Physics

This Was The First Human X-Ray Ever Taken

In 1895, while experimenting with cathode rays, physics professor Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, asked his wife to set her hand on a photographic plate. The result was the very first human x-ray. Here’s the full story of how it happened. https://observationdeck.kinja.com/lets-learn-about-a-random-scientist-vol-2-wilhelm-con-1625515752

How the Hell Does Quantum Mechanics Work Anyway?

People that know about quantum mechanics tend to talk about it very breezily, leaving us mortals behind. Be left behind no longer, though, with this wonderful little video. Taking a cue from Schrödinger’s famous cat thought experiment, Josh Samani walks us through the basics of quantum mechanics and entanglement. It’s still not easy—you’re going to…

Why Is It So Damn Hard to Balance a Pencil on Your Fingertip?

If you’ve ever tried balancing something as short and skinny as a pencil on your fingertip, you know it isn’t easy. Why is that? How is it possible to create a free-standing rock sculpture like this one, when it’s all but impossible to balance a stinking pencil for more than a couple seconds? Above: A…

Here’s Your Scientific Excuse to Drink a Beer This Evening

Want to get a beer on a Tuesday? Now you can blame your need to do a scientific experiment. First, though, you need to go to a bar and get a Guinness and some peanuts. And, what the hell, another Guinness. Now, stare into your beer. Resist the urge to stare at your fellow patrons,…

The Physical Effect that Creates Tiny Electrical Storms in Your Body

Did you know that you can charge up a piece of ice like a battery? How about making tiny electric storms when a drop of water turns into a puff of steam? We’ll tell you about the little-known Thermodielectric Effect, and why it’s present everywhere, including your body. The Basics of Dielectrics To get this…

NASA Scientists Have Found the First Interstellar Space Particles

NASA has identified for the first time seven rare, microscopic interstellar dust particles—that date to the beginnings of the solar system. The particles have been identified amongst samples obtained by NASA’s Stardust spacecraft, which returned to Earth back in 2006. The craft contained a tray of silica aerogel, which captured small interstellar dust particles as…

Watch The Largest Robotic Swarm In History Take Shape

Speedy they’re not, but the Kilobots – a group of 1,024 low-cost, inch-wide robots that can self-organize into complex shapes – together comprise the largest, most technically impressive robotic swarm ever created. Per Harvard University’s Self-Organizing Systems Research Group, where researchers Mike Rubenstein, Alejandro Cornejo and Radhika Nagpal have been designing and refining the Kilobot…

Forensic Meteorologists Solve Crimes You’ve Never Thought About

Forensic meteorology is the science of using historic weather records, atmospheric data, eyewitness accounts, and reenactment simulations to determine the weather conditions at a specific time and location. A forensic meteorologists’s analysis might be to corroborate or invalidate an alibi, provide context for an accident, or even to determine if the conditions could have been…

Scientists Recover Speech From Silent Video Of A Vibrating Bag of Chips

So this is incredible. Researchers led by MIT computer scientist Abe Davis have developed an algorithm that can reconstruct intelligible music and speech from video footage of things like plants and potato chip bags by analyzing the patterns of their otherwise imperceptible vibrations. Via Wired: The secret to the science is that the researchers were…

Can You Explain The Science Behind These Physical Phenomena?

Here’s Veritasium’s Derek Muller with 5 Fun Physics Phenomena to bend your brain. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on all of these, with the exception of the plastic cup/water demo (which I’ve always heard explained like this) and the teabag rocket, which – be right back, setting all my tea bags…

New Li-On Material Survives 30 Times the Charges of Current Batteries

Aside from capacity, the worst thing about batteries is that they degrade with time, holding less power with every charge. But now scientists have developed a lithium ion material that can endure 30 times as many charge cycles as current cells. Part of a collaboration between Sharp and Kyoto University, the new material—made of a…

A Giant Floating Duck That Generates Solar Power—Because, Why Not?

A group of artists, scientists and engineers have proposed a novel solution to help Copenhagen’s achieve its goal of becoming a carbon-neutral city: a 12-story-high solar energy farm in the shape of a duck. [Image: LAGI] Energy Duck is the brainchild (brainduckling?) of the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI), which designs public art installations that…

Fata Morganas Make Fantastic Castles Appear Over the Ocean

In past centuries, sailors were sometimes surprised to see upside-down ships sailing in the sky, or elaborate castles built on the ocean. When they turned towards them, these apparitions vanished. The illusions, called The Fata Morgana, can still be seen today if the witches are in a mood the weather’s right. Sailors going along the…

Can Atoms Ever Touch?

There’s a very commonly held view that atoms can never touch: bring them together slowly, and you reach a point where they begin to repel. But in this video, Professor Philip Moriarty explains that really isn’t the case. Philip is a little irritated by many of the discussion online about how molecules repel, never to…

This may look like some kind of rainbow top hat, but in fact you’re looking at the changing state of quantum bit—a qubit—over time. This experiment helps predict how quantum systems evolve, and may help us steer and control them more effectively in the future. [Nature via New Scientist]

A New Thruster Pushes Against Virtual Particles! …or is a Lab Error

Which is more likely: that NASA broke the laws of physics, or that an early experiment on propellant-free microwave thrust technology has a measurement flaw? If you opted for the latter, you have a solid grasp of the cycle of elation and chagrin that characterizes the practice of science. Above: Spaceship concept art by L.A.-based…

A Short Film About The Infinitely Various Paths Through Daily Life

A Truncated Story of Infinity is a short film, written and directed by Paul Trillo, that explores the endlessly ramifying possibilities that are born of the decisions (seemingly major or minor) and actions (conscious or otherwise) of our daily lives. Inspired by the discussion of parallel universes in physicist Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality, Trillo’s…

White Lies Make Social Networks Stronger. Selfish Lies Tear Them Apart.

“Lying is a bad thing – this is what mentors, parents and teachers tell us. But there is no society without lies.” Photo Credit: Sebastiaan ter Burg, CC BY-SA So says theoretical physicist Rafael Barrio, and when he and his colleague Kimmo Kaski from the Aalto University School of Science in Finland thought about this…

Particle Fever Makes Me Feel Like a Physicist

Understanding the inner workings of existence is a challenge not everyone is equipped for. In my high school physics class, I learned a handful of Newtonian laws and something about a quark, and that was about it. But during Particle Fever‘s 120-minute runtime, I felt like a physicist. The documentary centers around the discovery of…

Astronomers Happen Upon The Most Distant Lensing Galaxy Ever Discovered

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have spotted an elliptical galaxy 9.6-billion light years from Earth that is so colossal, its gravity bends and magnifies the light from a galaxy behind it. The rare alignment is the most distant example of a lensing galaxy ever discovered, and could yield insights into the formation of the…