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You Can Do It! Why We Overestimate Steepness (Scientific American) Archives

February 17, 2011 by Doug Cook

Forrest Horton '08, rock hammer in hand, charges up a ridge along Khanneshin Mountain in Helmand, Afghanistan, during his 2010 geology internship with the Defense Department's Task Force for Business and Stability Operations.

Hills. Stairs. They can be exhausting just thinking about them, but perhaps it is the thinking itself that is the real challenge. In Scientific American‘s 60-Second Science feature, read – or listen to – why we may be hardwired to be hypersensitive to changes in slope.