Top 10 cities you should visit in 2008

Moscow

Bone-chilling winters, crooked cops, lousy customer service, and a truly painful exchange rate; of the many reasons (which are all debauched) to visit Moscow, its hospitality is not one of them. This unforgiving Slavic beauty has been ruining young foreigners for 875 years with easy access to sex, vodka and other things designed to accelerate moral decline. The air of danger and criminality surrounding everything she does only serves to entice us more.

In 2008, the excitement surrounding Russia’s icy capital is bound to heat up. When March’s presidential elections end the relatively stable Putin era, will Kremlin in-fighting send the country back to the lawless Animal Kingdom-esque early 1990s? Or will Russia, riding on a tidal wave of oil money, continue to prosper to the chagrin of the rest of Western civilization? Will the mighty Ruble continue to rise, putting Moscow on par with Copenhagen, albeit more depraved? Will Moscow’s CSKA win the European Champion League final, causing the streets to flood with soccer hooligans in raptures of ecstasy? Stay tuned to this dial because in Moscow life might be hard and cold, but it is never, ever boring.

San Diego

San Diego’s 2008 event calendar probably makes it the most fun city in America. Case in point: The city is hosting the International World Beer Cup (a bottomless tap of the best brews from around the world), the U.S. Open (one of the few sporting events that mandates short skirts) and Comic-Con (quite possibly the biggest comics convention in the universe).

These high-profile social activities make an already attractive vacation destination just downright sexy. As a guy, you can’t really go wrong with San Diego. It’s great for singles on the prowl or proud pops looking to show the wife and kids a good time. The glittering seaside city is rife with opportunity, from the sultry old Gaslamp Quarter to the world-famous San Diego Wild Animal Park. San Diego has great weather, snazzy bars, slamming clubs, and scrumptious food. It’s positively seductive, a perfect place for adventure, spicy nightlife or even some plain-old rest and relaxation. The weather is pretty much fantastic year-round, and there’s a modern cityscape as well as a naturally stunning beachscape. Surf’s up!

Oslo

Florence has art, Paris has food -- but Oslo, the capital city of Norway, has character. Often overlooked by American tourists craving a predictable jaunt through Europe’s southern states, Oslo has something different that every man can enjoy -- history, culture, nightlife, nature, and some of the most beautiful women in the world.

Oslo is a small urban oasis surrounded by a scenic, rugged environment that consists of fjords, mountains and islands. This natural beauty, coupled with Oslo’s trendy nightlife, fashionable (and attractive) people, unique culture and rich Viking history make Oslo a prime destination for any man looking to explore somewhere new in 2008.

In addition to the permanent attractions that make Oslo unique, 2008 marks the opening of one of the city’s most well-known landmarks, the Opera House. Perched on the Oslo waterfront, the Opera House -- long considered old-fashioned and out-of-date -- has been renovated and will re-open in April 2008 under the hand of Norway’s Kind Harald. The long-awaited opening is considered one of the biggest boosts in the history of Norwegian culture.

So, if you’re looking for something different in 2008, we’ve got the scoop on what to see, where to rest and how to party in Scandinavia’s hottest city.

Bombay

There’s no dearth of reasons why you should visit Bombay (also known as Mumbai) any time of year, and given by the number of Westerners moving there for corporate career upgrades, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t stay either. Bombay is a glorious, chaotic, Technicolor riot, whether the city is awash in torrential Monsoon rains or baking under the soil-cracking May sun. Sprawling slums rub up against skyscrapers spotting some of the world’s most expensive real estate at Cuffe Parade and Nariman Point.

So why make 2008 the year to visit Bombay? Because it’s likely to be Bombay’s best year yet. Mira Nair’s film Shantaram, based on the best-selling novel, is scheduled for release this year and it’s going to do for Bombay what The Motorcycle Diaries did for Latin America. Bombay is in a bubble of immense well-being, with superb established restaurants like Khyber, and new places like Origami -- a sushi restaurant that imports some of its seafood from Japan.

