An interesting book about how you first write a sentence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joe Moran is a professor of English and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University. In 2018 he published an interesting and very usefu book titled First You Write a Sentence: The elements of reading, writing … and life. His chapter titles and subtitles are:

 

1]  A Pedant’s Apology

Or why I wrote this book

2]  The Ape That Writes Sentences

Or why word order is (almost) everything 

3]  Nouns versus Verbs

Or how to bring a sentence to life, but not too much

4]  Nothing Like a Windowpane

Or how to say wondrous things with plain words 

5]  The High-wire Act

Or how to write long and legato without running out of breath

6]  Foolish Like a Trout

Or how to join sentences together with invisible thread 

7]  A Small Good Thing

Or why a sentence should be a gift to the world

On Page 5 he explains that:

“A sentence is a small, sealed vessel for holding meaning. It delivers some news – an assertion, command or question – about the world. Every sentence needs a subject, which is a noun or noun phrase, and a predicate, which is just the bit of the sentence that isn’t the subject and that must have a main verb. The subject is usually (but not always) what the sentence is about and the predicate is usually (but not always) what happens to the subject or what is. This {subject} is a sentence {predicate}. A sentence must have a subject and a main verb, except when it leaves out one or both of them because their presence is implied. OK?” 

On pages 211 and 212 he has pithy advice in Twenty Sentences on Sentences:

 1) Listen, read and write for the sentences, because the sentence must be got right or nothing will be right. 

 2) A sentence is not about self-expression but about editing your thoughts into a partly feigned fluency, building a ladder of words up to a better self.

 3) Train your ears, for how a sentence sounds in the head is also what it says to the heart. 

 4) The bones of a sentence are just a noun and a verb, so put the right nouns and verbs in the right slots and the other words fall into place around them.

 5) Good prose is not a windowpane: a sentence reads best when the writer has tasted and relished the words, not tried to make them invisible. 

 6) Your sentences should mimic the naturalness of speech, so long as you remember that speech is not really natural and that writing is not really like speech.

 7) Short words are best, for their clarity and chewy vowels, but the odd long word in a sentence draws just the right amount of attention to itself. 

 8) Verbal economy in a sentence is a virtue but an overprized one: words are precious but they need to be spent.

 9) Learn to love the full stop, and think of it as the goal toward which your words adamantly move – because a good sentence, like a good life, needs a good death. 

10) If you keep the phrases short, and leave the longest phrase until last, the reader can cut a long sentence up into pieces in her head and swallow them whole.

11) Your sentences should sound slightly more naïve than you are, for good writing is done with a cold eye but an open heart, and it is better to be always clear than always right. 

12) The reader can live with more repetition – of both words and syntax – than you think, and these echoes within and between your sentences shed light on what you mean to say.

13) Vary the length of your sentences, and your words will be filled with life and music. 

14) Because sentences have to live alongside each other, not all of them can dazzle the reader with their brilliance.

15) You can change the whole tone of a sentence by moving it from the end of a paragraph to the start of a new one, and vice versa. 

16) Shorten your paragraphs: white space between sentences never fails to be welcoming.

17) A paragraph is not a single topic hammered home with proofs, but a rhythm made by the sentences rubbing up against each other, a rhythm which is itself the argument. 

18) A reader needs no chaperone: signposting should be invisible and the sentences cohere through suggestive arrangement, not coercive connection.

19) Voice is the holding energy that glues sentences together, the elusive elixir of coherence that gives whatever it is you want to say a home.

20) A sentence is a gift from writer to reader, one that should never have to be bought – with boredom, confusion, the duty to admire the giver, or anything else. 

Cartoon images of a head and heart came from OpenClipArt.

  

Don’t just bring an empty plate when you are invited for dinner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a humorous blog post by Laurie Smale on September 22, 2025 titled Magic Minute Quirky Aussie Custom. He begins by stating an idiom:

 

“Just about every Australian newcomer I’ve met has been thrown by the perplexing Aussie request to ‘bring a plate’ when invited to an informal gathering among friends.”

