Applied Physics

Photoelectric Effect- At Short Wavelengths And Very High Intensities, Things Get Even Weirder

By way of the classical photoeffect, Einstein proved in 1905 that light also has particle character. However, with extremely high light intensities, remarkable things happen in the process, say scientists of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 24 2009 - 11:06am

Sensors In Your Skin?

(Sensors in the skin- does that sound like Frank Sinatra singing?) Of the professors at Reading University, perhaps the one with the highest media profile is Kevin Warwick, well known for planting microchips inside himself as signalling devices. However, ...

Article - Robert H Olley - Apr 25 2009 - 10:13pm

Solve The Mystery Of Chalk And Make Someone Else Billions Of Dollars

A piece of chalk in a laboratory at the University of Stavanger in Norway may be the key to unlocking a great mystery. If the mystery is solved, it will generate billions in additional income.  Okay, it will be billions of dollars  for the oil industry and ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 26 2009 - 1:13am

How Better Pizza Led To Better Micro Motors

If pizza isn't already on the list of 7 greatest inventions of the post-modern world (because nothing goes with wanting to strangle someone who invokes Foucault like a nice slice of pepperoni) a new discovery may put it there; the physics of the perfe ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 27 2009 - 4:32pm

Wait, This Maneuver In Top Gun Was Real?

Scott Altman is a pretty cool guy.   He's the commander of the Atlantis mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope (and, as noted previously, astronaut John Grunsfeld is also carrying along Edwin Hubble's basketball, another level of awesome) a ...

Blog Post - Hank Campbell - May 12 2009 - 5:34pm

What Tetris Teaches Us About Self-Assembly And Solubility

Tetris stole hundreds of hours of our lives.  It’s about time it starts giving back.  Researchers at the Washington University of St. Louis have built a computer simulation that uses a modified Tetris game to explore self-assembly.  Their take on the clas ...

Article - Stephanie Pulford - May 14 2009 - 12:26pm

Metals that Pump water Uphill!

Just came across a really cool article, about a recent discovery where scientists have found a way to make a metal absorb water, transport it over distances just like a tree absorbs water from roots! I think this discovery can have numerous applications, a ...

Blog Post - Priyanka Dalal - Jun 3 2009 - 11:18am

Quantum Entanglement In The Mechanical World

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated entanglement—a phenomenon peculiar to the atomic-scale quantum world—in a mechanical system similar to those in the macroscopic everyday world. The work extends the b ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 3 2009 - 1:28pm

How Young Engineers Can Annoy Hiring Managers Less- Study

If you've ever been an engineering student, taught engineering or hired a young engineer, this will sound familiar: tales of students splitting up group projects so they don't have to work together or a student stating he didn't bother with ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 8 2009 - 9:21pm

Urban Myth- Fingerprints Improve Grip

Fingerprints are essential for crime dramas and look nicely distinct for each of us but what are fingerprints really for? According to Roland Ennos, from the University of Manchester, other primates and tree-climbing koalas have fingerprints and some South ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 12 2009 - 7:29am