In March, a relatively cooler time to visit Bombay, is the festival of Holi, where masses of people get together, get high on an Indian hooch called “bhang,” and literally smear each other for hours in every powdered color of the rainbow. And during September’s Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations to mark the end of the Monsoon season, hundreds of thousands of devotees march massive painted clay idols of the elephant-headed god to the sea to the megaphonic tunes of Bollywood songs.

Vienna

Vienna has long been a bastion of elegance and culture, and 2008 will be a testament to this fact. Art connoisseurs will be thrilled by the Albertina museum’s Max Ernst, Monet, Picasso, Kokoschka, and Van Gogh exhibits. Enthusiasts can also visit Viennafair 2008, the international contemporary art festival. Equally promising is the Kings of Chrome: Cars with a History exhibit, showing in the Museum of Technology.

Music fans can bask in the classical music Vienna is famous for or opt for something modern, like the Rebellion Punk Music Festival. The Vienna Jazz Festival is guaranteed to please, as is the Music Film Festival. For something more romantic, try the Johann Strauss Ball on Valentine’s Day. And don’t miss the relatively new Haus der Musik, an incredible museum of sound.

Sports lovers can look forward to Vienna hosting Euro 2008, the European soccer championship. Avid runners will enjoy the Vienna Marathon, and those seeking thrills should check out Masters of Dirt, the Freestyle Motocross show. The famous Vienna Prater -- one of the oldest amusement parks in the world, which dates back to 1766 -- will see its renovations complete this year, boasting new attractions which include a flight simulator and special-effects theater.

Belgrade

While many Americans might imagine Belgrade to be a gray and dull place that’s best left to journalists and political correspondents, those who are adventurous enough to visit the largest city in Serbia have found what is fast becoming the party capital of the world. In 2008, Belgrade will host the Eurovision Song Contest in its newly built Belgrade Arena, one of the largest of its kind in Europe. Each European country will be represented by a pop group in this competition, and pop fans from all over the continent will gather to see the most attractive live performances in the hemisphere.

For a more rugged experience, the annual outdoor Belgrade Beer Festival takes place in August. Spanning four days and nights, the festival features all the beer you can drink and is accompanied by live rock music.

If neither pop music nor beer are your thing, you can be one of the first to try your luck in the newly opened Casino Belgrade. The $44.5 million casino on the banks of the River Sava stretches over 30,000 square feet and features 25 gaming tables, 250 gaming machines and a staff of 300.

If you visit Belgrade in July, you will not want to miss a short excursion to the EXIT Festival in the nearby city of Novi Sad. The festival lasts for four days and nights and features partying and dancing along the walls of an 18th-century fortress.

Buenos Aires

Known as the Paris of South America, Buenos Aires is a city deep-rooted in culture and beauty. From its landscaped parks to its architecturally brilliant churches and cathedrals, this Argentinean city has much splendor to offer locals and tourists alike.

At the core of Buenos Aires is a city drenched in culture. Music, art and theater are esteemed parts of this city’s character. Consequently, marking a major event in Buenos Aires’ history is the reopening of the Teatro Colon on its 100th anniversary. The Teatro, one of the greatest opera houses in the world and the crown jewel of Buenos Aires, will be unveiled on May 25th after undergoing massive renovations.

Adding to the sultriness of this South American city and its love for music is the annual Festival Buenos Aires Tango, which features performances from the best tango dancers in the world. The closing night of the festival culminates in a huge dance on one of the city's grand boulevards.

New York City

New York -- it’s a hell of a town. It’s a smorgasbord of spectacles, it’s a chameleon of a city and it’s full of surprises and glorious hot spots. While some things may be priceless, New York is not among them and it’s no place for penny-pinching. Here then, are a few events that make New York an exhilarating place in 2008.

In addition to New York’s standard attractions, such as the Chinese New Year’s parades, the Belmont Stakes, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square, be sure to check out the last few seasonal shows of Cirque du Soleil’s Wintuk in January at Madison Square Garden. If you happen to attend this modern circus, be sure to check out Brooklyn’s old-school circus in Coney Island for a shocking counterpoint.

