Author: fc1959

Fracture mechanics is basically about scaling. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was the first to record some understanding of scaling in fracture, by designing strength tests on iron wires of different length. While we don’t know whether Leonardo actually ever realized such tests, which would have required a high

The “Guglielmo Marconi” building of the Institute of Physics (“Istituto Fisico”) in the University of Rome “Sapienza” (meaning Knowledge in Italian) may be quite intimidating, both for a young aspiring physicist and for a newcomer professor. The amount of outstanding

Unlike animals, which generally have to contend with a body plan which is fixed at birth, plants can continue to develop new organs and elaborate their body plan throughout their life. A beautiful example of a nearly regular and periodic

I am not that old, I think. Well, yet. However I am old enough to remember some old days when many groceries were purchased in bulk at the local shop around the corner. That was indeed the case for pasta,

According to some unverified urban legend, in a sunny day of April 1954 the English physicist George Ingram Taylor was distractedly browsing a copy of the Life magazine that his wife had brought back from the beauty parlor, when he

Once all our attempts to obtain living matter from inanimate matter have failed, it seems to me that it should be part of a validly correct scientific procedure, to ask ourselves whether life actually ever had an origin; if it

Rudolf Clausius was both a mathematician and physicist. Sadi Carnot was a mechanical engineer. Lord Kelvin did not spare a crown, and became a specialist of all the three disciplines. These people are usually regarded as the “inventors” of thermodynamics.

Imagine waking up in a Salvador Dalí painting. You reach over to touch your alarm clock, only to discover that it melted into a puddle during the night. The sun rising outside your window illuminates the hedge in your garden now

In the 5th century B.C., Zeno of Elea argued that motion is impossible. Although few philosophers have accepted Zeno’s conclusion (but Bertrand Russell described his logic as “immeasurably subtle and profound”) it must be conceded, I believe, that Zeno did raise some profound questions. Zeno’s paradoxes

I very vividly remember the day the Chernobyl accident was announced at the Italian TV, and the news of a few days later when the authorities asked people to stop consuming “wide-leaf vegetables” because of the risk of accumulation of