Applied Physics

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…

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…

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…

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…

Retirement in less than three week’s time!  What shall I sing?  How about this? And now the end is nearAnd so I face the final curtain Well, that’s my second most hated song, suited either…

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…

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…

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…

Traditional mirrors work by directing the path of photons of light but atoms possessing a magnetic moment can likewise be controlled using a magnetic mirror.  A new study investigates the…

Researchers have reported the creation of pseudo-magnetic fields far stronger than the strongest magnetic fields ever sustained in a laboratory, just by putting the right kind of strain onto a patch…