When baseball season rolls around, New York will be a different kind of baseball mecca. Not to ignore the Mets, but Yankee Stadium will field a drastically different team: George Steinbrenner has handed the reigns over to his sons, Joe Torre is gone and Alex Rodriguez is an unrestricted free agent with no plans to return. 2008 will also say goodbye to The House That Ruth Built, but not before it hosts baseball’s All-Star Game.

To truly enjoy New York, you first need to know where to eat, sleep and meet women.

Manchester/Liverpool

Liverpool and Manchester are less than an hour apart on public transportation, but their historic rivalry (and incredibly different accents) has always made them seem worlds apart. 2008 might just be the best year to see the best of both these worlds by enjoying a trip to take in two of the most exciting cities in the United Kingdom.

Manchester is sports central: The city hosts the World Track Cycling Championships in March, the World Aquatic Championships in April, the UEFA Cup Final in May, and the World Squash Championships in October. You'll want to count yourself in for a little bit of art in Liverpool: It’s the 2008 European Capital of Culture and the Tate Gallery is celebrating its 20th Anniversary. The Liverpool Arena will be opening and, to celebrate this occasion, Liverpool’s prodigal son, Sir Paul McCartney, will be its first act.

Both cities are no longer the drab, bleak beacons of industrial England they used to be. London may be the biggest city in Britain, but it may not necessarily be the best. The North is not only cheaper, it’s also friendlier. From Manchester’s refurbished main square, with terrific shopping and restaurants, to Liverpool’s growing waterfront district, these two sexy, stylish, urban centers are just waiting to be discovered.

Beijing

Stadiums, subway stations and shopping malls are springing up overnight, grass is being planted on rooftops to tackle the smog and taxi drivers with smelly cabs have been lectured on cleaning up their act. For the last three years, seemingly everything in Beijing has been about the 2008 Olympics scheduled for August.

By spring 2008, Beijing will be well on its way to being the city the government wants visitors to see. The Forbidden City will have shed all its scaffolding, the national Olympic Stadium -- the Bird’s Nest -- will be hosting practice events and the futuristic national theater, hailed as the capital’s new architectural icon by some, will open for business. Even the language barrier is set to be demolished following the introduction of a multilingual information service accessible via mobile phone, which can recommend restaurants according to the whims of users’ stomachs.

But while Beijing is flung headlong down the development path, life in what remains of the city’s shrinking ancient heart, with its narrow alleyways known as hutongs and traditional courtyard homes, trundles along regardless. This is something visitors should appreciate while they still can.

source: http://www.askmen.com

Top 10 Things you should know about Office 2008 for Mac

With something as ubiquitous as office software suites, you can’t blame me for being cynical about reviewing Office 2008 for Mac. After all, there’s a high chance you’d already get it anyway, unless you’re some kind of open-source fanboy who only uses alternatives like OpenOffice, or for that matter Google Docs or Zoho.

Still, it’s been a good four years since we had a new Office for Mac, so I thought it’d be important to highlight some of the significant changes Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit has managed to cook up.

Top Ten Things about Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac:

Microsoft Word 2008

1. How’s the speed?
One of the most popular questions I got was on speed. The new Office for Mac is written in Universal Binary, which closes a blinding gap left in our universe of native Intel Mac applications. I tried timing the startup time of each application with its predecessor, but it got tiresome having to to flush the system cache for a truer test. I also figured that it wasn’t just the application start-up time which mattered as much as overall performance, such as when changing font in Word, performing complex formulas in Excel and so on. As with all monolithic applications, Office will take a while to start. However, you’d be please to know that on my MacBook Pro, startup time has visibly improved, saving a few seconds of launch time. The refreshed Office 2008 interface has more flair now, but isn’t bogged down in terms of speed at all. Verdict: Cuts Faster!