There is an explanation at the Australian National University web page containing Bring a Plate in Meanings and origins of Australian words and idioms:

 

“An invitation to bring a plate of food to share at a social gathering or fundraiser. There are many stories of new arrivals in Australia being bamboozled by the instruction to bring a plate. As the locals know, a plate alone will not do. In earlier days the request was often ladies a plate, sometimes followed by gentlemen a donation. First recorded in the 1920s.”

 

And the Wikipedia page for a potluck says that:

 

“Other names for a ‘potluck’ include: potluck dinner, pitch-in, shared lunch, spread, faith supper, carry-in dinner, covered-dish-supper, fuddle, Jacob's Join, bring a plate, pot-providence and fellowship meal.”

 

Carrie Newcomer has an August 28, 2023 YouTube video of her song Potluck.

 

A related idiom is discussed by Martha Barnett at A Way with Words on June 14, 2013 in an article titled Ring the doorbell with your elbow. Why your elbow? Because both your hands are full!

 

An image of an Alberta potluck came from Wikimedia Commons. 

  

What to say when every second counts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on December 3, 2023 I blogged about how Talking on Eggshells by Sam Horn is an interesting and useful book. In researching that post I missed that Sam also had a ChangeThis manifesto on September 20, 2023 titled TICK TALK: What to Say When Every Second Counts. You also can download it as a seven-page pdf.

 

Her seven points are to:

 

1] Address time up front.

2] Relieve their anxiety

3] Ask yourself, ‘Why will they resist?’

4] Get their eyebrows up with a pithy one-liner and then riff off it.

5] Ask for advice.

6] Introduce something recent and intriguing.

7] Share what’s rare.  

 

She has an issue of her Tick Talk – The Better Newsletter #43 on July 25, 2024 with a useful infographic. And there also is a two-minute YouTube video titled TickTalk The Clock Starts Ticking the Second We Start Talking.

 

An image of a stopwatch was modified from this one at OpenClipArt.

 

 

For comedian Drew Lynch stuttering is a feature rather than a bug

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw an interesting article by Gabriel Hays at Fox News on September 27, 2025 titled ‘Stuttering Comedian’ Drew Lynch says speech impediment turned out to be his biggest ‘gift.’ He has a Wikipedia page. And Drew has a nineteen-minute TEDx talk on November 8, 2022 titled Why curiosity gets you farther than ambition | Drew Lynch |TEDxNashville.

 

Contrast that with his nine-minute 2015 YouTube video titled Drew Lynch -Stuttering Comedian – America’s Got Talent 2015 Audition. There is a seven-minute video on August 8, 2025 titled Heckler Says I’m Lying About My Stutter. And there is an hour-long video on June 27, 2025 titled The Stuttering Comedian | Drew Lynch | Full Comedy Special.

 

The cartoon was adapted from this image at OpenClipArt.  

 

 

A binder clip is a very useful office product invented eleven decades ago

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a Wikipedia page for the binder clip. It also is discussed by Henry Petroski (February 6, 1942 to June 14, 2023) in his last, 2022 book titled Force: What it means to push and pull, slip and grip, start and stop. He was a professor of both civil engineering and history at Duke University. In Chapter 12, titled Stretching and Squeezing (about springs) on pages 151 to 153 he says:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Large lessons lie in small things. No matter what shape a paper clip may take, it is essentially a spring. The so-called binder clip keeps together sheaves of paper that are too thick for a regular bent-wire clip; the clever device was invented by a Washington, D.C., teenager named Louis E. Baltzley, who came from a family of inventors. His grandfather was Elias Howe, who is remembered for the sewing machine; his father and uncle also held patents. Young Louis, who would go on to invent small items including an easily picked up and stacked poker chip, a sifter top for powder containers, and a drinking glass holder for the side of a game table, wished to help his father, whose main occupation was writing, keep his manuscripts in order.

 

The binder gadget was patented in 1915 under the title ‘paper-binding clip,’ and throughout the subsequent century its appearance changed hardly at all from that shown in the drawings for Baltzley’s patent, attesting to the difficulty of improving upon it. Its basic element is a strip of spring steel formed into a shape resembling a pup tent. Two steel-wire handles bent into a keyhole shape fold over the tent sides to serve as levers by which to spread the top of the tent open wide enough to receive a sheaf of papers. When the handles are released on the spring-steel tent, which wants to assume its naturally closed configuration, it clamps down on the papers so firmly that they do not easily slip out.

