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The staircase that defies science
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The Loretto staircase – built within the Loretto Chapel in New Mexico, USA – is by far the most remarkable staircase ever built. It features a double-helical spiral structure that spans 20 feet in altitude, and remains intact without the use of a central pole. The staircase is built mostly out of wood and is held together by wooden pegs and glue rather than nails or other hardware. The staircase is venerated by Catholics as being miraculous, not due to its marvel, but based on the events that have been passed down by the Sisters of chapel ever since it was built in the late 1800s. Before the construction of the Chapel could be completed, the architect responsible for the building's design had suddenly died, leaving the nuns without access to ...
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5611 |
bio_man |
2 years ago |
First ever exoplanets discovered outside our galaxy
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Using a technique known as gravitational microlensing, Oklahoma University astrophysicists were able to detect several exoplanets within a quasar 6 billion light-years away called RX J1131-1231 (depicted in the illustration above, left). Their research shows that the planets range in size from masses as small as the Moon to ones as great as Jupiter. The idea behind this technique is derived from the Einstein's theory of general relativity. Since light waves bend when they pass through space warped by a large gravitational presence, a planet passing in front of a star can act as a lens to focus the light, creating a temporary sharp increase in a star’s brightness, and changing the apparent position of the star. Currently, it's the only known ...
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1099 |
bio_man |
6 years ago |
How to Prepare for Your Next Physics Exam
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Taking a physics exam without first practicing problem solving is like pinch-hitting in a crucial game without having taken batting practice.Preparing for an exam in physics has two parts. You must make sure that you know how to work problems given a list of formulae, and you must ensure that you can reproduce the formulae. These tasks are rather separate. The first step in ensuring that you can work problems is to keep up with the assignments as they are due. There is simply too much to learn to postpone this work to the last minute. As you go along you should make sure that you have mastered each type of problem. You should review assigned problems that you got wrong and get help with those where you do not understand what you did wrong. Y ...
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4932 |
bio_man |
6 years ago |
Hammers are no match for this glass
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The tough-yet-fragile physical properties of the tadpole-shaped pieces of glass known as Prince Rupert’s drops have puzzled physicists for as long as, well, there have been physicists. Bash the head with a hammer, and a drop gets barely a scratch. But break off its thin tail, and it shatters into fine powder. Researchers long ago realized that the strength of the drops - named for Prince Rupert of Bavaria, who presented five of them to Britain’s King Charles II in 1660 - has something to do with stresses in the glass created when a drop is made by letting a blob of molten glass fall into water, so that it cools rapidly. Twenty years ago, a pair of researchers took high-speed video of a drop disintegrating showing that, when the tail is brok ...
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3818 |
bio_man |
6 years ago |
How to learn anything using the Feynman Technique
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Richard P. Feynman (1918 - 1988) was a New York City born, Nobel Prize winner in Physics in 1965. He was an American theoretical physicist known for his work in quantum mechanics, as well as in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model. Feynman developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams (below). His passion for science and education later lead him to develop a universal learning model, now called the Feynman Technique, that could help you learn practically anything no matter how difficult or complicated. As long you or the educator uses simple terminology (no complicated words or terms), you ...
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15459 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
China closed the world's highest and longest glass bridge after just 16 days
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The world’s longest glass-bottomed bridge in China's Hunan Province, which opened just over two weeks ago has been closed to the public. The Brave Men’s Bridge is 984 feet long, and spans a 590-foot deep crevasse. People attempting to make the terrifying walk across resorted to closing their eyes, crawling, and holding on to the rope guide for dear life. According to officials, the bridge is attracting too many tourist, deeming it unsafe. The glass floor is made up of a 24 millimeter (approximately one inch) thick glass, and there’s nothing but air below. ...
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5100 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
How the Turing machine works
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A Turing machine is a hypothetical machine thought of by the mathematician Alan Turing in 1936. Despite its simplicity, the machine can simulate ANY computer algorithm, no matter how complicated it is. Put simply, the Turing machine isn't a physical machine, but you can imagine it as an never-ending line of tape, broken down into squares. On each of those squares is a 1, a 0, or nothing at all. The machine reads one square at a time, and depending on what it reads, it performs an action - it either erases the number and writes a new one before moving on, or simply moves on to a different square. Each of those actions, which mathematicians call a 'state', are determined by the mathematical algorithm or problem the Turing machine has been desi ...
