Applied Physics

No, We're Not Being Pickled In Deadly Cell Phone Radiation

Tomorrow at TedX Sydney’s Opera House event, high-profile neurosurgeon Charlie Teo will talk about brain cancer. Last Saturday Teo was on Channel 9’s Sunrise program talking about the often malignant cancer that in 2012 killed 1,241 Australians. During th ...

Article - Simon Chapman - May 25 2015 - 12:02pm

Non-Joulian Magnetostriction May Energize The World

 A new class of magnets that swell in volume when placed in a magnetic field also generate negligible amounts of wasteful heat during energy harvesting. This "Non-Joulian Magnetostriction" could change the way we think about a certain type of mag ...

Article - News Staff - May 20 2015 - 9:55pm

Back To The Future: Skyscrapers Will Be Made Of Wood

Vancouver-based architect Michael Green was unequivocal at a conference at which I heard him speak a while ago: “We grow trees in British Columbia that are 35 storeys tall, so why do our building codes restrict timber buildings to only five stories?” ...

Article - The Conversation - May 21 2015 - 12:30pm

The Serious Physics Of Super Balls

By Joel Shurkin, Inside Science-- Super Balls are toys beloved by children because of their extraordinary ability to bounce. Physicists love them for exactly the same reason. Drop a baseball on the floor and it will hardly bounce at all. Drop a Super Ball ...

Article - Joel Shurkin - May 28 2015 - 8:00am

InstantShoe- Adjustable Customized Footwear Uses Memory Shape Composite

A new adjustable female shoe based on memory shape composite of leather and Nitinol material allows fitting the shoe to the foot shape after obtaining anthropometric measurements through a portable scanner and modifying it with a machine that completes the ...

Article - News Staff - May 25 2015 - 11:31am

Microscopic Sonic Screwdriver Invented

A team of engineers have created tiny acoustic vortices and used them to grip and spin microscopic particles suspended in water. The research by academics from the University of Bristol's Department of Mechanical Engineering and Northwestern Polytech ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 3 2015 - 10:00am

How To Cut A Vortex Into Slices

A lot of problems, associated with the mixing of the liquid in the microchannels, could be solved via proper organization of the inhomogeneous slip on the walls of these channels, according to a joint group of Russian and German scientists lead by Olga Vi ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 9 2015 - 11:30am

To Explore Mars With Likes Of Occulus Rift & Virtuix Omni- From Mars Capture Orbit, Phobos Or Deimos

I've talked before about how life on present day Mars could be vulnerable to Earth life. If only humans could be sterilized of other life, like a plant seed. But sadly, we can't do that, and it would kill us to try. Recent ideas, and experiments ...

Article - Robert Walker - Jan 4 2017 - 12:39am

Lego Optics Lab: Beam Splitter

 I finally took apart a broken computer projector. Some of the optics were burned or broken but I managed to salvage several lenses, mirrors, filters, and a curious little glass cube.   ...

Article - Steve Schuler - Jun 8 2015 - 12:08pm

Lego Optics Lab: Small Lens Holder

In my previous article, I started building a Lego optics lab with a dichroic prism I salvaged from an old computer projector that I took apart (I used the prism to build a beam splitter). I also salvaged several lenses, mirrors, and filters. To continue t ...

Article - Steve Schuler - Jun 29 2015 - 9:24am