The Chevy Bolt could be a very important car – no offense to you Tesla fans
I am a Baby Boomer, which means I grew up with the Chevy Vega and Chevy Chevette, two of the all-time worst cars ever made, and I sneered at all GM models as they nose-dived during the '80s and '90s. The idea that I'd ever be excited about a new car from Chevrolet...
read moreFans of small hydropower really love small hydropower
The Valley News has a nice profile of the new owner of a 1,35 megawatt hydropower dam in Claremont. Among other issues in resurrecting it was fixing gear boxes ("Gear boxes are notoriously finicky") and getting permission from grid operator ISO-New England to be part...
read moreNext step toward a ‘smart road’ is coming to NH turnpike
We’re all familiar with streets and roads, and turnpikes and highways – but are we ready for the “highly instrumented roadway”? We’d better be, because it’s coming to the F.E. Everett Turnpike. That's the start of my story today in the Monitor, about a communications...
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U.S. electricity use is declining – but will it last?
Probably due to the adaption of LED lighting, electricity use in the U.S. is declining, separate from the bigger economic picture. The question is whether it will last, and this article from UCal-Berkeley says it's too early to tell, if for no other reason than...
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Vermont utility and Tesla making Powerwall battery available to homes, pretty cheap
In the latest installment of their interesting collaboration, Vermont's Green Mountain Power and Tesla have announced a low price for home backup batteries ($15 per month) with the utility hoping to recoup the cost partly by linking all the batteries into a virtual...
read more“Gravity wave” – that word does not mean what you think it means
Terminology can have different meanings in different scientific disciplines ... which is why I was very excited to read this Vermont Public Radio story about a freak storm in Rutland, Vt., that was partly caused by gravity waves. Gravity waves?! Cool! Alas, turns out...
read moreLooks like we won’t be switching time zones
The New Hampshire state Senate on Thursday put the kibosh on one of the silliest (IMHO) ideas floating around these days: Improving our health and productivity by moving coastal New England states into Atlantic standard time, the zone used by Nova Scotia and most...
read moreN.H. bill would give privacy protection against ISPs that federal government has rejected
This story ran in the May 10, 2017 Concord Monitor: Internet providers in New Hampshire would have to alert customers before selling information about their online practices under a proposal that seeks to replicate at the state level internet privacy regulations that...
read moreHot, humid days raise NH deaths by 5% – and we’ll be seeing more (maybe lots more) of them
Deaths in New Hampshire and two other New England states rose by 5 percent and hospital emergency visits rose by 7.5 percent during hot weather spells that seem likely to increase in frequency. The results come from a study published this week in the...
read moreThat drone-pizza-lawsuit story was a joke – fake news, if you will
(Subscribers to my free newsletter saw this yesterday.) Last week I mentioned an online Forbes article that riffed on a New Hampshire lawsuit over damages caused when a pizza was dropped by a delivery drone - an accident, and a lawsuit, that never actually happened....
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Science Cafe NH
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.