Office for Mac: Ribbon Interface

2. Ribbon interface for everyone!
It started with Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows, where the entire tool bar interface had been revamped with a simplified, though very different, graphical approach. While it threw off a lot of us veteran Office users, most of us eventually came to terms with it. Great for new users, a little relearning for veteran users. I personally like it, as the ribbon interface seems reminiscent of the iWork and iLife, plus it actually behaves like the Mac OSX dock, complete with icon magnification and drag ‘n drop functionality. Incidentally, you can collapse both the toolbar and ribbon menu to get more document work space. Earlier versions of Microsoft Word for Mac was infamous for numerous toolbars which took up too much screen real estate. Verdict: Pretty smart!

Office 2008 for Mac: Publishing Templates

3. Publishing Layout: Office 2008 pays compliment to iWork
The Microsoft Office 2008 can be said to be more Mac-like. The Publishing Layout workflow lets you build pretty documents quickly (much like iWork) through the use of themed documents. For instance, the newsletter above came as a neatly designed template, leaving you to simply replace the content with your own. Verdict: Microsoft’s own iWork

Office 2008 for Mac: Document Elements

4. Document Elements: The “Lego” of Paper Writing
Document Elements. Under this ribbon item, you get Cover Pages, Table of Contents, Header, Footer and Bibliographies. Some of these elements were available in earlier versions of Office, except that in this 2008 version, the organization of these elements makes using them much clearer and obvious. Verdict: Timesaver!

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac: 3D Charts

5. Slick 3D Charts (especially for Keynote fans)
If you’re an Excel addict or simply love presenting statistics visually with Powerpoint, you’ll love the bevy of charting features offered in the new Office for Mac. It almost mirrors Apple’s Keynote and Numbers in making it easy to generate visually pleasing charts. Under the Charts ribbon menu, you’ll get charts types including Area, Bar, Bubble, Column, Doughnut, Line, Pie, Radar, Stock, Surface, as well as X/Y Scatter plots. Verdict: See more, Read Less!

Office 2008 for Mac: SmartArt Graphics (omnigraffle anyone?)

6. Introducing SmartArt Graphics (especially for Omnigraffle fans)
As a reflection of my state of mind, I kept writing “SmartAss Graphics”. It might as well be, since is an addition I really like. Besides creating slick statistical charts, Office 2008 now lets you indulge in the use relational graphics to help get your points across. At first it reminded me of Omnigraffle, a popular Mac app for creating great flowcharts easily, but SmartArt Graphics is more structured, where it involves more fill in the blanks than drawing. There’s a lot to choose from in this department: Lists, Processes, Cycles, Hierarchies, Relationships, Matrices, and Pyramids. Verdict: Brings the Sexy Back!

Office2008_Bibliographies

7. For graduate students, there’s Citations (especially for EndNote fans)
The most popular reference manager application out there would be EndNote, If your involved with research writing, you’d love this new Citations feature. Two ways this shows up in your document: 1) Citations panel lets you add / edit and manage various lists of references, 2) Insert “Bibliographies” under Document Elements to dynamically display your citations. Simple to use and to good effect. Verdict: Built-in librarian!
Office 2008: My Day

8. Making it “My Day”…
My Day is a widget-like application which sums up your day in terms of events and to-dos. As this Ars Technica review noted, it should really should belong in the dashboard. Verdict: An out-of-place handyman!
Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac

9. Rejoice and Beware: Open XML file format
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac uses the same file format as Office 2007 for Windows: Open XML. I believe that this move is meant to future-proof how Office documents are saved, by making them more open-standards compatible. The price of this move is that the native file format won’t work with older versions of Office. Two solutions around that: 1) Save in an older compatible format (i.e. Office 97-2004 format), 2) Use Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac. Verdict: Pre-emptive thanks?

Office 2008: The Little Details

10. Little things that matter…
Among the big changes to Office 2008, there are little add-ons that matter to the rest of us. Powerpoint 2008 can now be controlled by the Apple Remote and exports slides to your iPod, while Entourage 2008 supposedly works reliably in Exchange environments, freeing you from Windows Outlook when working with your colleagues. There’s also Automator support so you now do nifty things, such as batch convert your Word documents to PDF, or listen to your Entourage email on your iPod. Verdict: Nifty!

