Applied Physics

If you've been to a whispering gallery, a quiet, circular space often underneath a dome or vault that captures and amplifies sounds as quiet as a whisper, you have witnessed parabolics in action. The sound waves are efficiently propagated by the conc ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 7 2013 - 12:06pm

Toward Metamaterials: Printing Artificial Bone

If you want to design new materials that are durable, lightweight and environmentally sustainable, it makes sense to look at old kinds: Natural composites, such as bone. Bone is strong and tough because its two constituent materials, soft collagen protein ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 17 2013 - 10:12am

Vital Heat For 2013- At The Cellular Level

To our forefathers, distinguishing the living from the dead centered on calidum innatum- vital heat. Aristotle showed that when the heart turns cold, compared to other organs, a person dies and postulated that the vital heat produced in the heart caused b ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 28 2013 - 12:50pm

“Printing” Tiny Batteries The Size Of A Grain Of Sand

Miniaturization is in- but often the batteries that power them are as large or larger than the devices themselves, which defeats the purpose of building small. Nowm a team of researchers has shown that 3D printing can be used to print lithium-ion microbat ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 7 2013 - 10:20pm

How That Works: Blowing up cars in Movies

About once a week I use some specialized chemistry and physics to blow up cars for movies. Here's a little video revealing how that works, that I shot while creating a scene for Rooster Teeth... How That Works: Movie Car Explosions from Steve Wolf on ...

Blog Post - Steve Wolf - Jul 10 2013 - 11:17am

Sculpting Tailor-made Fluid Flows With Microfluidic Channels

You have noticed the way water flows around boulders in a fast-moving river, creating areas of stillness and intense motion. It's possible to control the forces of fluid flow at the smallest levels by placing tiny pillars in microfluidic channels. By ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 12 2013 - 12:30pm

Hurricane Sandy: The Tiny 19th Century Seawall That Saved A New Jersey Community

By the time Sandy hit New Jersey and New York, it had been reduced to a tropical storm but its rare angle of approach still meant a lot of devastation. Environmentalists in New York are resistant to creating barriers against future storms, like subway doo ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 16 2013 - 11:16am

Science Toys: Snap Circuits

Snap Circuits is an educational toy that teaches electronics with solderless snap-together electronic components. Each component has the schematic symbol and a label printed on its plastic case that is color coded for easy identification. They snap togeth ...

Article - Steve Schuler - Jul 19 2013 - 8:54pm

How Radio Waves Are Evidence Of Climate Change

Researchers can argue about the accuracy of old thermometers and how to pick the datapoints of numerical models, but radio waves can help clear some things up. The ionosphere, one of the regions of the upper atmosphere ionized by solar radiation, is used ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 30 2013 - 4:01pm

Snap Circuits Science: Hot Liquid Level Indicator For Vision Impaired

In my previous article, you learned how to build the “The 555 Test Circuit.” We are going to modify the test circuit to create a hot liquid level indicator for the vision impaired to help them fill cups with hot liquids such as tea or coffee. To fill a cup ...

Article - Steve Schuler - Aug 8 2013 - 3:36pm