Tickets available for Session 3 of The Story of Industrial Civilization

Tickets are now available for session 3 of my salon series with Interintellect, “The Story of Industrial Civilization”.

Topic: Agriculture

Before the Industrial Revolution, about half the workforce had to be farmers, just to feed the population. Even when times were good, diets were not varied and food was often not fresh. When times were hard, people went hungry and faced the threat of famine. Today, farm labor is more than 1,000 times more productive, representing only a few percent of the workforce—and we enjoy a secure, abundant supply of fresh food from all over the world. How did this happen? We’ll explore how we solved the challenge of soil fertility, mechanized the manual labor of farming, bred better varieties of crops and livestock, and learned to preserve food throughout the supply chain.

Sign up here.

I walk the (beta-stability) line

How counting neutrons explains nuclear waste

You probably recall from high school chemistry that atoms are made up of a nucleus containing protons and neutrons, surrounded by electrons. But how many of each?

If you remember a little bit more from high school chemistry, you’ll recall that the number of protons determines which element it is: an atom with six protons is an atom of carbon; seven makes it nitrogen; eight, oxygen. The number of electrons generally matches the number of protons, to make the atom electrically neutral. But how many neutrons are in the nucleus? Does it even matter?

It turns out that it matters a lot.

Lots of images in this one, so click through to read the whole thing: https://rootsofprogress.org/nuclear-physics