Tag Archives: radio

We’re Not in Phoenix Anymore: How Radio Signals “Skipped” All the Way to Kansas

Yes, it’s that exciting.

Unlike AM signals, FM is confined to line-of-sight, so Phoenix’s KBAQ radio station doesn’t typically reach much beyond the Valley of the Sun, let alone to a Volkswagen Beetle 875 miles away. So it’s no wonder that Ken Baker of the Radio Kansas Network was surprised to see what resolved on his HD tuner that day.

Read/listen to my full story at KJZZ’s Arizona Science Desk:
How Phoenix-Area Radio Signals Can Bounce All The Way To Kansas

Tesla: A mind to light the world

Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla

Thomas Edison has long enjoyed the incandescent light of public admiration and textbook domination while Nikola Tesla, the scientist and inventor who pioneered the alternating current that truly powers the modern world, has unjustly languished as a footnote in scientific history. Farsighted, quirky, driven and brilliant, Tesla frequently leapfrogged ahead of his contemporaries to the next step, and the next.

Over the course of his long career, Tesla registered over 111 American patents and around 300 patents worldwide, including radio and alternating current. He designed the Niagara Falls power station that provided electricity to most of the northeastern United States. But his loyalty to his first loves, science and progress, cost him his fame, his fortune and, some argue, his sanity. These are just a few of the …

10 Reasons Why Tesla is a Scientific God