Applied Physics

Falconry 101: Put Up Your Flaps During A Dive

Peregrine falcons are one of the world's fastest birds, reaching up to 200 miles per hour when diving. Scientists are studying the body shape and wing contour of the bird to better understand how they reach these high diving speeds while maintaining ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 13 2014 - 9:57am

The Crowd Dynamics Of Stampedes

Stampedes occur often, and not just in wild animal herds. Previously, physicists developed numerous models of crowd evacuation dynamics based on disasters such as the yearly Muslim Hajj or of the Love Parade disaster in Germany in 2010. If crowd dynamics ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 7 2014 - 11:25pm

Goodbye Ohm- Hello Heisenberg

Goodbye Ohm- Hello Heisenberg Research reported earlier this month shows that electrical resistance in nanoribbons of epitaxial graphene changes in discrete steps following quantum mechanical principles. In plain language, electron transport in a new vari ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - Feb 16 2014 - 9:17pm

Fishing Line And Thread Turned Into Artificial Muscle

Researchers have used fishing line fiber and sewing thread to create inexpensive artificial muscles.   The inexpensive, artificial muscles generate far more force and power than human or animal muscles of the same size and could be used in medical devices ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 21 2014 - 5:30am

New battery management technology could boost Li-ion capacity by 40%, quadruple recharging cycles

New battery management technology could boost Li-ion capacity by 40%, quadruple recharging cycles Long-life laptop battery the tech industry doesn’t want you to have? Fed up with the dwindling battery life of his BlackBerry Bold 9000, Carleton University c ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - Feb 24 2014 - 6:40pm

Using LEDs as Light Sensors

In my previous article DC Versus AC I discussed how a diode can be used as a rectifier to convert alternating current (AC) into direct current (DC) because the diode allows current to flow in one direction, but not the other. The diode is the simplest semi ...

Blog Post - Steve Schuler - Feb 27 2014 - 11:41am

Not Charge Or Spin: Shaken Will Mean Less Data Loss In Future Computers

By now, almost everyone understands computers and that current technologies for writing, storing, and reading information are either charge-based or spin-based. Spin-based devices operate on the principle that in materials like iron, electron spins genera ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 4 2014 - 3:12pm

Spectroscopy Science: Did You Really Buy A Priceless Work Of Art?

Collectors,museums and art dealers face a lot of problems determining origin, authenticity and discovery of forgery of artwork. Experts are easily fooled- but science, not so much. They get help through the application of modern, non-destructive, "hi ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 8 2014 - 12:30pm

Oh, What A Tangled Web The NSA Weaves

There’s a popular YouTube video featuring mathematician Edward Frenkel where he describes how the NSA hacked our emails. It is a backdoor into the National Institute of Standards and Technology public key encryption standards. I’ll borrow an analogy for a ...

Article - Steve Schuler - Mar 8 2014 - 6:39am

Living Materials- Bacteria That Conduct Electricity And Emit Light

Our bones are a matrix of minerals and other substances, including living cells, though most people don't think of them that way and assume bones are 'natural' —  but nature can be coaxed to do all kinds of things. MIT engineers have coaxed ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 25 2014 - 4:11pm