Applied Physics

How a fish ‘broke’ a law of physics ... says a press release from Bristol University. A great credit to the French is how, amid the turmoil of their revolution, so many of their scientists and mathematicians continued to come out with great discoveries (provided that they managed to keep their heads, unlike Antoine Lavoisier.)  Among their number was Étienne-Louis Malus (1775 – 1812) who served with Napoleon’s army in Egypt, but on his return to France developed his work in optics.  They didn’t have Polaroid in those days, but they did have Iceland spar crystals, whose properties…

One morning last March, engineers at General Electric’s Nela Park research lab in Cleveland, Ohio, opened a century-old time capsule hidden in a corner stone of Building 307. Inside the cavity and beneath a layer of sand was a standard 40-watt Mazda incandescent bulb made at the time of Thomas Edison. The engineers brushed off the dirt, screwed the lamp into a socket, and slowly powered it on. The bulb’s soft yellow glow was like a faint echo from the Big Bang that set GE on course to become a global industrial powerhouse. Two months later, researchers at the very same lab turned on a new…

A dynamic gel made of DNA mechanically responds to stimuli in much the same way that cells do. This DNA gel, at only 10 microns in width, is roughly the size of a eukaryotic cell, the type of cell of which humans are made. The miniscule gel contains within it stiff DNA nanotubes linked together by longer, flexible DNA strands that serve as the substrate for molecular motors. We won't have artificial muscles and self-propelled goo just yet, but Omar Saleh and Deborah Fygenson of UC Santa Barbara feel like they have gotten a lot closer. Using a bacterial motor protein called FtsK50C, the…

Can researchers improve the quality of matter akin to that found in plasma screens? A new study improves the understanding of plasma sources, where a certain portion of the particles are ionized.  Under certain circumstances, plasma tends to form structures - filaments of electric discharge that are like mini-lightning. Researchers recently investigated barrier discharge, which features at least one electrical insulating material within the discharge gap that acts as an electrically insulating barrier and can be used as a plasma source. They investigated the transition from a highly…

The small is weird. No – I do not mean supposed "quantum weirdness", which is not* about small stuff. The non-quantum behavior of the small is counterintuitive enough. Many misconceptions could be avoided with some awareness about how the surfaces of objects, even smooth looking metal surfaces, look like at small scales (think mountainous battle fields). Perhaps the best way to introduce the surprising world of nanometer** sized objects like molecules, is by talking about water. Whatever you are looking at, you are looking at water! The water molecule is not only small and thus likes to get…

Now that we had a hot summer, local weather effects are once again proof of global warming. The American mid-west had resisted BBC articles and journal press releases about how global global warming was and stayed about the same before finally doing its part and having a heat wave. That anomalous summer has put climate change back at the top of the political agenda but despite that, no one is comfortable doing actual weather and climate forecasting. Well, almost no one. Professor Sergej S. Zilitinkevich of the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) wants to revise the way physics treats…

The Apocalypse is coming.  If it isn't an earthquake, Ragnarok, Doomsday, Nibiru, GMO corn, global warming or the Mayans, it could surely be that Iranians get tired of explaining why Israel doesn't appear on the maps of any Muslim countries and decide to make all of the maps of the world consistent. Nuclear armageddon, folks.  Since nuclear destruction was a given after 1945 - heck, that hysterical Doomsday clock has barely moved despite nuclear disarmament and the collapse of the Soviet Union (it quickly embraced global warming when nuclear war was passé) - researchers made sure to…

The X-Ray laser was a main weapon envisioned for the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).  The descendants of that technology are used to image nano-scale structures the size of individual proteins.  This is a prime example of how science is not a moral pursuit. Science simply reveals tools for our use.  History. In the early 1980's, Ronald Reagan was president and had been talking tough when it came to the Soviet Union. After reviewing our operational plans and facilities for fighting a nuclear war, he came to a grim conclusion.   We could…

Since it's the weekend and you are reading this, you are intellectually curious about science, which means there is also a statistical likelihood you enjoy beer. Because of the natural confluence of interests that cause science and beer to go hand-in-hand, we have written a lot of articles about beer. Beer foam, beer goggles, Jurassic beer, whether or not cold filtering is better, deep fried beer; you name it, we have it.  What we did not have, in all of those academic discussions about beer, were any engineers with a way to make beer for emergency situations. Fortunately, while we have…

Snake Pliskin, the anti-hero of "Escape From New York", didn't get that name because of his armor, but one day there could be a lot of snake-like soldiers running around. Soldiers, and certainly civilians that can be be helped in the medical engineering sector, may one day get artificial implants with minimal abrasion, inspired by biology, or armor with all kinds of neat mechanical properties. Over the last 150 Million years so, snakes have evolved a way to ease the stress on their bodies due to constant friction forces incurred in their legless locomotion; their skin.  Regardless…