Top Ten Hockey Bloopers

Top 10 Myths of Entrepreneurship

This is a post by Scott Shane as a follow up to his entrepreneurship test. He is the A. Malachi Mixon Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of seven books, the latest of which is The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By. Many entrepreneurs believe a bunch of myths about entrepreneurship, so here are ten of the most common and the realities that bust them:

1.

It takes a lot of money to finance a new business. Not true. The typical start-up only requires about $25,000 to get going. The successful entrepreneurs who don’t believe the myth design their businesses to work with little cash. They borrow instead of paying for things. They rent instead of buy. And they turn fixed costs into variable costs by, say, paying people commissions instead of salaries.
2.

Venture capitalists are a good place to go for start-up money. Not unless you start a computer or biotech company. Computer hardware and software, semiconductors, communication, and biotechnology account for 81 percent of all venture capital dollars, and seventy-two percent of the companies that got VC money over the past fifteen or so years. VCs only fund about 3,000 companies per year and only about one quarter of those companies are in the seed or start-up stage. In fact, the odds that a start-up company will get VC money are about one in 4,000. That’s worse than the odds that you will die from a fall in the shower.
3.

Most business angels are rich. If rich means being an accredited investor –a person with a net worth of more than $1 million or an annual income of $200,000 per year if single and $300,000 if married – then the answer is “no.” Almost three quarters of the people who provide capital to fund the start-ups of other people who are not friends, neighbors, co-workers, or family don’t meet SEC accreditation requirements. In fact, thirty-two percent have a household income of $40,000 per year or less and seventeen percent have a negative net worth.
4.

Start-ups can’t be financed with debt. Actually, debt is more common than equity. According to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Small Business Finances, fifty-three percent of the financing of companies that are two years old or younger comes from debt and only forty-seven percent comes from equity. So a lot of entrepreneurs out there are using debt rather than equity to fund their companies.
5.

Banks don’t lend money to start-ups. This is another myth. Again, the Federal Reserve data shows that banks account for sixteen percent of all the financing provided to companies that are two years old or younger. While sixteen percent might not seem that high, it is three percent higher than the amount of money provided by the next highest source – trade creditors – and is higher than a bunch of other sources that everyone talks about going to: friends and family, business angels, venture capitalists, strategic investors, and government agencies.
6.

Most entrepreneurs start businesses in attractive industries. Sadly, the opposite is true. Most entrepreneurs head right for the worst industries for start-ups. The correlation between the number of entrepreneurs starting businesses in an industry and the number of companies failing in the industry is 0.77. That means that most entrepreneurs are picking industries in which they are mostlikely to fail.
7.

The growth of a start-up depends more on an entrepreneur’s talent than on the business he chooses. Sorry to deflate some egos here, but the industry you choose to start your company has a huge effect on the odds that it will grow. Over the past twenty years or so, about 4.2 percent of all start-ups in the computer and office equipment industry made the Inc 500 list of the fastest growing private companies in the U.S. 0.005 percent of start-ups in the hotel and motel industry and 0.007 percent of start-up eating and drinking establishments made the Inc. 500. That means the odds that you will make the Inc 500 are 840 times higher if you start a computer company than if you start a hotel or motel. There is nothing anyone has discovered about the effects of entrepreneurial talent that has a similar magnitude effect on the growth of new businesses.
8.

Most entrepreneurs are successful financially. Sorry, this is another myth. Entrepreneurship creates a lot of wealth, but it is very unevenly distributed. The typical profit of an owner-managed business is $39,000 per year. Only the top ten percent of entrepreneurs earn more money than employees. And the typical entrepreneur earns less money than he otherwise would have earned working for someone else.
9.

Many start-ups achieve the sales growth projections that equity investors are looking for. Not even close. Of the 590,000 or so new businesses with at least one employee founded in this country every year, data from the U.S. Census shows that less than 200 reach the $100 million in sales in six years that venture capitalists talk about looking for. About 500 firms reach the $50 million in sales that the sophisticated angels, like the ones at Tech Coast Angels and the Band of Angels talk about. In fact, only about 9,500 companies reach $5 million in sales in that amount of time.
10.

