Applied Physics

How Flying Snakes Fly

We don't often think of snakes as flying creatures- a lack of wings does not lend itself to flying imagery- but some snakes can glide as far as 100 feet through the air, jumping off tree branches and rotating their ribs to flatten their bodies and mo ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 30 2014 - 12:32pm

Engineering Isn't Just Functional, It's Beautiful

Asteroidea Electrica, first prize winner by Adrianus Indrat Aria. Cambridge University, CC BY By Allan McRobie, University of Cambridge ...

Article - The Conversation - Dec 28 2014 - 9:00am

Liquid-Liquid Extraction: High Value Metals Without Hurting The Environment

Researchers at the University of Guanajuato (UGTO), in middle Mexico, developed an extraction column which recovers metals companies use in their production processes; and thus avoid environmental pollution and lessen economic losses. Using the principles ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 27 2014 - 4:00pm

Acoustic Levitation Using A Non-Resonant Device

Acoustic levitation has been done in the past but it required a precise setup where the sound source and reflector were at fixed "resonant" distances. This made controlling the levitating objects difficult and isn't really proof-of-concept ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 6 2015 - 3:39pm

Splash Form Tektites- Cosmic Donuts Recreated By Levitation

Splash form tektites are tiny shards of natural glass created from spinning drops of molten rock flung from the earth during an extra-terrestrial impact, such as when the earth is hit by asteroids or comets. They come in many shapes, from dumbbells to doug ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 7 2015 - 1:20pm

Is Glass A Solid Or A Liquid? Yes

Glass looks like it is solid but telling a materials engineer that glass is a solid is like telling an aerospace engineer Bernoulli is why planes fly (or Newton, for that matter- whichever you say, they will argue the opposite). Glass flows- but slowly. Th ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 24 2015 - 9:01am

Spider-Man Webbing: How Many Calories Does It Take To Produce All That Silk?

Spider-Man's breakfasts must be unreal levels of eggs. warriorpoet By Mark Lorch, University of Hull While stuck in a hotel room I got sucked into watching the 2002 "Spider-Man" movie. And it struck me that Peter Parker must have an enormou ...

Article - The Conversation - Jan 28 2015 - 3:01pm

Ultralight Material Can Hold 100,000 Times Its Own Weight

By: Marsha Lewis, Inside Science (Inside Science TV) – They may look flimsy, but the materials printed with 3-D printing technology are one-of-a-kind, light-weight and super-strong. Materials engineers at LLNL have created a material with a special 3-D pr ...

Article - Inside Science - Feb 5 2015 - 1:01pm

DIY Super Selfie Stick

My wife bought me a “ selfie-stick ” (sometimes called Wand of Narcissus), which is ironic since I so rarely actually take selfies. But, once I took a look at its simplicity of design, I couldn’t leave well enough alone and decided to create the “Super Se ...

Article - Steve Schuler - Feb 3 2015 - 8:00pm

Turing Patterns At The Nanoscale

The world of single atoms and molecules may seem to be governed by chaotic fluctuations, but a team of researchers has found that the spontaneous formation of Turing patterns- responsible for the irregular yet periodic shapes of the stripes on zebras' ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 7 2015 - 8:30am