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Showing posts from February, 2013

Football Physics: Watching the game from the eye of the football

Imagine flying through the air at 50 miles an hour, swiftly dipping towards the ground, seeing the strained and determined expression on the wide receiver's face.

"Wouldn't it be cool if we could watch sports from the ball's point of view?" asked Kris Kitani, a post-doctoral fellow at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute.

Kitani and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon and at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo, Japan are working on just that.

"It took a couple of tries — shredded balls and broken cameras — to find a good way to put the camera inside of the ball," said Kitani, "in the end, we cut a hole in the side of the ball and pushed the camera in."

By embedding a camera inside of a football, the scientists are exploring a new area of research that Kitani calls Digital Sports.

Using cameras and other sensor-detector technology, Kitani is interested in how technology can aid in analyzing athlete training, augment the spectato…

African Americans in Physics

This week on the PhysicsCentral Podcast is the story of John McNeile Hunter, the founder and long time head of the physicss department at Virginia State College. He was the third African American to receive a PhD in physics. However there have been many more.

Edward Bouchet was the first African American to receive a PhD from a university in the United States. He received his doctorate in 1876 from Yale after studying optics, but had trouble finding a teaching position afterwards because of his race. He took a position teaching physics and chemistry at the Institute of Colored Youth in Pennsylvania for 26 years, then moved around to several different colleges and high schools at the end of his career.

Harnessing The Power Of Peacocks To Make Colorful Images

Nanotech material reflects light to display pictures without chemicals or electricity.
The gloriously colored, iridescent feathers of the male peacock aren't what they seem on the surface. They look that way largely because the feathers contain nanometer-scale protein structures that break up incoming light waves, recombine and reflect them as rich, vibrant colors.

How to Propose to your Physicist Girlfriend

Marriage proposals can be romantic, cliche, meaningful, or embarrassing. But have you heard of a peer-reviewed proposal?

Recently, one creative physicist named Brendan concocted a proposal that would make his thesis adviser proud. He wrote a "research paper," concerning an ongoing "two-body interaction" between himself and his long-term physicist girlfriend, Christie. Brendan submitted his paper to Christie, and she had the choice to continue their ongoing personal research.

Here's what Brendan concluded after "studying" the couple's happiness over the past seven years:

The summary of the findings...show that the projected happiness is upward with high confidence. Taking these results into account, the author proposes to Christie the indefinite continuation of the study. The subject's response should be indicated below.
According to a photo submitted to reddit, it looks like Christie has chosen further study with Brendan.

Brendan's physics-i…

Interview with Astronaut Don Pettit

Earlier this week, astronaut Don Pettit (of Science off the Sphere fame) stopped by the Physics Central offices in College Park, MD. We were fortunate enough to ask Don a few questions about living in space, immigrating to Mars, and riding aboard a Soyuz spacecraft.

Pettit's enthusiasm for science, space, and exploration is truly inspiring. Head on over to Physics Central for the full interview.

Looking Beyond A Gem's Beauty

Scientists use multiple tests to prove the region where gems were mined.

Each precious stone carries within it clues that scientists can examine to prove the gem's original location. The diamonds, emeralds, rubies and sapphires in a jeweler's cases come in many colors, cuts and settings, but where a gem was mined is not apparent from its physical appearance.

A Tour of Plasma Physics in Downtown Cambridge

While I was in Boston for the AAAS conference, I got the chance to tour MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center. Though there were amazing science presentations going on at the convention center that I hated to miss, the chance to see the latest in plasma research was too good to pass up.
A plasma is essentially a really energized gas, and it's often called the fourth stage of matter. The particles in a plasma have so much energy that electrons can't bind with electrons, which gives these naked nuclei a net charge. Positive protons aren't canceled out by the negative charge of electrons, which lets scientists use magnetic fields to manipulate plasma taking all kind of different shapes. The teams at MIT's lab are working on a number of different experiments looking at ways to understand and harness the power of plasma.

Mussel Power

This week's podcast comes from the AAAS Meeting in Boston, where researchers were talking about what they've learned from mussels, the tiny mollusks that bind to hard surfaces along ocean coastlines. Mussels position themselves right in the path of crashing ocean waves, which means they have to withstand thousands of pounds of pressure if they want to stay attached.

If I had to guess (before this meeting) how mussels accomplish this feat of strength, I might assume they used some sort of biological cement: something rigid and thick. In actuality, mussels use something called a byssal thread, which is not much thicker than a human hair. Researcher Emily Carrington talked a bit about her work studying these threads in the wild.

Not only do these tiny threads somehow withstand thousands of pounds of force, but they attach to surfaces in the presence of water. That's something that most human-made adhesives can't do (try using a tube of epoxy from a hardware store to bind…

Cosmic Rays are Born of Supernovae

Deep in space, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has collected evidence that the massive explosion of stars long ago is responsible for the cosmic rays that bombard the surface of the Earth.

Video Credit: NASA
Cosmic rays are high-energy charged particles that zip through the universe. About 90 percent of cosmic rays are protons, the rest being electron and atomic nuclei — all shooting through the galaxy near the speed of light.

Mapping Distant Planet Surfaces Possible

'Extrasolar cartography' technique could provide rough pictures of alien worlds.

Astronomers could one day create rough maps of far-away planets using information taken from starlight reflection, determining the balance of oceans, lands and overhanging clouds.

