Astronaut Don Pettit invents a zero gravity cup to drink coffee, and anything else, in weightlessness.
Category Archives: Video
Once the Rockets Are Up, Who Cares Where They Come Down?
… “That’s not my department,” says Wernher von Braun. (Tom Lehrer)
The Quadroheckicopter
Frost, Meet Leiden. Leiden, Frost.
Gray Matter: In Which I Fully Submerge My Hand in Liquid Nitrogen
My hand is like a red-hot poker to the liquid nitrogen, but an insulating layer of nitrogen gas forms- a phenomenon known as the Leiden-frost effect- keeping my hand safe and warm for a fraction of a second.
Trees Come Out of the Air
Fun to Imagine 1: Jiggling Atoms
Richard Feynman, one of America’s most renowned physicists, sits down in an armchair at his Californian home to explain the physics that underpins the world around us. In this first episode, he explores the beauty of the way atoms interact with each other and reveals why fires feel hot.
edit: Link doesn’t work (anymore) outside of the US.
So, here:
Anatomy of a RickRoll
I swear this takes you a really neat video. Honest.
This is a visualization of the network packets of a YouTube video, slowed down 12 times. You can clearly see the handshake, some odd client/server negotiation, and the full ramp-up.
…
The data is from a real tcpdump of the first 4 seconds of Rick Astley’s music video.
Robots Perpendicular to a Plane
A week ago it was geckos. Now, I can almost hear Samuel L. Jackson saying, “There are Mothef—— robots on this Mothef—— plane!”
Beavers … iiiin … Spaaaaace
Time lapse footage taken by Oregon State University alum Don Pettit during his time on the International Space Station. This one shows Earth from day to night.
Cool. Especially the aurorae.
Can I Get Insurance for it?
Secrets of the gecko foot help robot climb
A Stanford mechanical engineer is using the biology of a gecko’s sticky foot to create a robot that climbs. In the same way the small reptile can scale a wall of slick glass, the Stickybot can climb smooth surfaces with feet modeled on the intricate design of gecko toes.
If you watch the video, you might notice that they appear to have edited out a section discussing the need for a tail — the only kept the part when they added the tail and tell us the “now stickybot can climb.” It’s too bad, because I think there’s a bit of interesting physics there. It’s mentioned briefly in this video, where you can see a real gecko with its tail pressing against a surface, the hind legs acting as a fulcrum, so that it can move its upper body back toward the surface.
"Woman Scorned" Now Available in Bottles
Creating Hell in a Pop Bottle
Some outstanding slow-motion combustion, thermodynamics, and safety advice. Half a gram of water turns into about a liter of Hydrogen + Oxygen. Then, boom!
[W]hen H2 and O2 burn, there is actually a reduction in the number of molecules of gas, which would, if all other conditions were the same actually produce a reduction in pressure, however the temperature of the exhaust gas is not the same, it goes from about 300K to 3000K which in a confined system would increase the pressure from about 1 to 10 atmospheres. This is getting close to the failure threshold of these bottles, and also represents a significant rate of release of energy.- caution is required, and this really isn’t something you should be trying unless you really know what you are doing.