My mother’s dad grew table grapes in California in the 1940s; maybe I can grow them in NH in the 2010s
From UNH News Service: University of New Hampshire researchers have found certain varieties of seedless table grapes grow better in New Hampshire’s colder climate than others. The research project, funded by the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station, aims to...
read moreBad year for piping plovers on N.H. beaches
From New Hampshire Fish and Game: It was a difficult summer for the state-endangered and federally threatened piping plovers on Hampton and Seabrook beaches this year. This summer, three pairs nested on Hampton Beach with two chicks fledged (25+ days old), while on...
read moreNo N.H. entrants in annual design-a-better-wood-stove competition
There's a Massachusetts firm among the 14 wannabe finalists for the 2018 Wood Stove Design Challenge, but nobody from New Hampshire made the list. The competition is a sort of mini X-Prize-ish attempt to push innovation in an area that doesn't get a lot of geeky...
read moreToday is the anniversary of the first motorized Mt. Washington ascent – in a steam-powered car
From Crispin Battles, Marketing Director for the Mt. Washington Auto Road: Completed in 1861, the road to the summit the Northeast's highest mountain was originally referred to as the Mt. Washington Carriage Road. Motorized vehicles were still several decades away...
read moreThe most exotic automotive technology these days is a stick shift
My wife and I have two manual-transmission cars (although one of them is about to die due to body rust, just short of 250,000 miles). Increasingly, this means nobody can borrow them because fewer people learn, or remember, how to drive a manual transmission: "Drive a...
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Harvey dumped 5 times as much as rain as the all-time record for Concord
Over a period of three to four days, Hurricane Harvey has dumped more than 45 inches of rain over large swaths of Texas. That’s a staggering number, and it led one reader to call the newsroom with a question: What would happen if that much rain fell on Concord?...
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Internet of Tomatoes – now *that* is an IoT
You’ve heard, of course, about the Internet of Things plenty of times in this column. Maybe it’s time for a different IoT: the Internet of Tomatoes. “About 88 percent of farms around the U.S. are small and medium size, and of those, nearly 100 percent have no...
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New Hampshire’s science cafes are starting up again
September is almost here, which means New Hampshire is about to resume its title as The Science Cafe Capitol of the Western Hemisphere after a summer hiatus. Science Cafe New Hampshire is well into its sixth year in Nashua and Concord, while the...
read moreA hefty $300,000 is available for startups in the tripled-in-size TechOut event
The New Hampshire High Tech Council has opened the application period for its annual TechOut event, a startup competition aimed at enhancing the New Hampshire tech ecosystem by awarding investment capital to young startups. Now in its sixth year, the 2017 TechOut...
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The eclipse was a blip, but a noticeable one, for New England solar power
ISO New England, the folks who run the six-stage power grid, says the solar eclipse removed about 700 MW of solar power, or roughly a third of total PV output, at its height. That's not musch out of total production by all power plants of almost 20,000 MW. This is...
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Granite Geek on NH Public RadioAbout Granite Geek
Dave Brooks has written a science/tech column since 1991 - yes, that long - and has written this blog since 2006, keeping an eye on topics of geekish interest in and around New Hampshire, from software to sea level rise, population dynamics to printing (3-D, of course). He moderates monthly Science Cafe NH discussions, beer in hand, and discusses the geek world regularly on New Hampshire Public Radio.
Brooks earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics but got lost on the way to the Ivory Tower and ended up in a newsroom. He has reported for newspapers from Tennessee to New England. Rummage through his bag of awards you'll find oddities like three Best Blog prizes from the New Hampshire Press Association and a Writer of the Year award from the N.H. Farm and Forest Bureau, of all places. He joined the Concord Monitor in 2015.