 

Squeezing the shapely lever-handles of a binder clip between the thumb and index finger provides a strong sensation of the springiness. It is easy to open up at little gap but increasingly difficult to open up a wider one, just as Hooke’s law predicts. The clever design of the bent-wire handles enables the fingers to maintain their grip as they press with increasing force, which the user cannot help but feel. It is an ingenious device, and using it is an excellent way to feel the strong force of resistance that can come from even a small and compact device that looks nothing like a coil spring or the iconic Gem paper clip. It is also wonderfully adaptive. The handle loops allow the tightly clasped group of paper to be hung on a hook for ready access. When the handles are folded over onto the papers, they are out of the way for less visible storage. Alternately, the handles, which themselves are springs, can be manipulated to be removed entirely from the clip proper by squeezing their legs together sideways, and angling them out of the cleverly formed cylindrical recesses into which the edges of the clip terminate. By thus removing the handles from the clip or clips holding a set of papers together, a virtually permanent binding in book form can be achieved, with the backs of the clips forming a spine of sorts. In fact, a label could be affixed to the nearly flat back of a clip to identify what it holds.”

 

There is a broader discussion by Richard H. Moyer and Susan A. Everett in an article from EVERYDAY ENGINEERING on December 2011 (pages 16 to 21) titled Clips and Clamps.

 

An image of a binder clip holding a sheaf of papers was modified from Figure 3 of the patent 1,139,627.

 

 

Dendrites can form during solidification making ice or metal crystals

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an xkxd comic by Randall Munroe on September 19, 2025 titled Phase changes. The accompanying Explain xkcd web page says the title text is:

 

“People looking for the gaps in our understanding where the meaning of consciousness or free will might hide often turn to quantum uncertainty or infinite cosmologies, as if we don’t have breathtakingly complex emergent phenomena right there in our freezers.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those spikes are branching (often repeated) which is a feature of crystallization called dendrites. They can be seen in snowflakes, as is shown above. There are Wikipedia pages both for Dendrite (crystal) and Dendrite(metal). But both omit the much earlier 1963 and 1964 Mullins and Sekerka magazine articles describing the physics of morphological stability. An unstable solid-liquid interface leads to formation of dendrites. There is an article by Dmitri V. Alexandrov and Peter K. Galenko in the Journal of Applied Physics on August 1, 2024 titled The Mullins-Sekerka theory: 60 years of morphological stability.

 

Robert Sekerka is one the more interesting people I have ever known and taken courses from. When I was an undergrad at Carnegie-Mellon University, he described to a Metals Club meeting just how he got into metallurgy. His first job was as a metallurgy technician at Westinghouse Research Laboratories from 1955 to 1958. He worked for both William W. Mullins and William A. Tiller. Bill Mullins was later professor and head (1963 to 1966) of the Metallurgy Department at Carnegie Tech. And Bill Tiller was professor and head of the Department of Materials Science at Stanford (1966 to 1971).

 

Robert went to the University of Pittsburgh part time while working, and then got his B.S. in Physics in 1960. Then he went to graduate school on a fellowship and got a Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University in 1965. While he was at Harvard, Sekerka coauthored those two highly mathematical articles with Mullins. He headed back to Westinghouse from 1965 to 1969 as a Senior Scientist. Then he moved to Carnegie Mellon University in 1969 as professor in Metallurgy and Materials Science. He was department head from 1976 to 1982. Later he was Professor of Physics and Mathematics and a Dean. 

 

 

A ChangeThis manifesto and a book on how to improve feedback

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a useful ChangeThis manifesto by Therese Huston on February 3, 2021 titled How to Improve Feedback that also can be downloaded as a 12-page pdf. Feedback involves listening and conversation. She includes these survey statistics:

 

I would have felt much better if … Percentage of respondents:
My hard work had been acknowledged. 53%
The feedback had been accurate. 51%
I had a chance to discuss the feedback more fully with the feedback giver.40%
The feedback giver had listened to me.29%
The feedback giver and I had worked together to generate next steps.25%
I had known the feedback was coming. 24%
The feedback had been more specific. 24%
The feedback giver had asked me what I thought of the feedback. 22%
I had understood what I was expected to do differently in the future. 20%
I trusted the person giving me feedback. 19%
The feedback had come from a different person.13%

 

The manifesto refers to her interesting 2021 book is Let’s Talk: make effective feedback your superpower. There is a preview of the first 35 pages at Google Books. And a summary on page 43 for the first chapter makes three distinctions:

 

Chapter 1 – Three Kinds of Feedback

 

Communications are much clearer if you recognize that there are three kinds of feedback: appreciation, coaching, and evaluation. Every employee needs all three kinds.

