Applied Physics

Lego Video Car

I was able to find the EYESPY Spydercam at Goodwill. Several hacks for it came to mind, but the simplest is attaching it to a remote control vehicle. I have an old Lego remote control car that’s been gathering dust so I decided to use it for this article. ...

Article - Steve Schuler - Jan 29 2014 - 2:12pm

Snakes Are A Plane? The Physics Of Snakes That Fly

What would make snakes scarier? For spiders, the answer is easy. If you see one big enough to be feasting on Orc flesh in the caves under Mt. Doom, run, but snakes are tougher to make scary because they are slow. Not all of them. Snakes may not look aerod ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 30 2014 - 8:51am

Passing The Carnot Limit: Prototyping Of A Single Ion Heat Engine

Heat engines transform heat into mechanical energy with the corresponding efficiency of an Otto engine amounting to only about 25 percent, which is what your automobile gets. The efficiency of heat engines powered by thermal heat reservoirs is determined b ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 3 2014 - 10:53am

Leeuwenhoek Microscope From CD-ROM Drive Parts

This build is a simplified Leeuwenhoek microscope made from CD-ROM drive parts and construction toys. My initial design was simply a rectangle of corrugated cardboard with a hole punched in it and one of the glass spheres from the Chem C3000 kit, but the m ...

Article - Steve Schuler - Dec 18 2014 - 1:58pm

Phonon Lasers? At The Atomic Scale, Sound Is A Lot Like Light

You learned in high school that light has a dual nature- it exists as both waves and photons. It is this duality of light that enables the coherent transport of photons in lasers.  Physicists know that, at the atomic-scale, sound has the same dual nature, ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 5 2014 - 6:35pm

Falconry 101: Put Up Your Flaps During A Dive

Peregrine falcons are one of the world's fastest birds, reaching up to 200 miles per hour when diving. Scientists are studying the body shape and wing contour of the bird to better understand how they reach these high diving speeds while maintaining ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 13 2014 - 9:57am

The Crowd Dynamics Of Stampedes

Stampedes occur often, and not just in wild animal herds. Previously, physicists developed numerous models of crowd evacuation dynamics based on disasters such as the yearly Muslim Hajj or of the Love Parade disaster in Germany in 2010. If crowd dynamics ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 7 2014 - 11:25pm

Goodbye Ohm- Hello Heisenberg

Goodbye Ohm- Hello Heisenberg Research reported earlier this month shows that electrical resistance in nanoribbons of epitaxial graphene changes in discrete steps following quantum mechanical principles. In plain language, electron transport in a new vari ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - Feb 16 2014 - 9:17pm

Fishing Line And Thread Turned Into Artificial Muscle

Researchers have used fishing line fiber and sewing thread to create inexpensive artificial muscles.   The inexpensive, artificial muscles generate far more force and power than human or animal muscles of the same size and could be used in medical devices ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 21 2014 - 5:30am

New battery management technology could boost Li-ion capacity by 40%, quadruple recharging cycles

New battery management technology could boost Li-ion capacity by 40%, quadruple recharging cycles Long-life laptop battery the tech industry doesn’t want you to have? Fed up with the dwindling battery life of his BlackBerry Bold 9000, Carleton University c ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - Feb 24 2014 - 6:40pm