Swans on Tea

Solar furnace. Cooks hot dogs, melts steel.
You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

The Physics of Surfing (Part Two: Tubes and Barrels)
But why do some waves break as hollow grinding tubes while others crumble more gently and forgivingly? Let’s examine a little wave dynamics in order to assess the situation. Ocean waves are created by wind blowing over the ocean surface, as the kinetic energy of the air [...]

Mathematician Cracks Mystery Beatles Chord
The opening chord to A Hard Day’s Night is also famous because for 40 years, no one quite knew exactly what chord Harrison was playing. Musicians, scholars and amateur guitar players alike had all come up with their own theories, but it took a Dalhousie mathematician to figure out the exact [...]

General Kenobi, years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars. Now he begs you to help him in his struggle to explain what a hologram is, and isn’t.
I only watched a few minutes of CNN’s election coverage before becoming ill (figuratively) and switching off the TV, so I messed where he called their [...]

Exploring Liquids: An Experiment
Fun, and physics, with fluids
Here’s a fun experiment you can try using the contents of your kitchen cupboard. Explore the effects of different densities and learn about refraction, viscosity and the planet Jupiter. You’ll need five different liquids; I used golden syrup, dishwashing liquid, water, alcohol and vegetable oil. I also used [...]

Career Advice from Dr. Pion
Engineering and physics and programming are all hard work. Hard work can be fun, or it can be a drag. Money can make up for it being a drag, but many students who are just in it for the money will struggle with motivation when faced with the years of hard [...]

Lorentz Transformations at Backreaction

I’ve been seemingly running in quicksand ever since returning from the 7th Symposium on Frequency Standards and Metrology, what with the pileup of work while I was away (and everything seemingly breaking during that period of time) and getting ready for our clocks to leave the nest. But now, as I’m burning up my [...]

Splitter
A physics-based puzzle game in which you have to guide your character to the goal by cutting wooden objects and joints.

The Physics of Surfing (Part One: Dropping In)
[P]addling by itself doesn’t get you into the wave, because you actually cannot paddle as fast as the wave is moving, and you need to match the speed of the wave if you want to ride with it. In order to catch up to that wave speed, it’s [...]

Ultrafast Lasers Show Snapshot Of Electrons In Action
In a paper to appear in the Oct. 30 issue of Science Express, the online version of the journal Science, the CU team describes how they shot a molecule of dinitrogen tetraoxide, or N2O4, with a short burst of laser light to induce very large oscillations within the [...]

Optics basics: Inverse problems at Skulls in the Stars.
Plenty of other techniques exist for measuring the internal structure of objects, using a variety of different types of waves. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) subjects a patient to an intense magnetic field, and makes an image by measuring the radio waves emitted when the field is [...]