Swans on Tea

. . . and hit me with that laser beam. Or rather, hit Al, and rip it apart, in slow motion.
Way to go, Frankie.

Cool musical step sequencers that use optical input.

Google’s Zurich office
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Infrared Swan
The temperature range in these images (and others on the site) mean that these were taken with a thermal imaging camera; 300-310K blackbody spectra peak somewhere between 9 - 10 microns, rather than a regular ol’ digital camera with the IR filter disabled.
Frankly, though, most of the other birds and mammals in [...]

Making Lichtenberg figures. First video seems to be with an external discharge
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This video is using an internal charge. Mind you, absolutely anyone who has a large particle accelerator at their disposal can do this.
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Be patient … it’s worth it
Web product display, Rube Goldberg style
via The Quantum Pontiff

I got a fluorescent clipboard a while back. I love the effect.

The edge is much, much brighter than the rest, though it’s a little easier to see this in person. The clipboard is acting as a waveguide for the emitted fluorescence; any light emitted within the total internal reflectance angle is being transported [...]

Scarcely able to believe his eyes, Ralph Mellish looked down. But one glance confirmed his suspicions. Behind a bush, on the side of the road, there was *no* severed arm. No dismembered trunk of a man in his late fifties. No head in a bag. Nothing. Not a sausage.
And [...]

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It took me more than a few seconds to be convinced that it wasn’t just two people with a box over their torsos.
Big Dog
Much less time to figure this one out
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(’twas the feet [...]

Google Sky
Much like Google Maps in that there are areas that are not mapped in great detail, and others where you can zoom all the way in (it shouldn’t be all that hard to guess that this correlates with interesting features in the night sky). No “street view” feature, yet.
via The Quantum Pontiff

Cryogenic dark matter search (CDMS) signals converted into visual and audio
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(OK, who didn’t have one of these in their dorm rooms in college? )
There’s a pepsi-through-the-nose funny part, too, (at least according to my calibrations) about halfway through. What a [...]

For a peek at a few more illusions, of the “interchanging 2-D and 3-D” variety, as well as some history & physics behind it all, head on over to Skulls in the Stars.