Applied Physics

In my previous article about the Kano Computer, I demonstrated how to use MIT’s Scratch graphical programming language on the Kano to flash an LED (the “Hello World!” program of hardware hacking). In…

"In space no one can hear you scream" was the tagline for the movie Alien. I finally created a Twitter account, but in Twitter, if you have no followers, no one can read your tweets. You are…

Researchers have witnessed how football-shaped carbon molecules known as buckyballs arrange themselves into ultra-smooth layers, all in real time, and by piecing that together with theoretical…

It's common sense that if you have ne mess and add another mess, you have created an even bigger mess. But in arcane statistics, economics and social science, a bigger mess can lead to more order - a…

Thermodiffusion is when a temperature difference establishes a concentration difference in a mixture. Two recent studies build on recent experimental results from the IVIDIL (Influence Vibration on…

Fewer cords, smaller antennas and quicker video is the goal of a microwave circuit that has set a new world record for data transmission.  As we all know, watching a film clip on a tablet or…

I did almost all of them when I was a kid, except superglue my fingers together. I had a few pocket knives but my favorite was the Swiss Army knife. This is what I use today to void product…

Computer chips with superconducting circuits would be 50 to 100 times as energy-efficient as today's chips due to a lack of electrical resistance. That means less heat, less deformation and less…

The Obama administration only recently banned incandescent bulbs and compact fluorescent bulbs are getting all of the marketing due to generous government subsidies, so light emitting diodes (LEDs)…

In the future, it may be possible to try on clothes even when the shop is closed, thanks tosemi-transparent mirrors in interactive systems presented at the ACM UIST 2014 human-computer interface…