The brilliant young PhD student Ralph Alpher working with his advisor George Gamow were about to publish a major work about the origins of the elements after the Big Bang. In a burst of inspiration, Gamow invited the physicist Hans Bethe to include his name on the paper, even though he had not contributed to it at all. That way the paper would have been authored by Alpher, Bethe, Gamow, a play on the first three letters of the Greek alphabet alpha, beta, and gamma. It was a delightful pun, and their one page paper serendipitously ran in the April 1st issue of Physical Review Letters.
Monthly Archives: May 2009
Random Laser
The Laser Glow of an Atom Cloud
A normal laser is essentially a gain medium inside a reflective cavity. The light is amplified by the medium as it bounces back and forth between the cavity’s mirrors. A random laser has no cavity. Instead, tiny “mirrors,” or scatterers, are added to the gain medium, causing photons to bounce around and become amplified by the medium, before escaping in all directions. For example, a container of micron-sized particles floating in water in which a laser dye has also been dissolved can emit laser light if pumped with external light. Random lasers do not require the same precise manufacturing as normal lasers, so they could be inexpensive to produce. Potential applications include digital displays, light emitting paints, and temperature sensors.
Not Sunspots
Compton Lecture: Steven Chu
The energy problem and the interplay between basic and applied research
Slow Toys at Play
Trying out the new camera on some of the toys in the office. The trebuchet and the Zero blaster.
Both filmed at 420 fps.
Doo Doo Transpires
The Science of a Really Bad Day
Interview with Peter J. Bentley, PhD, the author of The Science of Why Sh*t Happens
Not Inherently Naughty
littleBits is an opensource library of discrete electronic components pre-assembled in tiny circuit boards. Just as Legos allow you to create complex structures with very little engineering knowledge, littleBits are simple, intuitive, space-sensitive blocks that make prototyping with sophisticated electronics a matter of snapping small magnets together. With a growing number of available modules, littleBits aims to move electronics from late stages of the design process to its earliest ones, and from the hands of experts, to those of artists, makers and designers.
You Just Made the List, Buddy
Adobe Updater popped up on my computer this morning, telling me to update Acrobat, and for once this didn’t happen while I was actually using the program or my browser — it seems to usually check only when the program is in active use for maximum inconvenience. So I installed the patch, and descended into hell. Once the updater was done, it re-launched the program, which was suddenly possessed. Besides the head spinning, pea soup spewing and saying, “your mother sews socks that smell,” it proceeded to open every goddamn pdf file on my computer. OK, not strictly true — it stopped when it reached 50, because that’s the limit on open files. But when I clicked on the error message, it just came up with another one, because it was continuing to try and open more files. Killing and relaunching the program just repeated the experience.
After Googling and being unable to uncover any instance of this happening (so there’s no posted solution), I tried to contact Adobe through their website. They want you to register for online help, and this requires that you opt-in to their spam.
There’s no way to say “don’t contact me.” Screw you, Adobe. I’ll reinstall.
aka The Big Captain Crunch
But Rich Hall snigletified this first: The Cheerio Effect
In fluid mechanics, the cheerio effect is the tendency for small wettable floating objects to attract one another.
[…]
The phenomenon of molecules clumping applies to any (macroscopic) object that floats or clings to the surface of a liquid. This can include a multitude of things, including hair particles in shaving cream and fizzy beer bubbles. The effect is not noticeable in boats and other large floating objects since the force of surface tension is relatively small.
All is not well in Cheerio-land, however. Cheerios might be considered a drug, in a daft legalistic way similar to how tomatoes are a vegetable.
Throwing You a Curve
The break of the curveball illusion.
In baseball, a curveball creates a physical effect and a perceptual puzzle. The physical effect (the curve) arises because the ball’s rotation leads to a deflection in the ball’s path. The perceptual puzzle arises because the deflection is actually gradual but is often perceived as an abrupt change in direction (the break). Our illusions suggest that the perceived “break” may be caused by the transition from the central visual system to the peripheral visual system. Like a curveball, the spinning disks in the illusions appear to abruptly change direction when an observer switches from foveal to peripheral viewing.