Starting a business is easy. Actually it isn’t, and most people who begin the process of starting a company fail to get one up and running. Seven years after beginning the process of starting a business, only one-third of people have a new company with positive cash flow greater than the salary and expenses of the owner for more than three consecutive months.

TOP Ten Most Beautiful Physics Experiments

source:http://mocii.com

Robert P. Crease, a member of the philosophy department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the historian at Brookhaven National Laboratory, recently asked physicists to nominate the most beautiful experiment of all time. Based on the paper of George Johnson in The New York Times we list below 10 winners of this polling and accompany the short explanations of the physical experiments with computer animations.

1. Double-slit electron diffraction

The French physicist Louis de Broglie proposed in 1924 that electrons and other discrete bits of matter, which until then had been conceived only as material particles, also have wave properties such as wavelength and frequency. Later (1927) the wave nature of electrons was experimentally established by C.J. Davisson and L.H. Germer in New York and by G.P. Thomson in Aberdeen, Scot.

To explain the idea, to others and themselves, physicists often used a thought experiment, in which Young's double-slit demonstration is repeated with a beam of electrons instead of light. Obeying the laws of quantum mechanics, the stream of particles would split in two, and the smaller streams would interfere with each other, leaving the same kind of light- and dark-striped pattern as was cast by light. Particles would act like waves. According to an accompanying article in Physics World, by the magazine's editor, Peter Rodgers, it wasn't until 1961 that someone (Claus Jönsson of Tübingen) carried out the experiment in the real world.

2. Galileo's experiment on falling objects

In the late 1500's, everyone knew that heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones. After all, Aristotle had said so. That an ancient Greek scholar still held such sway was a sign of how far science had declined during the dark ages.

Galileo Galilei, who held a chair in mathematics at the University of Pisa, was impudent enough to question the common knowledge. The story has become part of the folklore of science: he is reputed to have dropped two different weights from the town's Leaning Tower showing that they landed at the same time. His challenges to Aristotle may have cost Galileo his job, but he had demonstrated the importance of taking nature, not human authority, as the final arbiter in matters of science.

3. Millikan's oil-drop experiment

Oil-drop experiment was the first direct and compelling measurement of the electric charge of a single electron. It was performed originally in 1909 by the American physicist Robert A. Millikan. Using a perfume atomizer, he sprayed tiny drops of oil into a transparent chamber. At the top and bottom were metal plates hooked to a battery, making one positive (red in animation) and the other negative (blue in animation). Since each droplet picked up a slight charge of static electricity as it traveled through the air, the speed of its motion could be controlled by altering the voltage on the plates. When the space between the metal plates is ionized by radiation (e.g., X rays), electrons from the air attach themselves to oil droplets, causing them to acquire a negative charge. Millikan observed one drop after another, varying the voltage and noting the effect. After many repetitions he concluded that charge could only assume certain fixed values. The smallest of these portions was none other than the charge of a single electron.

4. Newton's decomposition of sunlight with a prism

Isaac Newton was born the year Galileo died. He graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1665, then holed up at home for a couple of years waiting out the plague. He had no trouble keeping himself occupied.

The common wisdom held that white light is the purest form (Aristotle again) and that colored light must therefore have been altered somehow. To test this hypothesis, Newton shined a beam of sunlight through a glass prism and showed that it decomposed into a spectrum cast on the wall. People already knew about rainbows, of course, but they were considered to be little more than pretty aberrations. Actually, Newton concluded, it was these colors — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet and the gradations in between — that were fundamental. What seemed simple on the surface, a beam of white light, was, if one looked deeper, beautifully complex.

5. Young's light-interference experiment

Newton wasn't always right. Through various arguments, he had moved the scientific mainstream toward the conviction that light consists exclusively of particles rather than waves. In 1803, Thomas Young, an English physician and physicist, put the idea to a test. He cut a hole in a window shutter, covered it with a thick piece of paper punctured with a tiny pinhole and used a mirror to divert the thin beam that came shining through. Then he took "a slip of a card, about one-thirtieth of an inch in breadth" and held it edgewise in the path of the beam, dividing it in two. The result was a shadow of alternating light and dark bands — a phenomenon that could be explained if the two beams were interacting like waves. Bright bands appeared where two crests overlapped, reinforcing each other; dark bands marked where a crest lined up with a trough, neutralizing each other.

