Swans on Tea

Solder is a nice woody word, even though it contains tin. And for even more irony (and silvery), there is a new solder that contains iron and silver, and eliminates lead.
Magnetic solders are a leap towards green alternatives
By subjecting the solder to an alternating magnetic field, the solder can be selectively heated. This keeps [...]

How The Chilean Quake Moved An Entire Planet
Listen to a colleague of mine explain that we can’t measure the time or pole shift, because they’re too small.

I linked to a gravitational redshift experiment that was recently published, and have had a chance to read the paper. It’s quite cool. I had been dismayed at the first couple of popular summaries, but this one is pretty good and as I had indicated, the press release is pretty good for a [...]

Hamiltonian Function: The Nissan Leaf
Energy efficiency analysis of the new electric car that’s been advertised recently.

What Is Time? One Physicist Hunts for the Ultimate Theory
Sean Carroll is interviewed by Wired, on the subject of the arrow of time. He should write a book or something.
[W]hy was the entropy ever low to begin with? Why were the papers neatly stacked in the universe? Basically, our observable universe begins around 13.7 [...]

My Solar System simulation

Global warming advocates ignore the boulders
He’s certainly not a scientist, nor, seemingly, is he scientifically literate.
In his latest steaming pile of op-ed on global warming, Mr. Will attempts to call into question the “settled science” of global warming by discussing virtually no science at all. Seriously — a bunch of politicians not being able [...]

Atlas V launch earlier this month. The rocket goes supersonic as it passes through the cloud layer that was prettily refracting light from the sun (a sun dog), with the shock wave visible in the clouds and disrupting the effect. The fun starts at about 1:50, and is replayed a few times after [...]

Pictured: Incredible gravity-defying ant that can carry 100 times its body weight
The photo shows an Asian weaver ant hanging upside down on a glass-like surface and holding a 500mg weight in its jaws. It was captured by Dr Thomas Endlein of Zoology department at the University of Cambridge who was investigating the sticky feet [...]

Not that I need any help in that area.
I’ve been watching the curling televised in the afternoons this past week, and I have to apologize to the US teams — as soon as I tuned in, you tanked. Choked. Collapsed. Obviously, I’m bad luck and it’s all my fault. But I still [...]

Record grooves under an electron microscope
It has CD pips, too, for those of you too young to remember what a “record” is.
But if you put a needle in the groove and moved them relative to each other, the needle would wiggle back and forth. Use a transducer to convert it to an [...]

13-year-old helps save daylight saving in Utah
I know this is supposed to be an uplifting story of how clever a teenager is, in a sort of afterschool special kinda way, but I’m more cynical than that. I see it as a bunch of blowhard politicians happily debating something they do not understand, have made [...]