Physics at the Beach

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Sandcastle Science via physics and physicists

“[W]et sand’s strength is more or less constant for anywhere between one and 30 per cent water.” That’s because there’s a trade-off between the strength of each bond between the grains – which lessens as the sand gets wetter – and the number of bonds, which increases as the sand becomes more saturated.

A Relatively Good Concert

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Musical Relativity at the ArXiv blog

From the paper:

It is known that certain triads sound “happy”, while others sound “sad”.
Why this is so has been a question on minds of many musicologists, composers, musicians and
music lovers for a very long time and theories have been put forward. References to some works in
this area can be found in the recent book by Loy. But the question of “Why?” is beyond the scope
of this work. In this paper, we simply show that under specific physical conditions, a chord sounds
happy or sad depending not only on the observer’s subjective interpretation, but also on his frame
of reference. In other words, the musical “mood” depends on the observer’s state of motion.

In other words, “that note sounds flat!” becomes “you’re moving at the wrong speed!”

Just Stopped In

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to see what condition my condition was in

What’s Wrong with the Sun? (Nothing)

This report, that there’s nothing to report, is newsworthy because of a growing buzz in lay and academic circles that something is wrong with the sun. Sun Goes Longer Than Normal Without Producing Sunspots declared one recent press release. A careful look at the data, however, suggests otherwise.

&@#*%$

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The use of symbols to represent swearing actually has a name: grawlix

[I]t looks to have been coined by Beetle Bailey cartoonist Mort Walker around 1964. Though it’s yet to gain admission to the Oxford English Dictionary, OED Editor-at-Large Jesse Sheidlower describes it as “undeniably useful, certainly a word, and one that I’d love to see used more.”