The demonstration was often repeated over the years using a card with two holes to divide the beam. These so-called double-slit experiments became the standard for determining wavelike motion — a fact that was to become especially important a century later when quantum theory began.

6. Cavendish's torsion-bar experiment

The experiment was performed in 1797–98 by the English scientist Henry Cavendish. He followed a method prescribed and used apparatus built by his countryman, the geologist John Michell, who had died in 1793. The apparatus employed was a torsion balance, essentially a stretched wire supporting spherical weights. Attraction between pairs of weights caused the wire to twist slightly, which thus allowed the first calculation of the value of the gravitational constant G. The experiment was popularly known as weighing the Earth because determination of G permitted calculation of the Earth's mass.

7. Eratosthenes' measurement of the Earth's circumference

At Syene (now Aswan), some 800 km (500 miles) southeast of Alexandria in Egypt, the Sun's rays fall vertically at noon at the summer solstice. Eratosthenes, who was born in c. 276 BC, noted that at Alexandria, at the same date and time, sunlight fell at an angle of about 7° from the vertical. He correctly assumed the Sun's distance to be very great; its rays therefore are practically parallel when they reach the Earth. Given estimates of the distance between the two cities, he was able to calculate the circumference of the Earth. The exact length of the units (stadia) he used is doubtful, and the accuracy of his result is therefore uncertain; it may have varied by 0.5 to 17 percent from the value accepted by modern astronomers.

8. Galileo's experiments with rolling balls down inclined planes

Galileo continued to refine his ideas about objects in motion. He took a board 12 cubits long and half a cubit wide (about 20 feet by 10 inches) and cut a groove, as straight and smooth as possible, down the center. He inclined the plane and rolled brass balls down it, timing their descent with a water clock — a large vessel that emptied through a thin tube into a glass. After each run he would weigh the water that had flowed out — his measurement of elapsed time — and compare it with the distance the ball had traveled.

Aristotle would have predicted that the velocity of a rolling ball was constant: double its time in transit and you would double the distance it traversed. Galileo was able to show that the distance is actually proportional to the square of the time: Double it and the ball would go four times as far. The reason is that it is being constantly accelerated by gravity.

9. Rutherford's discovery of the nucleus

When Ernest Rutherford was experimenting with radioactivity at the University of Manchester in 1911, atoms were generally believed to consist of large mushy blobs of positive electrical charge with electrons embedded inside — the "plum pudding" model. But when he and his assistants fired tiny positively charged projectiles, called alpha particles, at a thin foil of gold, they were surprised that a tiny percentage of them came bouncing back. It was as though bullets had ricocheted off Jell-O. Rutherford calculated that actually atoms were not so mushy after all. Most of the mass must be concentrated in a tiny core, now called the nucleus, with the electrons hovering around it. With amendments from quantum theory, this image of the atom persists today.

10. Foucault's pendulum

Last year when scientists mounted a pendulum above the South Pole and watched it swing, they were replicating a celebrated demonstration performed in Paris in 1851. Using a steel wire 220 feet long, the French scientist Jean-Bernard-Léon Foucault suspended a 62-pound iron ball from the dome of the Panthéon and set it in motion, rocking back and forth. To mark its progress he attached a stylus to the ball and placed a ring of damp sand on the floor below.

The audience watched in awe as the pendulum inexplicably appeared to rotate, leaving a slightly different trace with each swing. Actually it was the floor of the Panthéon that was slowly moving, and Foucault had shown, more convincingly than ever, that the earth revolves on its axis. At the latitude of Paris, the pendulum's path would complete a full clockwise rotation every 30 hours; on the Southern Hemisphere it would rotate counterclockwise, and on the Equator it wouldn't revolve at all. At the South Pole, as the modern-day scientists confirmed, the period of rotation is 24 hours.