Swans on Tea

Following the suggestion and subsequent reminder (nothing like a deadline to get the creative juices flowing) from gg at Skulls in the Stars, I’ve got two “old” papers that I’m going to summarize.
I recommend choosing something pre- World War II, as that was the era of hand-crafted, “in your basement”-style science. There’s a [...]

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Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine
Story of Richard Feynman working at Thinking Machines.
Many a visitor at Thinking Machines was shocked to see that we had a Nobel Laureate soldering circuit boards or painting walls. But what Richard hated, or at least pretended to hate, was being asked to give advice. So why were people always [...]

The surprisingly rich physics of peeling paper
[T]he physics of peeling paper almost exactly mimics the stick-slip movement of tectonic plates, right down to the statistics of the time between “quakes” and the correlations between released energy and aftershock activity.

From the preprint, “Line creep in paper peeling:”
For paper, we use perfectly standard copy paper, with an [...]

An electric fly-swatter, over at Built on Facts
Press the button on the side and swing it at the fly in the air; there’s a spark and a pop, and the fly falls out of the sky like a little brick. No mess, and dementedly entertaining (I’ll admit it). Yeah it’s a little redneck, but effectiveness [...]