Why Snow Is White Even Though Snowflakes Are Clear
When you look at pictures of individual snowflakes, the snowflakes are clear. So why is snow white and not clear? First, it’s important to understand what’s going on when we see certain colors. Visible light from the Sun or other light source comes in a variety of wavelengths that human eyes interpret as colors. When…
Could Cinderella’s Glass Slippers Physically Exist Without Shattering?
It is delightful to have my masters degree in Mechanical Engineering put to use in resolving age old engineering problems. One can never know the exact shape or size of the slippers that Cinderella wore, but one can hazard a guess that they must have looked something like: Now, let’s talk about failure. No, not…
10 Reasons Our Universe Might Actually Be Virtual Reality
Physical realism is the view that the physical world we see is real and exists by itself, alone. Most people think this is self-evident, but physical realism has been struggling with the facts of physics for some time now. The paradoxes that baffled physics last century still baffle it today, and its great hopes of…
How Iron Man’s Arc Reactor (Probably) Works
Since the Iron Man arc reactor is a fictitious device, and it has no official scientific explanation in the Iron Man canon that I’m aware of, we might as well something up. Now, I’m mixing real science and fake science here. So physics nerds and comic-book nerds: Deal with it. The Stark Arc Reactor is…
