Applied Physics

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 from shoulder height, and it will bounce back 92 percent of the way to the drop-off point. Super Balls also are just as bouncy vertically as they are horizontally, and they spin oddly. "Physicists love it because it has interesting physical properties," said Rod Cross, retired professor of physics at the University of Sydney in Australia,…

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 process directly in the shop. The "InstantShoe" prototype expected to be out on the market at the end of 2015. Foot diseases represent an important societal problem and the large majority of people affected are women. The Hallux Valgus, commonly known as bunion, is the most frequent foot deformity and affects 20% of adult women. This…

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?” True, regulations in that part of Canada have changed relatively recently to permit an additional storey, but the point still stands. This can hardly be said to keep pace with the new manufacturing technologies and developments in engineered wood products that are causing architects and engineers to think very differently about the…

 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 magnetism that has been in place since 1841, when physicist James Prescott Joule discovered that iron-based magnetic materials changed their shape but not their volume when placed in a magnetic field. This phenomenon is referred to as "Joule Magnetostriction," and since its discovery 175 years ago, all magnets have been characterized on…

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 the program he said: Unfortunately the jury is still out on whether mobile phones can lead to brain cancer, but studies suggest it’s so. Teo’s name appears on a submission recently sent to the United Nations. If you Google “Charlie Teo and mobile phones” you will see that his public statements on this issue go back years. The submission he…

Liquid metal electronics like antennas are intriguing because the shape and length of the conducting paths that form an antenna determine its critical properties such as operating frequency and radiation pattern. Using a liquid metal, such as eutectic gallium and indium, allows for modification of antenna properties more dramatically than is possible with a fixed conductor.  But a significant and unfortunate drawback slowing the advance of such devices is that they tend to require external pumps that can't be easily integrated into electronic systems, so North Carolina State…

Currently, burning fossil fuels is the main source of energy here and around the world.  Those fuels emitting greenhouse gasses are considered by most associated scientific organizations in the world as contributing to a potential global catastrophe in the making.  With this, we are critically dependent on electricity for almost every necessity we have in our standard of living.  A very important concept in electricity production is the term baseload.  This term is often used when concluding the need for nuclear energy to be in the mix of clean electricity sources for…

By Sara Rennekamp, Inside Science -- Last week's deadly derailment that sent an Amtrak Northeast Regional train careening off its tracks has many people asking how such a tragedy could happen. Investigators on the case have not announced an official cause just yet, but it seems that speed played a major factor: the train was, apparently, traveling down the track at 106 mph, more than 50 mph over the posted speed limit on the bend where the train derailed, according to National Transportation Safety Board member Robert Sumwalt. On a purely physical level, the train's derailment due to…

New research has brought us closer to understanding the health benefits of coffee. Monash researchers, in collaboration with Italian coffee roasting company Illycaffè, have conducted the most comprehensive study to date on how free radicals and antioxidants behave during every stage of the coffee brewing process, from intact bean to coffee brew. The team observed the behaviour of free radicals - unstable molecules that seek electrons for stability and are known to cause cellular and DNA damage in the human body - in the coffee brewing process. For the first time they discovered that…

Bats are masters of flight, even at night. The best pilots in World War II would have to be envious of their steep nosedives and sharp turns. But when we think about bats and flying, most people think of echolocation and their built-in radar. But that doesn't help while banking hard left. Instead, it is the sensation of touch - bats have a unique array of sensory receptors in their wings and provide feedback to during flight. A new study in Cell Reports suggests neurons in the bat brain respond to incoming airflow over the wings, noted by touch signals, and they make rapid adjustments to…