Collaborate Disseminate
Science fiction authors and readers dream of travelling at the speed of light, but Einstien tells us we can’t. You might think that’s an arbitrary rule, but [FloatHeadPhysics] shows a …read more Continue reading You Are Already Traveling at the Speed of Light
Lego! It’s a fun toy that is popular around the world. What you may not realize is that it’s also made to incredibly high standards. As it turns out, the …read more Continue reading Building an Interferometer With Lego
Is fire conductive? As ridiculous that may sound at first glance, from a physics perspective the rapid oxidation process we call ‘fire’ produces a lot of substances that can reduce …read more Continue reading Is Fire Conductive Enough To Power a Lamp?
We are deeply intuitively familiar with our everyday physical world, so it was perhaps a bit of a surprise when researchers discovered a blind spot in our intuitive physical reasoning: …read more Continue reading Turns Out Humans Are Terrible At Intuiting Knot Strength
The Brennan torpedo, invented in 1877 by Louis Brennan, was one of the first (if not the first) guided torpedoes of a practical design. Amazingly, it had no internal power …read more Continue reading Pulling Backward to Go Forward: The Brennan Torpedo Explained
Two guys — Stern and Gerlach — did an experiment in 1922. They wanted to measure magnetism caused by electron orbits. At the time, they didn’t know about particles having …read more Continue reading The Stern-Gerlach Experiment Misunderstood
You don’t have to know how a car engine works to drive a car — but you can bet all the drivers in the Indy 500 have a better than …read more Continue reading Intuition about Maxwell’s Equations
How do you keep a glass of beer cold the longest? By using science, of course. At least that’s what one researcher has turned to, finding the optimal shape of vessel that will keep a poured beer chilled for as long as possible while you drink it.Contin… Continue reading Beer science: This popular glass keeps your brew coldest, says physics
If you need to measure the temperature of something, chances are good that you could think up half a dozen ways to do it, pretty much all of which would …read more Continue reading Measuring Temperature Without a Thermometer
Physicist John Archibald Wheeler made groundbreaking contributions to physics, and [Amanda Gefter] has a fantastic writeup about the man. He was undeniably brilliant, and if you haven’t heard of him, …read more Continue reading Remembering John Wheeler: You’ve Definitely Heard of His Work