us well to remember the indignities suffered not all that long ago by women in academia, and to mourn the loss of scientific advances caused by the marginalization of women. Wikipedia gives the evidence (my emphasis)
In 1891, Derick began her master’s program at McGill under David Penhallow and received her M.A. in botany in 1896. She attended the University of Bonn in 1901 and completed the research required for a Ph.D. but was not awarded an official doctorate since the University did not give women Ph.D. degrees. She then returned to McGill and “continued to work, teach, and administer” in the botany department. In 1905, “after seven years of lecturing, assisting Penhallow with his classes, researching and publishing, without any pay increments or offers of promotion, Derick wrote directly to Principal Peterson and was promoted to assistant professor” at one-third the salary of her male counterparts. Derick was only officially appointed as professor of comparative morphology and genetics by McGill in 1912 after three years of running the department following Penhallow’s death. She was the first woman both at McGill and in Canada to achieve university professorship. She retired in 1929.
Somehow I missed this anniversary, and the Google Doodle shown below isn’t visible from the U.S. Here’s the skinny from CNet:
While my car has trouble going over 65 mph, the speed of light is much faster — approximately 186,282 miles per second. How do we know that? Well, we can all thank Danish astronomer Olaus Roemer.
To honor Roemer and the 340th anniversary of the determination of the speed of light, Google made a Doodle.
Roemer determined the speed of light in 1676 by observing the planet Jupiter eclipsing its moon Io 140 times. His measurements were taken from Copenhagen while his peer Giovanni Domenico Cassini took measurements of the same eclipses in Paris. Roemer compared the results to determine the speed of light.
In the Google Doodle, you see Roemer repeatedly and thoughtfully pacing back and forth after viewing his telescope. This simple illustration shows just how much detail and thoughtfulness Google applies to its Doodles.
There’s more on this experiment on a Wikipedia page, which describes the method—a very clever one. It’s based on the assumptions that the period of revolution of Jupiter’s moon Io around its planet would be constant, but that as the Earth moved farther from Jupiter over a period of time, the time that Io appeared to us from behind its planet would be greater because light would take longer to travel to Earth. By measuring the time differential over many revolutions of Io, Rømer calculated that the speed of light was 220,000 kilometres per second. That’s pretty accurate: about 26% lower than the true value of 299,792 km/s. His observations were controversial, but the order-of-magnitude accuracy was supported by other astronomical observations, and then refined to the present value by experiments involving measurements solely on Earth:
More data, and why we’re celebrating on this date, comes from Wikipedia (my emphasis):
On 22 August 1676, Rømer made an announcement to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris that he would be changing the basis of calculation for his tables of eclipses of Io. He may also have stated the reason:[note 4]
This second inequality appears to be due to light taking some time to reach us from the satellite; light seems to take about ten to eleven minutes [to cross] a distance equal to the half-diameter of the terrestrial orbit.
Most importantly, Rømer announced the prediction that the emergence of Io on 16 November 1676 would be observed about ten minutes later than would have been calculated by the previous method. There is no record of any observation of an emergence of Io on 16 November, but an emergence was observed on 9 November. With this experimental evidence in hand, Rømer explained his new method of calculation to the Royal Academy of Sciences on 22 November.
The original record of the meeting of the Royal Academy of Sciences has been lost, but Rømer’s presentation was recorded as a news report in the Journal des sçavans on 7 December. This anonymous report was translated into English and published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in London on 25 July 1677.
Today’s Google Doodle honors the 117th birthday of the Hungarian inventor László József Bíró (1899-1995). From either his name or the Doodle you can guess that he invented the ballpoint pen.
Biró’s story from Wikipedia:
Bíró was born in Budapest, Hungary,[2] in 1899 into a Jewish family. He presented the first production of the ballpoint pen at the Budapest International Fair in 1931.[2] While working as a journalist in Hungary, he noticed that the ink used in newspaper printing dried quickly, leaving the paper dry and smudge-free. He tried using the same ink in a fountain pen but found that it would not flow into the tip, as it was too viscous. Working with his brother György,[1] a chemist, he developed a new tip consisting of a ball that was free to turn in a socket, and as it turned it would pick up ink from a cartridge and then roll to deposit it on the paper. Bíró patented the invention in Paris in 1938.
In 1943 the brothers moved to Argentina. On 10 June they filed another patent, issued in the US as US Patent 2,390,636,[3] and formed Biro Pens of Argentina (in Argentina the ballpoint pen is known as birome). This new design was licensed for production in the United Kingdom for supply to Royal Air Force aircrew, who found they worked much better than fountain pens at high altitude.[4][5]
In 1945 Marcel Bich bought the patent from Bíró for the pen, which soon became the main product of his Bic company.
And from the Torygraph:
The first major buyer of the newly created pen was the Royal Air Force. During the Second World War the organisation ordered 30,000 of the tools, which would work at high altitudes unlike traditional fountain pens. After the war it entered commercial production.
Today, the Bic Cristal biro is the world’s most popular pen. In the US, the price has remarkably stayed the same since 1959 – retailing at 19 cents despite inflation.
In Europe you can still hear these pens called “biros,” but that word is virtually unknown in the U.S., where they’re called ballpoint pens. Here’s an early ad:
And here’s Biró himself:
Now I’ve never liked writing with ballpoint pens. Earlier in my life I loved fountain pens, which made the act of writing a sensuous pleasure, and I eventually worked my way up to the King of Fountain Pens, the Montblanc Meisterstück. (I still have it, but it needs to be repaired.) I also had a Parker 75 in sterling silver. Over the past few years, though, I’ve graduated to the Uni-Ball micropoint pen, a sort of hybrid between ballpoints and fountain pen. The ink dries quickly and it has a very fine point, good for drawing cats in books. I also find that I write almost nothing by hand any more, and so my handwriting has degenerated a bit.
What do you write with?
There seem to be other Google Doodles celebrating the Olympic Games in Rio that begin today, but the one below is what I see in Poland (click on the screenshot to go to the long animation). The explanation:
Today marks the season opener of the Rio Olympics 2016 Doodle Fruit Games! For the next couple of weeks, we’ll journey to an otherwise unassuming fruit stand in Rio, where produce from all over the market competes for the title of freshest fruit. To play along, get the latest Google app on Android or iOS, and tap the Doodle. Let the games begin!
And now, a report from the field covering Day 1 of the action….
The Games are off to a rollicking start! Strawberry takes an early lead but Watermelon’s on a roll. Over to Coconut and what a jump! What a dunk! Passed by Lemon, going…going….ooh, frozen fruit. To Pineapple where a sweet return earns a prickly reception. Things are getting juicy! Now Orange swings and Blueberry soars. Grape rides and Apple spikes. It’s a cornucopia of conquests! But wait, here comes Strawberry with Watermelon spitting at its heels. Will it end in a blender blunder? Not today! This game will end with a Strawberry on top.
Come back tomorrow and for the next few weeks to keep up with all the action from the 2016 Doodle Fruit Games.
Umm. . . I don’t think so.
To mark the opening of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro on Friday, the web giant is launching a series of interactive doodles championing its own 2016 Doodle Fruit Games. During the next couple of weeks, fruit such as coconut, strawberry and watermelon from a fruit stand in Rio will compete in races and other feats of skill, strength and stamina for the title of “freshest fruit,” the company said in an introduction to its companion games.
The Fruit Games, which you can participate in by tapping the Google Doodle on your Android and iOS devices, appears to have events planned that mirror the traditional contest held at the Olympic Games, including track and field, swimming, and cycling, among others.
What lamebrain came up with that idea?
