Applied Physics

After The Singularity, Music Quality Will Be Even Crappier Than It Is Now

I took a moment to look at Ray Kurzweil's response to PZ Myers' second-hand dissection of his talk at the Singularity Summit (1) I attended last weekend (see The Singularity Stole My ATM Card) because Andrea Kuszewki is on the case and trying to ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Aug 20 2010 - 5:14pm

Is It A Bird? A Plane? No, It's... A Fish

Fish in a wind tunnel?   How else will you learn how they fly? It turns out flying fish can remain airborne for over 40 seconds and cover distances of up to a quarter mile hitting a top speed up to 40 miles an hours, says Haecheon Choi, a mechanical engine ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 10 2010 - 2:44pm

World's Tiniest Refrigerator Is 1 Qutrit

In almost everything, size matters.  And usually, being bigger helps.   I don't know anyone who couldn't use a larger refrigerator but University of Bristol physicists have done the unthinkable and made the smallest refrigerator ever. ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 10 2010 - 11:47pm

Micro-Missiles?

Retirement in less than three week’s time!  What shall I sing?  How about this? And now the end is near And so I face the final curtain Well, that’s my second most hated song, suited either to a dictator facing trial at the International Criminal Court or ...

Article - Robert H Olley - Sep 11 2010 - 9:50am

E-Skin: Nanotechnology's Artificial Skin Breakthrough

Artificial skin, dubbed "e-skin" by the researchers, is the first such material made out of inorganic single crystalline semiconductors.  It's a pressure-sensitive electronic material made from semiconductor nanowires and this sort of touch- ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 13 2010 - 3:16pm

Parting The Red Sea- Could It Have Happened? Wind Setdown Model Says Yes

Since you are not Moses, with an omnipotently powerful deity covering your escape, in the situation of a fanatical pharaoh on your trail you may be confused as to how you could part the Red Sea and thus save your People.   Numerical modeling is here to hel ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 22 2010 - 11:17am

Thermo-Electricity: Future Computers Could Run On Their Own Heat Rather Than Electricity

A semiconductor material called gallium manganese arsenide has been shown to have an interesting new effect that converts heat into a quantum mechanical phenomenon – known as spin – in a semiconductor.   If developed, the effect could enable integrated cir ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 27 2010 - 7:44pm

Science Or Myth? Breaking Curveballs In Baseball

Baseball players will tell you that a fastball can rise- and elementary physics says it can also, the same way an airplane rises because the teardrop shape of a wing causes air to go over the top faster than below the flatter bottom, 'sucking' it ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 24 2014 - 8:42pm

Meta-Flex: Your Future Invisibility Cloak?

Depending on whether or not an invisibility cloak conjures up images of 'Harry Potter' or "Star Trek", we can tell a lot about you your age but as far back as H.G. Wells' turn-of-the-19th-century classic "The Invisible Man&quo ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 4 2010 - 1:38pm

Rigid Membranes And How Folded Structures Form

Our brain, wrinkles on our faces and even mountain chains have one thing in common- all those things, though very different, result from the same process, namely the compression of a 'rigid membrane'.  Take a thin sheet of a solid material and tr ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 7 2010 - 12:11am