Applied Physics

Why Anchors Don't Work From earliest times to today, from boat safety pamphlet to engineering treatise on marine architecture: all are agreed that the anchor does the work of keeping a boat or ship…

Spaceship Earth: Entropy Factor #1 We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace…

Engineers from the University of Florida and Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea have developed what they call a 'nearly perfect hydrophobic interface' by reproducing, on small bits of flat…

Getting More Bang Per Buck In The Steam Age Once the physics of steam engines began to be understood, engineers were able to focus their minds on how to get more power for the same fuel, or the same…

Pushing The Moon Away With Victorian Machinery This is a further article in my occasional series about coal, engines and energy, heat and thermodynamics.  In this article I am going to show you…

Boring Science Produces Awesome results The simple scientific observation that you can't use the same energy twice is absolutely awesome! This is a further article in my occasional series about coal…

How Can Ice Work Like A Horse? In this short series of articles about coal, engines and energy I am trying to show something of  the history behind our current knowledge of heat, energy and…

Dirty Coal And Boring Science There was a time when, through the proliferation of steam power, coal extraction in vast quantities became economically viable.  Throughout the U.K. coal was burned…

King Coal And The Heat Values Of Fuels A Potted History Of The Human Use Of Coal The term 'coal' covers many different materials with a common property: they are materials high in carbon which were…

After posting the thought on facebook, I have decided to begin a blog on this topic. The blog will track my day-to-day research on the subject. Once finally compiled and completed, further action…