Daily Archives: January 20, 2010

Patently Obvious?

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Inventing a New Economy

What patent applications can tell us about America’s economic prospects.

A quick glance suggests several conclusions: First, the view that a worldwide technological and innovative explosion began in the mid-1960s and continues until now is correct. The sheer number of patent applications—which had remained relatively static from the 1880s until the 1950s—suddenly grew dramatically, coinciding with the onset of the computer and telecom revolutions. Second, not surprisingly, the patent offices receiving the vast majority of this explosion have been those in nations with the greatest economic growth during that period—initially the United States and Japan and more recently China, Korea, and Russia.

This ties in with yesterday’s comment about basic research being the raw material of later applications.

This Ain't Like Dusting Crops, Boy!

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Dispersion of Sound Waves in Ice Sheets

The most striking thing about these recordings is the synthetic-sounding descending tones caused by the phenomenon of the dispersion of sound waves. The high frequencies of the popping and cracking noises are transmitted faster by the ice than the deeper frequencies, which reach the listener with a time lag as glissandi sinking to almost bottomless depths.

And there’s more: …Sounds like Star Wars Blasters (which they do)

[M]any people were thinking about the cause of such sounds and the resemblance to the famous laser gun sounds in Star Wars. First: the dispersion of sound waves, meaning higher frequencies reach the listeners ears earlier than deeper frequencies, is not only an effect experienced in ice sheets, metal is another solid that can perfectly manipulate the speed of frequencies travelling through the material. Because huge thin metal plates are very rare to find (infinte plate called in physics), long wires are the best to experience the dispersion effect. The longer the wire the stronger the down glissando effect. Slinkies are good toys to demonstrate that.

Float Like a Butterfly, Sting like Faraday

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It’s a knockout

Verena Kräusel and her colleagues performed their trick by beefing up an existing electromagnetic-forming machine. Such machines use a bank of capacitors to discharge a current rapidly through a coil. The coil converts the current into a powerful magnetic field. When the component to be worked is placed next to such a machine, the coil induces in it a corresponding field. Like poles repel, and the repulsion between the two fields is strong enough to make the metal distort.