The required reading/viewing apparently did not include the Tacoma Narrows Bridge for the Russian engineers who built this
The bridge across Volga river is 1260 meters long and 32 meters wide. It was opened less than a year ago in October 2009.
Monthly Archives: May 2010
Inside Out
Happy Belated Metrology Day
It was yesterday. Oh, well.
Rachel Maddow interviews Tom O’Brian, who is the head of NIST’s Time & Frequency division.
Kinda funny (to me) to hear O’Brian to continually use English units in his examples.
At Least it Doesn't Involve the LHC
Street Corner Science
Normally, learning your physics on the streetcorner is a dicey thing. But not in Chicago on June 6
Street Corner Science:
Ask a Nobel LaureateFind us in front of the Chicago Wrigley Building on the afternoon of Sunday, June 6 and ask the Nobel Prize winning Physicist, Dr. Leon Lederman, anything you want about science, technology, and the physical world!
Simple Toys
Paintball guns: spool valve vs poppet valve
Rube Goldberg device (full-screen version — it’s modular — complete with annoying music)
A toy I’ve seen. Not sure if/where this is incorporated in functioning machines.
Radial engine and Wankel rotary engine (more engines at a site to which I’ve previously linked)
Geroter aka “Generated Rotor”
The Days of Our Lives
The Mystery of Sand Flow Through an Hourglass
Physicists have long known that the flow of sand through an hourglass is entirely different from the flow of liquid. In the case of a liquid, the rate of discharge depends on the pressure at the aperture which is determined by the height of the liquid above.
But things are different in granular media. In 1895, a German engineer called Janssen discovered that the pressure at the bottom of a container of granules does not depend on the height of the grains above. He reasoned that the grains form chains and bridges that transmit their weight to the side of the container where they are supported by friction. So the pressure increases asymptotically with depth up to a threshold.
MiB
Meet The New Villain In ‘Men In Black III’
Any bets on whether this can beat the odds involving the third movie in any franchise massively sucking (or is that sucking massively)?
The Half-Monty
Non-Normalizable Probability Measures for Fun and Profit
An eccentric benefactor holds two envelopes, and explains to you that they each contain money; one has two times as much cash as the other one. You are encouraged to open one, and you find $4,000 inside. Now your benefactor — who is a bit eccentric, remember — offers you a deal: you can either keep the $4,000, or you can trade for the other envelope. Which do you choose?
Stop the World!
Foucault’s pendulum is sent crashing to Earth
The original pendulum, which was used by French scientist Leon Foucault to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth and which forms an integral part of Eco’s novel’s labyrinthine plot, has been irreparably damaged in an accident in Paris.
The pendulum’s cable snapped last month and its sphere crashed to the marble floor of the Musee des Arts et Metiers.
In 1851, Foucault used the pendulum to perform a sensational demonstration in the Paris Pantheon, proving to Napoleon III and the Parisian elite that the Earth revolved around its axis. Such was its success that the experiment was replicated throughout Europe.