 

Appreciation communicates that you value both the work and the person doing it.

 

Coaching helps the person adapt, improve, and learn.

 

Evaluation lets the person know where they stand relative to expectations, and what they can expect down the line.

 

Ask employees what kind of feedback they want and be sure to give it.

 

An important exception: content novices, or people who are new to a task, often need more appreciation than they realize.

 

Because coaching and evaluation are usually lumped together under ‘constructive feedback,’ they’re often conflated and that can lead to frustrations for you and the employee.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pages 96 and 97 have a useful table with valued listening behaviors, as is shown above.

 

The cartoon came from OpenClipArt.

 

 

Kurt Vonnegut on how to write with style

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back in 1980 the International Paper Company had a two-page ad written by Kurt Vonnegut and titled How to Write with Style. You can find a reprint here. It was one of a series of twelve discussed by Chuck Green at ideabook in an article titled One of my all-time favorite advertising campaigns: The Power of the Printed Word. Kurt’s ad had these eight headings:

 

1] Find a subject you care about.

2] Do not ramble.

3] Keep it simple.

4] Have the guts to cut.

5] Sound like yourself.

6] Say what you mean to say.

7] Pity the readers.

8] For really detailed advice [read The Elements of Style by Strunk and White].

 

There is an excellent 2019 book by Kurt Vonnegut and Suzanne McConnell titled Pity the Reader: On writing with style which makes the seventh heading singular. You can find a Google Books preview of the first five chapters. Chapter 27 is titled Prose, the Audial. It opens by stating:

 

“Languid or sharp, voluptuous or minimal: we learn and feel a lot about the time, place, characters, and a sense of a piece of writing by the sound of it.

 

The fiction writer must also furnish dialogue. There’s a real art to dialogue. Anyone who’s recorded someone speaking and then tried to translate that verbatim into intelligent prose will discover how circular, repetitious, how many hesitations, um’s-ah’s-and-well’s, how dependent on inflection and gesture actual conversation is.

 

Kurt Vonnegut may have called his Indiana idiom like a ‘band saw cutting galvanized tin.’ But he actually had quite an ear.

 

You probably do too. Cultivate it.

 

Vonnegut used to read his prose aloud. His grown children remember hearing him in his study in Barnstable. ‘He rewrote and rewrote and rewrote, muttering whatever he had just written over and over, tilting his head back and forth, gesturing with his hands, changing the pitch and rhythm of the words,’ his son Mark recalls.”

 

An image of typing came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Public speaking was the most common and greatest fear found by a Croatian survey of ten fears published in April 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an interesting article by Kamilo Antolovic, Mario Fraculji, and Sinisa Kovacic in the Proceedings of the Tenth International Scientific Conference: “Finance, Economics and Tourism – FET 2022” that was held on September 22 to 24, 2022 and published in April 2023 titled Research on stage fright and fear of public speaking.

 

The sample for their online survey consisted of 181 students from higher education institutions (under 30 years old) and another 355 people over the age of 30. Overall there were 536 adults, 47% female and 53% male.

 

They were asked how much they feared ten things, which in alphabetical order are: animals, bad weather, the dark, death, disease, flying, insects, other, public speaking, and strangers. Fears were reported on seven levels: 1 = none, 2 = barely noticeable, 3 = noticeable, 4 = medium, 5 = very noticeable, 6 = high, 7 = extremely high. Figure 3 of the article lists intensity of fears for all the percentages. We can rank them based on the sum for very noticeable, high, and extremely high.

