Chemicus is a service set for Russian chemists/patriots; made of fine ceramics and adorned with a traditional Gzhel pattern, it repurposes laboratory test tubes and beakers for home-kitchen experiments.
Interesting that the kettle and vase have a biohazard symbol on them.
And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, Again
“We also get to talk about tension and compression,” he said, though he avoids technical terms. “We talk about pushing and pulling.”
His big innovation is using blankets to wrap two large cushions so that they create a large wall panel that can stand on its edge. In fact, he creates several such panels. Then he uses another blanket or sheet to attach adjoining panels, in effect connecting the walls of the fort.
Physics demonstrations: the Pythagoras cup
This is the trick of the Pythagorus cup, also known as the Pythagorean cup or the Tantalus cup! It can be used as a nice prank to play on someone (don’t use red wine, unless you need to replace your carpeting anyway), but also serves as a nice demonstration of some physics of fluids.
The Food Lab: My Favorite Cooking Hacks
I already covered their beer-cooler sous-vide hack. For the wok hack,
When filled part way with coals and allowed to ignite, the well-ventilated chimney channels all of that heat energy upwards.
True for the convection, which is the most important heat transfer going on. (But the radiation is still pedantically being emitted out the other sides.) And the ice-cream-without-an-ice-cream-maker sounds intriguing. I’ve had liquid nitrogen ice cream, which is a truly geeky hack that achieves the same goal of quick freezing so you get small crystals.
via @rjallain (via @seriouseats)
Flying object propels itself by flipping inside out
The design is based on the inverted cube shape discovered by inventor and mathematician Paul Schatz. By dissecting a cube into three parts, two star-shaped units can be produced at either end with an invertible belt in the middle section which is the same shape as the flying band. The system reproduces the entire structure: it opens to release the band while the ends remain on the ground as a docking station.
The video seems odd, though — it looks like they speed it up in spots, making it more difficult to tell what’s actually going on.
First place I saw this didn’t mention what the combustion reaction was, but via kottke:
If you mix calcium carbide and water, it produces acetylene. Acetylene is extremely flammable and can launch 55-gallon drums into the air when ignited.
Yosemite National Park, the High Sierra, and the Eastern Sierra are some of the most beautiful places on earth. Ever since I serendipitously won a trip to Yosemite when I was 18, the beautiful Range of Light has captured my heart and become my home. Nothing brings me more joy than to share this life changing beauty with others.
Ever since I became fascinated with timelapse photography almost 2 years ago, after seeing the work of Tom Lowe, I’ve wanted to do a piece on Yosemite and the Sierra. Now after almost 2 years of shooting, I’m thrilled to share. I hope you enjoy my vision of my home, the majestic Yosemite & Sierra. Best viewed Full Screen with Sound 🙂
There’s a neat effect about halfway in, with the spray from waterfalls making a rainbow, but since it’s time-lapse, you can see the rainbow move as the sun’s position changes.
Facts is survived by two brothers, Rumor and Innuendo, and a sister, Emphatic Assertion.
Services are alleged to be private. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that mourners make a donation to their favorite super PAC.
Gender Issues Start Sooner Than You Think
It’s a good post, linking to another good post. Go read it/them.
The more of this stuff I see, though, the more I think that many women-in-STEM initiatives in higher ed are aiming at the wrong target. If you want to really change things, you need to start earlier. About eighteen years earlier, probably more (since the minds you really need to change are the parents’).
(Of course, to be fair to those initiatives, they’re working on changing what they can. College faculty have a fairly minimal ability to affect the conditions even at their own children’s schools and day care centers, but they have a good deal more flexibility to affect their own classes and departments. And even too little, too late is better than nothing at all.)
From my own perspective, I used to observe and even weigh in on some of the STEM gender discussions, only to have the attitude that “it’s university-level discrimination, and only university-level discrimination, dammit” prevail, and anyone not toeing the line getting lambasted, regardless of the validity of their argument. This happened too many times, in a setting of a bunch of scientists, which I found to be dismaying. Thus I usually duck or run the other way when the subject comes up these days. I have no use for conversation where volume is substituted for facts.