=== Fosbury’s Victorious Flop === As Dick Fosbury watched, his teammates hurtled over the high jump bar. Raised to a height of 5′6″, which had proved to be too high, the sophomore could not clear the bar. His peers took long strides toward the bar, which rested horizontally on the notches of two skinny posts, and launched them off the ground. Most dove over and landed on the mat, victorious. The high jump ruined Fosbury’s chances of becoming a star high school athlete. When Fosbury joined his high school’s track-and-field team in 1963, most high jumpers used the straddle technique to clear the bar. To perform the straddle, an athlete must run toward the bar at a sharp angle then launch off the inside foot (nearest the bar). Jumping into the air and stretching the outside leg over the bar, the athlete ducks their head and tumbles over facedown, headfirst. The straddle felt unnatural to Fosbury; he decided to try the less common scissor kick technique, which requires the athlete to launch off the outside foot. Once in the air, lifting first the inside leg and then the outside leg over the bar, keeping the torso perpendicular to the ground and allowing the athlete to land feetfirst. Whether Fosbury attempted the technique but still fell short. The only solution was to tweak his form. Fosbury found that if he lifted his hips after launching into the air, his head, and shoulders would tilt back, so that he sailed over the bar headfirst and chest-up, almost parallel to the ground. The adjustment worked. In one day, Fosbury improved his personal record by six full inches. In 1968, after perfecting his unconventional technique, dubbed the “Fosbury Flop,” Fosbury qualified that same year for the Olympics in Mexico City. The audience laughed at Fosbury’s form at first. But by the time he had won the gold medal and broken the Olympic record (with a height of 7′4″), Fosbury was the fan favorite and an inspiration to a new generation of high jumpers. After his victory in Mexico City, Fosbury never again qualified for the Olympics. === Flamenco === paragraph into two. Should the writer begin or not styles, three basic elements combine to create flamenco: begin a new paragraph here, and why? music, dance, and clapping. Typically, a flamenco guitarist provides a musical foundation through the use of strumming, improvised plucking, and steady rhythm. guitarists participate through a form of clapping called palmas, their sounds enhancing quiet or exciting moments. Adding to the intensity is duende, the collaborative ambiance created among the participants. This duende infuses Ruiz’s energetic appearances, whether they are formal concerts or casual events. Ruiz even led a group of festivalgoers in a choreographed flash mob at the 2013 Festival de Jerez, inspiring visitors from across the globe to step into the world of flamenco. === Charles Cushman’s Kodachrome America === [1] On September 3, 1938, he traveled up the Pacific coast, hobbyist photographer Charles Cushman loaded his first roll of Kodachrome color film into his 35-millimeter camera. [2] He began by photographing his shiny red Ford coupe, the newly painted crimson-orange Golden Gate Bridge in the background. [3] A hazy, pale-blue sky filled out the frame. [4] Though color film for cameras was introduced in the mid-1930s, for decades afterwards most photographers continued to work in black and white. [5] But capturing street scenes, buildings, and landscapes in vivid color became Cushman’s passion. [6] From 1938 to 1969, he traveled up and down again and again, driving over a half-million miles to take thousands of photographs with color film. === Keys for Community === [1] Jostling with the crowds on a busy city morning, I hardly expected to hear the delicate notes of a piano étude. [2] There, a woman without sheet music or traditional concert attire played on an old piano. [3] What I thought must be coming from a storefront’s speakers but it was actually drifting from the city square. [4] Drawing closer, I read the message scrawled in crayon across the piano’s keys: “Play Me, I’m Yours.” === Street Piano Project === Angeles, and Cincinnati cities like mine with music. Founded by British artist Luke Jerram, the 'Play Me, I’m Yours' project aims to promote interaction among city dwellers, whom Jerram perceives as coexisting, but not communicating. Secondhand pianos—strategically placed in sights with high pedestrian traffic, encourage people to stop a moment and interact with others. Often, Jerram has learned, a song is all the spark people need to greet longtime neighbors or find new friends. Street piano projects also offer a second chance to pianos that might otherwise be scrapped. Given rising costs of maintenance, making piano owners likely to throw their old instruments away rather than have them repaired for sale or donation. Street pianos, though, need not be kept in perfect condition. A piano with a few worn keys can still introduce children to the instrument or provide students with practice opportunities. Easy to spot, a street piano can also reveal the gifted musicians in our midst. Harmonies wafted on the air. People drifted away from storefronts. Lifting her fingers from the keys, letting the last chord ring, the woman rose to leave. She was brought to a halt by her now plentiful audience and its fervent cheers—mine loudest among them. Now, the next player took the bench, and the next, two of us chatted about music, the city, and ourselves. The shuffling of foot traffic faded. Replacing it were the lively strains of 'Happy Birthday' and holiday tunes, Billy Joel and Bach, all underscored by the hum of conversation. === Brown Dwarfs === [A] In 1963, the year Shiv Kumar, an astronomer studying stars of very low mass, theorized that the process that forms stars could also create a new class of smaller objects, distinct from both stars and planets. These 'brown dwarfs,' as astronomer Jill Tarter later termed them, raised essential ponderings about how matter in the universe evolves. More massive than Jupiter, brown dwarfs are not massive enough to fuel the fusion reactions that make stars brightly shine, brown dwarfs are too dim to be observed through telescopes due to their lack of brightness. Astronomers had to rely on advanced ways of finding these elusive orbs. Their first clue lay in the process of nuclear fusion. While brown dwarfs, like stars, initiate fusion, they cannot sustain the constant fusion that causes stars to burn at high temperatures. Still, brown dwarfs lose their heat, cooling over time to temperatures between those of planets and those of stars. An infrared telescope can detect heat signatures in this range, thus helping astronomers home in on potential brown dwarfs. With these candidates identified, astronomers were then able to search for a telltale variation in brown dwarfs’ chemistry. Fusion reactions rapidly burn through lithium in stars’ cores. It follows from the fact that brown dwarfs cannot sustain these reactions, though, most never deplete their lithium supply. An object’s spectrum can show which elements, lithium tacked on, remain present. It was by running a spectrum analysis that the first brown dwarfs were confirmed in 1995—the culmination of three decades of research and collaboration. Since then, hundreds of brown dwarfs have been found and studied, shedding light on how stars, planets, and brown dwarfs differ while also revealing surprising similarities. Some brown dwarfs, for instance, have planetlike weather patterns—clouds made of sand—swirl in their atmospheres, bringing rain of liquid iron.