 

As shown above in a bar chart, the most common Top Five percentages are: public speaking (36%), disease (27%), death (22%), insects (19) and flying (13%). (The margin of error is 4.2 percent).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But we also can rank them based on the sum for barely noticeable, noticeable, and medium, as shown in a second bar chart. Then the ranking is completely different - disease (59%), animals (58%), death (57%), public speaking (52%), and a tie at 51% for bad weather and insects.

 

We also can report Fear Scores on a scale from 1 to 7 where:

 

Fear Score = [ 1x(% None) +2x(% Barely Noticeable) +3x(% Noticeable) +4x(% Medium) +5x(% Very Noticeable) +6x(% High) +7x(% Extremely High)]/100  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above in a third bar chart, the greatest Top Five Fear Scores are for public speaking (3.72), disease (3.40), death (3.13), insects (3.05) and animals (2.45). The order for the top four matches that based on the sum for very noticeable, high, and extremely high.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4 of the article lists Fear Scores (intensity of symptoms) for women and men. For women a fourth bar chart shows the top five Fear Scores again are for public speaking (4.10), disease (3.71), death (3.44), insects (3.09) and animals (2.52).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For men a fifth bar chart shows the top five Fear Scores yet again are for public speaking (3.18), disease (2.92), death (2.62), insects (2.14) and animals (2.11). Scores for women are consistently higher than those for men.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And Figure 5 of the article lists Fear Scores (intensity of symptoms) for younger people (30 or less) and older people (>30), which I have shown above on yet another pair of bar charts. For younger people a sixth bar chart shows the top five Fear Scores are for public speaking (4.43), insects (3.57), death (3.27), disease (3.17), and strangers (2.67).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For older people a seventh bar chart shows the top five Fear Scores are for public speaking (3.57), disease (3.37), death (3.04), insects (2.53), and animals (2.32). Fear scores of younger people are higher than for older people.  

 

 

Pronoun Trouble is a 2025 book by John McWhorter which tells the story of us in seven little words

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an interesting little book from 2025 by John McWhorter titled Pronoun Trouble: The story of us in seven little words. It has 225 pages, and is just 7-1/4” tall by 5-1/4” wide. You can find a preview at Google Books. There are five chapters titled:

 

1] The ‘Your Highness’ of I-ness [page 11]

2] Poor Little You [page 53]

3] We Persisted [page 99]

4] S-He-It Happens [page 121]

5] They Was Plural [page 155]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I began with the Proto-Indo-European word eg, which became one of those [page 21] shown above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Old English, there are three second-person pronouns for you – singular, dual, and plural [page 78], as shown above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

The Old English versions for she, it, and they were spelled differently [page 122], as shown above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other languages, like Tok Pisin from eastern New Guinea, have different forms for me and you (or them) [page 106] depending on if there is one, two, or three as is shown above.

 

 

A half-dozen brief YouTube videos from TED-Ed teaching essential communication and presentation skills

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a blog post from TED-Ed on August 21, 2025 titled Public Speaking 101 launched to teach essential communication and presentation skills. It says they plan a series with eleven YouTube videos. So far they have released the first six, which you can watch in less than 45 minutes:

 

1]  What happens when you share an idea? [5:29]

 

2]  How to uncover your best ideas [4:00]

 

3]  How to communicate clearly [7:11]

 

4]  What’s the best way to give a presentation? [8:06]

 

5]  How to speak with meaning [10:23]

 

6]  5 ways to connect with people [8:08 ]

 

Here is a transcript of the first one, What happens when you share an idea?:

 

"Great public speaking is like magic. Whether it’s a presentation for school, a talk for your community, or a video message for family and friends, a good talk can electrify and audience and even change the world.

 

It all starts with an idea. Ideas change everything. They bring people together, spark curiosity, and inspire action. The right idea can ripple across the planet at the speed of light.

 

But what is an idea, exactly? Your number one mission as a speaker is to take something that matters deeply to you and rebuild it in the minds of your listeners. That something is an idea. Think of it like a gift you give your audience; something they can walk away with, value, and be changed by.

 

Your idea doesn’t need to be a scientific discovery or a genius invention to be great. You can share instructions for a special skill you have. Or a story from your life and the lessons it taught you. Or a vision you have for the future. Or just a reminder of the things that matter most.

