SuppleMentally Blog

A multimedia supplement to the Mensa Bulletin’s SuppleMentally science column

By John Blinke

March 3, 2025

This video is ostensibly a friendly grudge match between an electric RC boat and a comparable gas powered model. Actually, it's an experiment with video from a trout-eye view at the water level — which we hardly ever see. The video is from a “key fob” camera Velcroed to a foam float. This was a good thing to do because the glue let go just as the other boat swamped me and my flex drive broke! I was able to recover the camera.

March 3, 2025

METHANE BUGS

Chemistry of the deep sea is an ongoing mystery. But scientists are unraveling it bit by bit. They knew methane was being oxidized into carbon dioxide — yet this was happening in oxygen-starved waters where fish can’t survive. Was some organism doing this? The answer turns out to be that no single bug is responsible. It takes two microbes working together, using sulfate as a source of oxygen.

February 28, 2025

ON THINNING ICE

Given the massive global flooding problems that will occur if Greenland sheds its ice cap into the ocean, NASA and ESA want to monitor the ice with satellites. ESA’s CryoSat-2 has a radar altimeter that can see through clouds and ice all the way down to bedrock. NASA’s ICESat-2 has a laser altimeter that can gauge the ice surface but cannot see through clouds. The two agencies have put their satellites into similar orbits so they can combine data for more precise measurements. They found that Greenland ice has diminished by 2,347 cubic kilometers in 13 years — a little more than the combined volume of Lakes Ontario and Erie. The loss was greatest at the edges.

February 28, 2025

ALASKA-SIZED SHORTCUT

A land bridge across the Bering Strait once connected Asia to the Americas. It was the way some peoples arrived there. In our mind’s eye, a land bridge seems like a narrow ridge or isthmus, but it was not that. The Bering land bridge was as wide as the state of Alaska—an expanse of wooded land full of game where migrating people may have lived for generations.

February 24, 2025

BLOOD SUGAR: NOW VS. THEN

Your doctor might poke your finger to check blood glucose and also draw blood for an A1C blood sugar test. Two sugar tests! What’s going on? The finger-poke is a check of your blood glucose at the moment. The A1C measures the average over three months based on sugar molecules that stick to red blood cells.

John Blinke has been the Mensa Bulletin’s science editor since 1984 and is a two-time recipient of American Mensa’s National Service Award. He lives in the wilderness of Michigan and keeps busy with a wide range of hobbies, including astronomy, RC models, drones, photography, model rockets, and fooling around with microscopes and other scientific gear. John spent 50 years as an electrician with Ford Motor Company. He holds a BA in English from Wayne State University, completed the UAW-Ford electrical apprenticeship, is a certified Level II Thermographer, and has an Extra Class amateur radio license. Email him at BulletinSupplementally@us.mensa.org.