Physics Buzz

In a recent think piece from Drexel University's The Smart Set, author Michael Lund boldly proclaims that it's time for western academia to throw in the towel on a decades-long failed experiment: "hard" social science.

Yes, astronauts landed on the moon. But that doesn't mean NASA has been completely honest.

Starting in the 1970's, for some reason I have yet to discover, NASA started lying to us about the basic physics of space flight -- that is, they invented the word microgravity.

OK, maybe they didn't invent it. I'm not sure if it's possible to figure out exactly who coined the term. Still, some time in the late seventies or early eighties, NASA (and a lot of other scientists) enthusiastically embraced the the idea of microgravity. The problem is, NASA is using it wrong - and I believe that's a very bad thing.

In 2010, physicist and educator Michael Hartl published something he called The Tau Manifesto, a piece of writing that makes a surprisingly controversial assertion: pi is wrong.

A few weeks ago, we put up a "Fermi problem Friday" post about the odds of being struck by lightning. That post was met with some criticism in the comments section, so it's currently down while we revise it to reflect our readers' concerns. But last Friday, we made a discovery here at PhysicsCentral headquarters: your odds of getting zapped go up exponentially if your boss brings her old Van de Graaff generator to work!

I recently moved to the DC area in the middle of the summer where, on a bad day, being outdoors is a lot like being inside a rice cooker; sometimes I wish I could stop sweating, because evaporative cooling doesn’t really work when the air is already practically saturated with moisture. As such, the dehumidifier has become my new best friend. This miracle of modern technology that keeps the mildew out of my apartment works by blowing air over a refrigerated mesh of wires, where the water condenses and falls into a bucket, sometimes at the surprising rate of a few liters per day.

About 3.4 billion light-years away, in the general direction of the constellation Draco, lies one of the heaviest singular objects in the known universe. Designated H1821+643, it has roughly 30 billion times the mass of the sun, with an event horizon that could swallow our solar system—28 times over.

A lot of things, it turns out. But the one you'd probably least expect? Waste from a non-nuclear power plant, by a factor of 100.

On Wednesday, we published a Physics+ article about radiation, written in memory of the bombing of Hiroshima, 70 years prior. While the author did a fantastic job in describing the state of the art on low-dose radiation research, I was troubled by a line where he cited "widespread deployment of nuclear power" along with medical scans and air travel as a potential contributor to chronic low-dose radiation. I took issue with the line because, counterintuitive as it might be, widespread deployment of nuclear power is acting to decrease the radiation burden of the average individual. To understand how, we'll need a smidge of radiation biophysics knowledge, along with a touch of nuclear engineering. If that sounds scary, don't worry; I promise to keep it simple.

By now you've probably seen the latest video of Lexus' hoverboard technology, a two-minute spot produced as part of their "Amazing in Motion" advertising campaign. The board itself is incredibly cool—literally—the technology relies on superconductors, cooled using liquid nitrogen to somewhere below -200°C, and as a result it emits a trail of futuristic-looking fog (actually condensing water vapor) wherever it goes. Unfortunately, the video, which shows a number of skateboarders trying out their favorite sport sans wheels, is more than a little misleading.

I was living in Indiana back in June when I got a surprise lesson in optics, simply by looking out my window to see the golden-orange glow of sunset bathing our lawn. That’s odd, I thought to myself, seems like the day just flew by.
I checked my watch; it was 3 P.M. I blinked hard, wondering to myself what could be going on. I checked my phone; still 3 P.M. I stepped outside for a better look around. There was no mistaking it; this was the kind of color scheme I was used to seeing an hour or two before the last light of the day, but the sun was hanging stubbornly far above the horizon, at its usual 3 o’clock position.

Creating a slow-motion effect in real life takes some creativity, but with the help of a few strobe lights and a frequency generator, the folks at Pasco put together one that’s truly mesmerizing, on top of being educational. Watch the video of it below, and then read on to find out how it’s done!