 

An idea is anything that can change how people see the world. If you can conjure up an exciting idea in someone’s mind, you have done something wondrous. A little piece of you has become part of them. In March 2015, a scientist named Sophie Scott gave a TED Talk [titled Why we laugh].

 

‘What I’m going to do now is just play some examples of real human beings laughing. And I want you just to think about the sounds people make and how odd that can be, and in fact how primitive laughter is as a sound. It’s much more like an animal call than it is like speech.

 

So here we’ve got some laughter for you – the first one is pretty joyful.’ Within minutes, Sophie had the entire audience cracking up. She’s one of the leading researchers on laughter. She was showing the audience just how weird a phenomenon laughter is.

 

‘Now, this next guy, I need him to breathe. There’s a point in this when I’m like you’ve got to get some air in there, because he just sounds like he’s berathing out. This hasn’t been edited, this is him.’

 

‘More like an animal call than speech,’ as Sophie put it. Sophie’s talk was a lot of fun to listen to, but she gave her audience something more than just a good time. She changed the way they think about laughter. Sophie’s core idea is that laughter exists as a way human beings form bonds with one another. Her research shows that laughing strengthens relationships.

 

Nobody who listened to Sophie’s talk will ever hear laughter the same way again. A laugh isn’t just a silly sound in reaction to a joke – it’s a biological process through which we can connect with one another. Sophie gave her audience a gift. She gave them an idea that will be part of them forever.

 

In order for an audience to receive the gift of an idea, a speaker has to deliver the idea in a way that the audience can understand. How does a speaker do that? Well, it can be helpful to think of a talk as a journey that a speaker and an audience take together. You, the speaker, are the trusty tour guide. To be a good tour guide, a speaker must start where the audience is, and must be careful not to lose anyone by rushing ahead or constantly changing direction. The goal is to lead the audience to a beautiful new place, step by step.

 

And this is done by using language. Language is a very powerful tool. Let’s prove it. Imagine an elephant with its trunk painted bright red, waving the trunk to and fro in sync with the shuffling steps of a giant orange parrot, dancing on the elephant’s head and shrieking over and over: ‘let’s do the fandango!’ You have just formed in your mind an image of something that has never existed in history, except in the minds of people who have heard that sentence. A single sentence can do that.

 

The fact that we can transfer ideas in this way is why speaking skills are so important. Language builds our world. Our ideas make us who we are. And speakers who have figured out how to spread their ideas into others’ minds have the power to make an incredible impact. Do you have ideas that deserve a wider audience? Focusing on what gift you would like to give your audience, or what journey you might lead them on, are two great ways to start preparing your talk."  

 

The cartoon was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

 

Building low-cost lab equipment using LEGOs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an interesting article by Diane N. Jung, Kailey E. Shara, and Carson J. Brunsat at PLoS One on August 12, 2025 titled LEGO as a versatile platform for building reconfigurable low-cost lab equipment. They discuss three creative examples, as is shown above in Figure 5 of that article. They are an orbital shaker, a syringe pump, and a microcentrifuge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A pump shown in detail via Figure 1, which has a motor and gear drive that push to empty syringes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

A second is an orbital shaker, shown above in Figure 2.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A third is a microcentrifuge, shown above in Figure 3, which has arms for holding spinning tubes.

 

There is a second article by Elizabeth Fernandez at the MIT Technology Review on June 25, 2024 titled Lego bricks are making science more accessible. It begins by showing a cell stretcher.

 

 

Using histograms for visualizing statistics from playing a hundred games of solitaire

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It often is helpful to show the details of data rather than just a mean and standard deviation. Recently I played a hundred games of Solitaire to generate the game times shown above via a histogram (created using Excel with bins ten seconds wide). The mean time to complete a game is 221 seconds (3 minutes and 41 seconds), and the standard deviation is 31 seconds. But the range goes from 160 to 335 seconds. The distribution is roughly symmetrical, with three longer outliers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also kept track of the number of moves per game, as shown above via another histogram using a bin width of five. The mean is 133 moves, and the standard deviation is 13 moves. The range goes from 116 to 170 moves. The distribution is skewed positively (to the right) with two outliers.