Monthly Archives: August 2011

FFS is Probably not "Fox Fails Science"

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FFS: Fox Fails Physics

In short — and we’ll describe it in more detail below — their “expert” argues that the 1st law of thermodynamics and Le Chatelier’s Principle explain why carbon dioxide can’t cause global warming. This is not only wrong, this is high school physics-level wrong. Either the FOX folks are incredibly stupid, or stunningly sociopathic. I’m guessing both.

Short version of this (and many other anti-AGW arguments) is that if they are right, then insulation of any type can’t possibly work. Congratulations, you’ve just proved that wearing a coat in winter is pointless. Surrender your coat.

The Reach of Outreach

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Uncertain Principles: The Status of Science: We Have No-one to Blame but Ourselves

People are generally in favor of outreach activities, of course, but in the same diffuse way that the general public is in favor of tax increases. If you ask them whether they’re in favor of outreach to the general public, they’ll say yes, but pressed to support it in a concrete way, they’ll find reasons not to.

Got Milk?

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Protip: add a few drops of milk to water to make lasers show up better. You want particulates to scatter the light, and little globules of fat do just fine.

Here you can see total internal reflection of the laser off of the surface of the water. The structure of the beam is probably because I didn’t stir the water, so the milk was only mixing due to the residual motion of it and the water. You can see it’s settled a bit at the bottom.

Oh Buoyancy!

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Via Zapperz

A man who obviously has a “girth” larger than the inner radius of a floating inner tube, appears to have gone through it unscathed, both for him and the inner tube.

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The inner diameter of the tube is around a meter (I’m guessing this guy is bigger than a 40-in waist). If the tube part is 10 cm across, that’s about 8L of volume being submerged, displacing 8L of water, exerting ~80N of buoyancy force, or more than 17 pounds. Another way to look at it is if you filled the tube with water it would weigh that much. Is it reasonable that the man’s “spare tire” would hold that up? In addition to the malleability of flab, water is a pretty decent lubricant.

Not Affiliated with Möbius Strip

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MÖBIUS

Twenty-one large triangles animated by Melbourne, throughout Federation Square. MÖBIUS is a sculpture that can be configured into many cyclical patterns and behave as though it is eating itself, whilst sinking into the ground. The result is an optical illusion and a time-lapse of people interacting with the sculpture and moving through Melbourne’s landmark location throughout the day.

A Water Bridge in Air

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ArXiv pdf

[T]he floating water bridge remains stable without breaking for big aspect ratios and unbent by gravity due to the effect of the induced polarization forces at the interface, generating normal stresses that counteract not only capillary forces but also gravity.