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4817 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
Non-Newtonian fluids are no longer a mystery
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A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid with properties that differ in any way from those of Newtonian fluids - it changes its viscosity almost instantly under stress, so you can punch it as a liquid and it’ll turn into a solid (watch the video below), and you can literally walk across a pool of it. On the contrary, a Newtonian fluid is defined as the perfect fluid, where its viscosity is influenced mostly by its temperature and pressure. So if you have water at a moderate temperature and pressure, it will continue to act like a liquid no matter how much you punch it. Depending on how you manipulate it, the fluid-like substance can change states from a liquid to a solid, but how this happens has remained a conundrum amongst physicists. Scientists ...
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2988 |
duddy |
7 years ago |
The glue of the future, today
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Before I begin telling you about this fascinating new glue (adhesive), there's a thing or two you need to know about the animal that inspired it all, the gecko. Geckos are small lizards that have the ability to run up walls and scurry across ceilings with the help of tiny rows of hairs on their feet known as setae. Setae generate a multitude of weak attractions (called Van der Waals forces) between molecules on the two surfaces that add up to a secure foothold. Unlike glue or tape, a gecko’s sticky feet attach and detach effortlessly, which made it a perfect case study for engineers to model. To create their artificial gecko adhesive, a Stanford team of scientists started by making silicone micro-wedges, which imitated gecko hair. They asse ...
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18564 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
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10874 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Here's what a magnetic field actually looks like
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If you want to be an effective science teacher, demonstrations are a must in the classroom. If you want to grab the attention of a young student then make it obvious, as shown in this visualization of a magnetic field!
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8338 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
All trees, regardless of size, break once this wind speed is reached
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The magic number is 42 m/s (94 mph). Using mathematical data and physical experiments, scientists say they have found the law that governs the resistance of wooden beams under stress. According to the study ( link), researchers hung weights from wooden rods and pieces of pencil lead to record the amount of force needed to snap the cylinder. As one might sense, they found that for a fixed length, increasing the diameter made the rods stronger: They could bend more before breaking. This would make tall skinny trees most vulnerable, but, as the team points out, trees don’t grow taller without getting disproportionately thicker as well. By incorporating established laws of tree allometry - which explain the relationship of tree size parameters ...
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12761 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Slow down!
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This semi-circular bridge in Uruguay, known as the Laguna Garzón bridge, was designed to force drivers to slow down and enjoy the panoramic views of this amazing landscape. The concrete structure consist of two semi-circular bridges, joined at either end to create a ring, and was built to replace a raft crossing between the cities of Rocha and Maldonado. The bridge also has a pair of pedestrian walkways.
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4101 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
Watch how the ancient Babylonians tracked Jupiter in the sky
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It's hard to fathom the difficulties our ancestors had to contend with given how our world has advanced with technological sophistication over the past century. We shouldn't, however, underestimate the power of the human-mind, and how everything that was discovered in the past paved the way for the practices used today, especially those used in science. Of the very first astronomers, the ancient Babylonian were the first to use simple arithmetic to predict the positions of celestial bodies. Evidence reveals that these astronomers, working several centuries B.C.E., also employed sophisticated geometric methods that foreshadow the development of calculus. Historians had thought such techniques did not emerge until more than 1400 years later, ...
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5406 |
bio_man |
8 years ago |
Time to update the science textbooks
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The periodic table has been given four new elements, changing one of science’s most fundamental pieces of knowledge. Elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 will now be added to the table’s seventh row and make it complete, after they were verified by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry on December 30 th. The new elements were discovered by team from Japan, Russia and the USA, who will all get to name their own new elements. All of the four new admissions are man-made. The super-heavy elements are created by shoving lighter nuclei into each other and are found in the radioactive decay - which only exists for a tiny fraction of a second before they decay into other elements. The elements have been worked on since at least 2004, when st ...
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16526 |
duddy |
8 years ago |
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