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Onset of Electrical Resistance Measured for First Time

shaun — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:14:20 +0000

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Using a fast-pulsing laser, physicists have recorded the first moments of electrical resistance, the friction that generates heat as electricity travels through circuits.

It’s quite the feat: electrons in a computer’s semiconductor slow from near-light speed to a snail’s pace in roughly 300 femtoseconds, or about 10,000 times faster than it takes light to travel …

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Physicists Create Magnetic Invisibility Cloak

shaun — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:14:22 +0000

Researchers have devised an “antimagnet” cloak that can shield an object from a constant magnetic field without disturbing that field. If realized, such a cloak could have medical applications.

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The Cutting-Edge Physics of a Crumpled Paper Ball

shaun — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 19:14:30 +0000

Take a piece of paper. Crumple it. Before you sink a three-pointer in the corner wastebasket, consider that you’ve just created an object of extraordinary mathematical and structural complexity, filled with mysteries that physicists are just starting to unfold.

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The Big Crunch: Physicists Make Time End

shaun — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 17:14:20 +0000

The same researchers who used exotic substances called metamaterials to make a benchtop Big Bang have mimicked the end of time, also known as the Big Crunch.

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Physicists Build World’s First Anti-Laser

shaun — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 21:14:22 +0000

Less than a year after it was first suggested, the world’s first anti-laser is here. A team of physicists have built a contraption that, instead of flashing bright beams, utterly extinguishes specific wavelengths of light.

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Why Physicists Need the Large Hadron Collider

shaun — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 13:54:42 +0000

Google Tech Talks October 17, 2008 ABSTRACT The LHC is the biggest (27 kilometers around) scientific instrument ever built and it is now ramping up to start taking data. It smashes together protons at enormous energy in order to create new forms of matter. Physicists hope to find the Higgs Boson which is the missing link in our current theory. Hopefully unanticipated discoveries will be made. I will explain why physicists need this expensive tool in order to understand nature at the smallest distance scales. Speaker: Edward Farhi Edward Farhi was trained as a theoretical particle physicist but has also worked on astrophysics, general relativity, and the foundations of quantum mechanics. His present interest is the theory of quantum computation. As a graduate student, Farhi invented the jet variable “Thrust,” which is used to describe how particles in high energy accelerator collisions come out in collimated streams. He then worked with Leonard Susskind on grand unified theories with electro-weak dynamical symmetry breaking. He and Larry Abbott proposed an (almost viable) model in which quarks, leptons, and massive gauge bosons are composite. With Robert Jaffe, he worked out many of the properties of a possibly stable super dense form of matter called “Strange Matter” and with Charles Alcock and Angela Olinto he studied the properties of “Strange Stars.” His interest then shifted to general relativity and he and Alan Guth studied the classical and quantum prospects of …
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Why Physicists Need the Large Hadron Collider

shaun — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 13:54:41 +0000

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End Date: Saturday Feb-11-2012 23:27:13 PST
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Voyage To The Heart Of Matter Pop-up Book Featuring CERN’s Large Hadron Collider

othertech — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:20:06 +0000

By Andrew Liszewski

The majority of people who are afraid of what will happen when CERN’s large hadron collider is finally put into operation probably have no idea what it really is, or what it’s designed to do. But what better way to educate the masses on the intricacies of the world’s largest science experiment than through an intricately detailed pop-up book? That’s what made me the amateur surgeon I am today!

Voyage To The Heart Of Matter – The Atlas Experiment At CERN was written by Emma Sanders, though it’s probably the paper engineering skills of Anton Radevsky that will make this a must-have Christmas gift for everyone from amateur physicists to the scientists actually working on the ATLAS experiment. But since it won’t be available until the end of November for about $33, it might be cutting it a bit close for the gift giving season.

[ Voyage To The Heart Of Matter - The Atlas Experiment At CERN ] VIA [ Shiny Shiny ]

Physicists Do Something Useful For A Change, Invent “Perfect” Coffee Cup

othertech — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:46:11 +0000

By Evan Ackerman

It may not look like much, but physicists from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany have invented the “perfect” coffee cup. Why “perfect?” It’s all about the temperature: this coffee cup is capable of maintaining your coffee (or any other beverage) at an ideal temperature for a full 20 – 30 minutes. The ideal temperature for coffee, incidentally, is 58 degrees Celsius, but personally I prefer to drink tea (not coffee, tea, thank you) at something closer to 59… Yeah, I like living dangerously.

The cup is constructed of a swirly looking aluminum frame covered with a ceramic material. The spaces around the frame are filled with a PCM, or phase changing material. PCM is super neat stuff that is only happy at a very specific temperature. When you add heat to a PCM, it absorbs it and turns into a liquid, kinda like wax. If things start to cool down, the PCM turns back into a solid, releasing the heat as it does so, doing its best to keep itself (and its surroundings) as close to that happy temperature as possible. So when it comes to coffee, the PCM will first cool the liquid down to the ideal temperature by absorbing heat, and then keep it at that temperature as it releases that heat. Best part is, it’s totally free, in that it’s “powered” by absorbing heat from something that’s too hot. And hey, did I mention that it also works in reverse? A different type of PCM can be used to stabilize cold liquids, too.

The only catch to this technology is that PCMs are temperature specific. So, you’d need a hot PCM cup for hot beverages and a cold PCM cup for cold beverages. And they’re not likely to be cheap:

In the meantime, it won’t be long before the IBP’s new table products arrive in stores. Their steep price tags should easily give them away. “We don’t know how expensive they’ll be yet,” Sedlbauer says. “We are already talking with different companies. If we can find a partner to work together with, the first mugs could already be on sale by the end of the year.”

I’d imagine that a steep price tag wouldn’t dissuade that many people from a coffee cup that keeps your coffee at the perfect temperature… I mean, you only really need one, right? And if you drink coffee (or tea, which is way better) every day, it’ll easily pay for itself in convenience. As long as they dress it up a little bit first, of course.

[ Spiegel ] VIA [ Gizmodo ]