Collaborate Disseminate
If you were asked to imagine a particle accelerator, you would probably picture a high-energy electron beam contained within a kilometers-long facility, manned by hundreds of engineers and researchers. You probably wouldn’t think of a chip smaller than a fingernail, yet that’s exactly what the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s Accelerator …read more
It’s no secret that the average smart phone today packs an abundance of gadgets fitting in your pocket, which could have easily filled a car trunk a few decades ago. We like to think about video cameras, music playing equipment, and maybe even telephones here, but let’s not ignore the …read more
Continue reading 36C3: Phyphox – Using Smartphone Sensors For Physics Experiments
It seems that tensegrity structures are trending online, possibly due to the seemingly impossible nature of their construction. The strings appear to levitate without any sound reason, but if you bend them just the right way they’ll succumb to gravity.
The clue is in the name. Tensegrity is a pormanteau …read more
Researchers have created an audio speaker using ultra-thin wood film. The new material demonstrates high tensile strength and increased Young’s modulus, as well as acoustic properties contributing to higher resonance frequency and greater displacement amplitude compared to a commercial polypropylene diaphragm in an audio speaker.
Typically, acoustic membranes have to …read more
Continue reading A Single-Digit-Micrometer Thickness Wood Speaker
When it comes to architectural features, there are probably not many as quintessentially memorable as arches. From the simplicity of the curved structure to the seemingly impossible task of a supposedly collapsable shape supporting so much weight in mid-air, they’ve naturally fascinated architects for generations.
For civil engineers, learning to …read more
We all use antennas for radios, cell phones, and WiFi. Understanding how they work, though, can take a lifetime of study. If you are rusty on the basic physics of why an antenna radiates, have a look at the very nice animations from [Learn Engineering] below.
The video starts with …read more
Continue reading Bent Electric Field Explains Antenna Radiation
The universe is generally believed to be expanding at an accelerating rate, thanks to a mysterious force dubbed dark energy. But how exactly does this force work? Researchers in the UK have conducted an experiment to test a hypothesis that th… Continue reading Atomic experiment to detect dark energy fails to feel the force
Astronomers have detected a gravitational wave signal that appears to have been caused by a black hole swallowing a neutron star. Aside from being an incredible cosmic cataclysm to witness, this detection is important for another reason: it m… Continue reading Gravitational waves point to a black hole swallowing a neutron star
Few things are as mysterious as dark matter, the strange substance that appears to outnumber ordinary matter by a ratio of five to one. Now, a physicist from Johns Hopkins University has outlined a new theory that helps to explain the stuff b… Continue reading Did dark matter arise before the Big Bang?
When scientists need to learn about something, recreating it in the lab is often one of the best ways – and now that even applies to the Sun itself. Physicists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have built a mini-Sun in the lab, and use… Continue reading Lab-made "Mini-Sun" sheds light on the real thing