Zippers, buttons, glue, staples, stitching. Prior to 1955, those were the main ways in which things were fastened together. But inventor George de Mestral’s 1941 discovery led to an easier and often more effective way of conjoining two things: VELCRO. While we’ve all used the substance and it’s a common part of things we use every day, it was an invention that was a long time in the making.
Sandblasting is commonly used to prepare a surface prior to painting and to strip paint from machinery and metal. It is also used to produce the lettering and engraving on most modern cemetery monuments and markers and to clean boat hulls, brick, stone and concrete.
There are three closed boxes on a table. Each box contains $5, $10, and $20 respectively, in five-dollar bills. The $10 box contains two five-dollar bills; the $5 box contains one five-dollar bill; and the $20 box contains four five-dollar bills.
Can you rearrange the positions of the figures to form a new line, from left to right, according to the following rules? The triangle is in position 1. The circle is not in 2 or 4. The circle is not at the end of the line. The pentagon is not in 4 or 5. The octagon is not in 5.
If you use a computer and software every day, you owe much of its operational logic to Claude Elwood Shannon. Shannon was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as a “father of information theory.”
Desalination is the process of removing minerals (mostly salt) from seawater through physical and chemical processes to make it drinkable. Desalinated water is used on many seagoing ships and submarines, and water-scarce regions are particularly reliant on the technology.
Friends Maddie, Carmen, Dean, Holly and Dennis found a new café that had just opened a few weeks ago and decided to try it out. Each wore a different-colored T-shirt (black, blue, green, orange, and red).
Roller coasters descended from monumental ice slides — long, steep wooden slides covered in ice — that were popular in 16th- and 17th-century Russia. But historians diverge on the exact evolution of these ice slides into actual roller coasters.
Test your skills of deduction with the March 2023 edition of Riddle Me This: How Many? How many four-sided 90-degree shapes (squares and rectangles) are there in the diagram shown?
John was visiting an island where all the inhabitants are either Knights—always tell the truth, or Knaves—always lie. John meets three of the inhabitants. A woman named Jackie, and two men named Ben and Don. He asked Jackie “Are you a Knight?” She replied under her breath so he couldn’t hear her.
