By Lisa Goudy
If he were still alive, July 10 would've been inventor Nikola Tesla’s 159th birthday.
Tesla, born in Croatia, died on Jan. 7, 1943 at age 86. Tesla invented the electrical motor, arc lightning and AC power. He
was an electrical engineer, mechanical engineer and physicist. He even worked for Thomas Edison, but resigned after Edison
refused to pay him the money he was promised to receive.
Tesla’s teachers thought he was cheating before he became famous because he was so good at doing calculus in his head. This
name might be familiar to you, or it might not.
But did you know that it was Tesla’s dream to get rid of wires? Now, wireless is extremely common in our every day society.
Unfortunately, Tesla didn’t receive recognition in his time for most of his work.
According
to an article on inhabitat.com, University of Washington researchers
are working on something called PoWiFi. They
recently demonstrated technology for “ambient ‘backscatter’ radio
signals to power battery-free temperature and camera sensors,”
the article said. In essence, they are working to power
electronics wirelessly.
While science certainly isn’t everyone’s forte, without it, many of our developments in society wouldn’t exist.
Wouldn’t
it be even better if there were a fun way to actually learn a little
bit about science? Well, it just so happens
that there are many fun ways out there to learn about science.
One, however, I discovered at San Diego Comic-Con International
2014.
When I was at the convention last July, one group passed out several free comics aimed at younger audiences. These comic books,
Spectra, are put out by PhysicsCentral, and follow a middle school superhero.
The neat thing about this idea is that these heroes use things in physics as part of their powers. So, in essence, while younger
audiences are enjoying reading about superheroes, they’re also learning more about science.
Physics is a subject that tends to scare a lot of people away, unless you’re totally into science. At first glance and for
those who are not gifted in mathematics, physics is hard. And part of it is hard. Not all physics is easy and not everyone
is going to be good at it. This is true of any subject or any discipline.
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn about it. Maybe you won’t go get your masters degree in physics and maybe you hate
science. But you might love reading comic books, so this provides a great way to learn something and enjoy it.
And who knows, you might actually discover that you have an interest in science after all. Maybe that will inspire some of
us to invent something innovative that’ll change the world.
After all, Tesla once said, “Invention is the most important product of man’s creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the
complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs.”
*** This column appeared in the July 8, 2015 edition of UnCut. Read UnCut online here.
No comments:
Post a Comment