Ball makes U-turn from foul to fair on Brian Dozier’s incredible infield hit (Video)
Some stories are saying it defies the laws of physics (which, unfortunately, does not defy the laws of journalistic hyperbole) but the stretch at about 0:45 gets it right: it’s like a cue shot in pool. There’s a lot of spin, and it looks a lot like a trick shot.
After spending four hours in makeup, 2012 NBA Rookie of the Year Kyrie Irving heads to the courts of New Jersey to devour some young bloods in a pick-up game.
The derecho that nailed, among other places, northern Virginia on Friday night. My abode’s power has been out for more than 48 hours now.
Light And ‘The Illusion Of Knowledge’
Often, the familiar hides the deepest mysteries. This is certainly the case with light, one of the take-it-for-granted physical phenomena that surrounds us in everyday life. We wake up to it, we turn it on and off, rarely thinking of what it really is. A good thing, for even the greatest physicists pause before talking about the nature of light.
A sundial that spells out the equinoxes and solstices.
Big storm. Tree down where I originally parked last evening, but I moved my car into better shade. Power out. Fire alarm (luckily false, because the fire department too a long time to show). Hot. Eventually, too hot.
Fled the state in search of an internet connection and juice, yes, the precious juice. Hoping things have been restored by this evening. Enjoy your leap second tonight.
A few weeks ago Doug Natelson had a post about handy numbers to know … if you’re doing some kind of physics involving liquid nitrogen or liquid helium, or anything else in which a condensed-matter/nanoscale physicists might be involved. (I assume this is in addition to knowing basic constants)
But I do atomic physics. A few favorite things that help me out if I’m away from a calculator or reference book, with some additions from my colleagues. I probably knew more of these, once upon a time.
— The speed of light can be written as 30 GHz-cm. Thus a 30 GHz signal has a wavelength of 1 cm. 1 Ghz means 30 cm.
— 1 nanosecond is 1 foot (light travel in a vacuum)
— a 1 eV photon is 1240 nm
— Room temperature is 1/40 eV (kT)
— Planck’s constant is 0.4 amu-micron-meters/second (useful for deBroglie wavelength calculations)
— There are about $latexpi$ x 10^7 seconds in a year
General reference:
– \(sqrt{g} = pi \) (to about 0.3%) Handy for Pendulum problems — just cancel or combine the two values.
Spiral-cut your wieners for good topology, excellent condiment retention, and extra caramelization
My first painful thought was as a euphemism for a weird circumcision ritual.
Ancient text gives clue to mysterious radiation spike
An eerie “red crucifix” seen in Britain’s evening sky in ad 774 may be a previously unrecognized supernova explosion — and could explain a mysterious spike in carbon-14 levels in that year’s growth rings in Japanese cedar trees. The link is suggested today in a Nature Correspondence by a US undergraduate student with a broad interdisciplinary background and a curious mind.
I used to love catching fireflies as a kid, but they didn’t seem to be around as much as I got older. I assumed it was a byproduct of spraying for mosquitos.