If you live in a part of the world with cold winters, you probably know the awful feeling that comes with an unexpectedly early frost or snow—one that covers your car in a layer of ice before you’ve pulled out your gloves and ice scraper for the season. The one that makes your fingers freeze
Physics
As someone whose job it is to help people understand and appreciate physics, I absolutely hate the way most people talk about Isaac Newton and how he developed his theory of gravity. It’s not the apple bit that I have a problem with; that’s an important part of the story, and even historically accurate! The thing
By Rebecca and Chrystian Vieyra As teachers, students, and their families have navigated online learning this year, science education has taken a bit of a hit. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reported that only 38% of teachers who responded to a survey said that they had been able to engage their students
Tin is a commonplace metal that’s used industrially in a thousand different ways. From the solder that holds your computer’s motherboard together to the PVC plumbing under your sink, tin compounds are everywhere. In spite of its versatility, tin possesses an interesting physical property which is responsible for its tendency to wear down over time
By Lindsay Olson Scientific Adviser: Dr. Don Lincoln Curator: Georgia Schwender As Fermilab’s first artist in residence, my workspace had some unusual supplies for an artist’s studio. Pinned to my idea board I had a list of subatomic particles, quotes from popular physics books, the names of inspiring physicists, and a picture of Nobel Laureate
Dutch scientists journeyed close to the North Pole to pursue a question that has baffled scientists for generations: Why is Rudolph’s nose red? Image Credit: Kia Krarup Hansen You may recall the most famous reindeer of all, though you might not have realized that a species of reindeer really does have a particularly rosy snout. In
It’s a typical December scenario: The family trip to the tree lot. The Fraser Fir tied to the roof of the car. Dad under the branches screwing the stand to the trunk. And the inevitable wobbling of the 7-foot holiday embellishment as it threatens to topple over and onto the floor, scattering needles everywhere. When
You can now play a video game called Quantum Odyssey, which teaches all you need to rigorously understand quantum computation. Understanding the logic (set of rules, laws) followed by the building blocks of our Universe is no trivial matter – even more, to use this very logic and create meaningful computation, such as solving a
By: Hannah Pell In the 2004 movie National Treasure, the main character Ben Gates — a historian, cryptographer, and treasure hunter played by Nicholas Cage — is determined to solve the generational mystery passed down to him from his grandfather. The only clue that Ben has is: The secret lies with Charlotte. Based on this,
Like much of the world, scientists thrive on coffee. It’s not just because of the caffeine though, it turns out that even spilled coffee fuels research. Most people are annoyed by nagging coffee stains, but to physicist Sidney Nagel they were inspiration. If you’re a coffee lover (or you live with one), I guarantee that
They sniff out drugs, cadavers, missing people, explosives, and even cancer. Dogs are more than man’s best friend, they are some of the best chemical detectors in existence. They are so good that by modifying a commercially available explosives detector to act like a dog’s nose, researchers were able to make the detector much more
The fastest timescales. The highest pressures. Absolute zero. The nanoscale. These conditions are far from our everyday experience, but studying how things behave in different situations can reveal a more complete picture of their nature—and can lead to revolutionary breakthroughs. Click to enlarge. This false-color map of a random light field includes a large number
Scratchy. My ultra-smooth gel pen made a distracting and mildly irritating sound that I can only describe as scratchy with each stroke. I became acutely aware of the process involved in forming each letter. I flipped a page in my memo pad to make room for more notes, but the loud, prolonged crinkling of the
Researchers from MIT have come up with a new way to fabricate nanoscale structures using an innovative “shrinking” technique. The new method uses equipment many laboratories already have and is relatively straightforward, so it could make nanoscale fabrication more accessible. Image Credit: Illustration by Abigail Malate, American Institute of Physics Conventional nanostructure manufacturing techniques—ones that
If you made a wish on every star in the universe, you’d need to make about a trillion trillion wishes—that’s a 1 followed by 24 zeros. Of course, you can’t see all of those stars from your bedroom window. You can’t even see them all from the Hubble Space Telescope, and you won’t be able
Sugar. A variant on the sweetest ingredient in many a sumptuous holiday feast, glycolaldehyde has now been found in a star-forming region of space far from the galactic center called G31.41+0.31, about 26,00 light years away from Earth. Directly linked to the origin of life, glycolaldehyde is an advantageous find for researchers seeking out habitable
Wild Turkey / Image Credit: Andrea Westmoreland via Flickr There are 60-foot high balloons floating above packed city blocks, cranberries on the stove, inside-the-turkey stuffing, mashed potatoes, outside-the-turkey stuffing, football, abominably huge turkeys, and one lucky bird. The best part of Thanksgiving dinner? Leftover Thanksgiving dinner. But those leftovers take hard work– that hot, perfect,
Who hasn’t wished the doctor would prescribe a week of vacation or a trip to Walt Disney World to cure an ailment? For patients with kidney stones, that might be just around the corner. According to research published in 2016 in The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, a trip to your local amusement park might
By: Hannah Pell Two years ago on November 16th, 2018, representatives from more than 60 member nations of the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (International Bureau of Weights and Measures) convened in Versailles, France to make a very important decision. Representatives in attendance to the 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) unanimously
Just outside the town of Oracle, Arizona, nestled between the seemingly endless plains of the Sonaran desert and the cactus-pocked foothills of Mount Lemmon, stands an enormous glass ziggurat: Biosphere 2. Built in the late ‘80s at the behest of an oil tycoon, the structure was intended to be a small-scale model of a self-contained
Artistic representation of OSIRIS-REx over the asteroid Bennu. NASA/GODDARD/University of Arizona. In 2016, the OSIRIS-REx probe left Earth but unlike most other probes on their journey out to space, OSIRIS-REx does intend to return home. If all goes well, OSIRIS-REx will return to its home in 2023 carrying a precious sample. As of 2018, OSIRIS-REx
By: Hannah Pell It’s nationwide election time yet again. As of October 30th, more than 85 million Americans have already cast their ballot, a remarkable number considering total voter turnout for the 2016 election was 138 million. By the time you’re reading this, we may or may not yet know the winners, especially given the
By Allison Kubo Hutchsion Although humans first witnessed nuclear reactors in 1942 with the development of the Chicago-Pile by Enrico Fermi, natural fission reactors existed billions of years ago. Fission is the process of breaking apart atoms of heavy elements such as uranium. Energy is released during fission in the form of heat and can
NASA image of a dust storm from 1998. Provided by the SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, and ORBIMAGE – NASA Visible Earth, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=402743 By Jeremiah O’Mahony The Canary Islands spent a few days of March 2018 shrouded in Saharan dust. Calimas, two-to three-day-long gusts of sand and warm wind named for the haze they
By: Hannah Pell On September 22, 2020, NASA and the U. S. Space Command announced that they were tracking an unidentified piece of space debris that appeared to be hurtling toward the International Space Station (ISS). It was predicted to pass by within only a few kilometers, dangerously too close to chance, at 5:21 p.m.
By: Hannah Pell On 23 January 2020, the Doomsday Clock was calibrated to 100 seconds before midnight — the closest it has even been — by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the organization in charge of the clock. Because the Doomsday Clock is set no sooner than annually, this decision was made even before
Originally written for https://www.tamiawilliams.com/blog - TamiaWilliams Image: 5 Year Old Drip (Bobo hair ties, Clear skin & Sunday’s best), 2001 This is my mom’s favorite picture of me as a child. On the back, it’s dated Oct/Nov 2001 – Tamia – 5yrs old. I have no recollection of this day, when the picture was taken