The Quicker Picker-Upper

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Ultra-powerful laser makes silicon pump liquid uphill with no added energy

By using a laser to etch a pattern in the silicon surface.

[I]nstead of sticking to each other, the water molecules climb over one another for a chance to be next to the silicon. (This might seem like getting energy for free, but even though the water rises, thus gaining potential energy, the chemical bonds holding the water to the silicon require a lower energy than the ones holding the water molecules to other water molecules.) The water rushes up the surface at speeds of 3.5 cm per second.

Yet the laser incisions are so precise and nondestructive that the surface feels smooth and unaltered to the touch.

Science as Art

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Science graphs and figures as art.

The Large Hadron Colander

This is a tumblr mostly for images and diagrams from papers. This way I read more papers, and have something pretty to look at when I am done. Science can be art.

Also, sometimes I post pictures of manatees. I have no self control.

Update: more science-as art-sites

Science Is Beauty
Fresh Photons

(Weird. I got these links in a comment in the moderation queue, but when I went to approve it, the comment did not appear. But the links remain, like the Cheshire Cat’s smile.)

A Monument to Falling Up

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Odd Things I’ve Seen: Anti-Gravity Monuments

To market the mission of the [Gravity Research Foundation], Babson made large donations to various colleges with the stipulation that they each set up one of these strange monuments. Curiously, none of the three colleges that he founded have anti-gravity monuments, those colleges being Babson College in Wellesley, MA; Webber International University in Babson Park, FL; and Utopia College in Eureka, KS. Utopia College has a bit more of an excuse, though, since while the other two still exist, it went defunct years ago. Naturally, no place with a name like that can operate for long without irony, self-consciousness, or feelings of inadequacy rotting it from the inside.

A list of the monuments located in New England is given, with a short description

Tufts University in Medford, MA: Located between Barnum Hall and Ballou Hall at the north corner of the President’s Lawn, this stone has actually been incorporated into a campus tradition. Students who graduate with degrees in cosmology kneel at this stone while professors drop an apple on their heads. Once again, gravity-related humor is so underrated.

It's not Magic

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This is cool: a micromachined device, which has been cooled into its ground stated.

Scientists supersize quantum mechanics

A team of scientists has succeeded in putting an object large enough to be visible to the naked eye into a mixed quantum state of moving and not moving.

This, not so much

Quantum mechanics just got REAL

The fuck? In my day, we were taught, with the help of non-graphing calculators and paper notebooks, that quantum mechanics was a lot of wand-wavey nonsense about wave/particle duality that you never had to worry about because it belonged to some magical tiny land that no one visits with their actual eyes. This…this is straight-up magic.

Ohdearohdearohdear. Quantum mechanics is not magic. It’s great that it evokes a sense of wonder when the experimental boundaries are pushed, but considering established science to be “wand-wavey nonsense” diminishes it and makes it easier to accept real nonsense.

Watch Out, Winnie the Pooh

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The History of the Honey Trap

The trade name for this type of spying is the “honey trap.” And it turns out that both men and women are equally adept at setting one — and equally vulnerable to tumbling in. Spies use sex, intelligence, and the thrill of a secret life as bait. Cleverness, training, character, and patriotism are often no defense against a well-set honey trap. And as in normal life, no planning can take into account that a romance begun in deceit might actually turn into a genuine, passionate affair. In fact, when an East German honey trap was exposed in 1997, one of the women involved refused to believe she had been deceived, even when presented with the evidence. “No, that’s not true,” she insisted. “He really loved me.”

May the Phallus be With You

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Japan: Nothing says springtime like a penis festival

It may sound like a sophomoric gag. But these are folk rites going back at least 1,500 years, into Japan’s agricultural past. They’re held to ensure a good harvest and promote baby-making.

I don’t know if you’ll get the same flash popup, but mine said “Sponsored by Siemens,” which made me spit Pepsi on my monitor. I now await the spam that the keywords of this post will bring.

Ponder the Parabola

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In basketball, shooting angle has a big effect on the chances of scoring

It’s the elegant arched trajectory naturally formed by any projectile, from an artillery round to a tomato, moving in a gravitational field. Parabolas have been extensively studied since people started throwing stuff at each other, and they shape the outcome of many ballistic sports, such as baseball, golf, football, shot put and more. But they reach their apex in basketball, where field goals and free throws demand precision control of parabolas.

One Ringy-Dingy, Two Ringy-Dingy

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Over at Cosmic Variance, JoAnne tells a story about dialing Pi on the phone:

Several years ago, before pi-day was famous, a student called the phone number associated with the digits in pi that appear after the decimal point, i.e., 1-415-926-5358. Apparently this is rather common now, and in fact, appears to be promoted as a mnemonic for the first 10 decimal places for those folks we need to have those numbers handy at all times. But this story happened in earlier times, back before the Bay Area split into several area codes. And, as the clever reader has already guessed, that student reached the SLAC main gate. How cool to phone pi and reach the main gate of a major national scientific research laboratory!

I remember the Cesium atomic clock frequency as a phone number: 919-263-1770. It should be a number in the Raleigh, NC region, but there is no listing for it. I’ve never actually called it.