Amazing Russian Meteor Videos

Early Friday morning, a streaking meteor illuminated the sky over Chelyabinsk, Russia. Seconds later, meteorite debris pummeled the city, injuring over 900 people. A shcokwave from the meteor's higher altitude explosions also cracked as it reached the ground and shattered glass windows.

Below are a few videos of the incident as compiled by redditors "Therecanonlybetwo" and "hattmarington," respectively. The first video shows the meteor streaking across the sky from the view of a dashcam. The second video captured the booming shockwave's arrival on ground level and the subsequent damage.

The Most Exciting Video of Nothing Happening: Pitch Drop Experiment in 2013

The world's longest-running scientific experiment is about to drop into the headlines. For over 80 years, two physicists at the University of Queensland have been standing guard over the Pitch Drop Experiment. Now, the decade-awaited moment of truth is bearing down: a drop is about to fall.

Stare the drip down on the live web cam

In 1927, the first physics professor at the University of Queensland, Thomas Parnell, sought to demonstrate that some materials exhibit seemingly contradictory properties. Once used to seal the bottom of boats, tar pitch feels solid at room temperature and shatters like glass under a hammer blow. But, as Parnell has undeniably demonstrated, pitch is actually a very, very viscous fluid.

So one day, Parnell placed a block of tar pitch in a sealed funnel. Three years later, the pitch had settled into the bottom of the funnel and in 1930 the bottom of the funnel stem was cut.

The first drop fell in December, 1938.

It is something of an overstatement to say tha…

Podcast: Picasso's Mysterious Paint

On today's podcast I talk with Francesca Casadio, a scientist at the Art Institute of Chiago, and Volker Rose, a physicist at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. Together, this duo just answered a long-standing question about the type of paint Picasso used in some of his pieces (including The Red Armchair, seen here). The paint in question was the first commercial house paint, and a symbol of Picasso's rebellion against the old world art establishment. It's a story of mystery and passion, like a Nancy Drew book, but with science! (And no murders or trap doors.)

While art historians obviously benefitted from this research, Rose says the study provided valuable information for him as well. The key ingredient in both house paint and artists paint at that time, was zinc oxide: a material that has properties similar to silicon, making it a candidate for use in various electronic devices.
To hear more, check out this week's podcast.

Ask Don Pettit Anything!

Hopefully many of you have been following our Science Off The Sphere series of videos on PhysicsCentral. If you have, you know Don Pettit is a pretty cool guy. He does really cool demos and even offers dating advice from time to time. This Friday, Don will be interviewed on NASA TV and he wants to answer some questions from you. If you have a question you've always wanted to ask Don, anything from where did you learn to play the didgeridoo to where did you get cornstarch in space, put your question in the comments section below. If you'd rather let us know your question directly, send an email through our website.

Here's one of our favorite videos:

Crowd-Sourced Einstein@Home Data Analysis Discovers New Pulsars

Imagine a world in which something huge was going on behind the peaceful wax and wane of the little light on your sleeping computer.

That time is now. Scientists report that the global crowd-sourced astronomical data crunching project, Einstein@Home, has discovered 24 new pulsars, six of which are members of binary systems.

In 1915, Einstein published his theory of General Relativity, predicting that the universe is filled with gravitational waves. When black holes collide or stars explode, these violent disruptions in the fabric of space and time ripple through space as gravitational waves.

At the time, gravitational waves were too weak to be detected by astronomical instruments. Today, two detectors, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) and GEO 600, are coming ever closer to detecting gravitational waves by catching stars and black holes in the process of violent events and directly measuring a gravitational wave passing by.

Wielding the most sensitive gra…

Bang Goes the Theory: Coming to America

There's a British invasion afoot today. The BBC science show "Bang Goes the Theory" premieres tonight on BBC America. So how does this show distinguish itself from the abundance of other educational science shows on TV today?

Part of the appeal stems from a selection of awesome experiments. In the first episode, for instance, the show's presenters experimented with an enormous vortex cannon and a fire tornado generator (something we've done in the past).

But there's more to this show than just cool experiments; the team also interviews leaders in science and technology for short magazine-style segments. The show seems like a cross between 60 minutes and Mythbusters, sprinkled with British accents.

Oscar Sci-Tech Awards Honor Ingenious Screen Science And Engineering

This year's awards showcase the interplay between art and science.
The goal of every movie is for the audience to suspend its collective disbelief and become immersed in the world created on screen. With special effects breakthroughs continuing to raise the bar for movie audiences, the technical folks behind the scenes are convening on Saturday to celebrate the science and engineering advances in moviemaking.

Q&A on LEGO SLAC Particle Accelerator

Buried deep underground lies one of the longest buildings in the world: the SLAC linear particle accelerator – colloquially, the "linac". Most who pass by don't get the chance to see the 2-mile netherworld through which electrons fly at nearly the speed of light and emit X-rays that enable scientists to take pictures of the smallest atomic structures, uncover the chemical basis of photosynthesis, and probe fundamental properties of matter at the center of stars.

The excitement of the place rubbed off on Greg Stewart. Faced with a childhood's supply of Legos, the SLAC graphic designer got to work.
While maintaining an appropriate – shall we say – Lego minimalism, the Lego accelerator has a surprising level of detail, including separating the particle accelerator (little tube) from the laser light pipe (big tube) that keeps the particle beam aligned.

I spoke to Stewart to find out what went into building a Lego SLAC (Folks, do try this at home):

QT: How did you come up …