{"id":2137,"date":"2009-04-12T05:39:39","date_gmt":"2009-04-12T10:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=2137"},"modified":"2009-04-12T05:39:39","modified_gmt":"2009-04-12T10:39:39","slug":"the-candy-cummings-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/2137","title":{"rendered":"The Candy Cummings Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The fastball can&#8217;t get any faster, we&#8217;ve seen a changeup (slow light) and a knuckleball (aberration from atmospheric turbulence), so now <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciam.com\/article.cfm?id=high-intensity-lasers-curve\">High-Intensity Lasers Throw Scientists a Curve<\/a><\/p>\n<p>OK, let&#8217;s start with the bad:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Researchers defy the laws of physics by making a laser beam bend<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I really dislike that phrase, and whenever it&#8217;s used invariably the story goes on to explain how the phenomenon <em>follows<\/em> the laws of physics and it&#8217;s really just the researchers being clever in how they can manipulate one of the variables.  As they did here \u2014 they reshaped the beam profile of the laser.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The researchers reshaped the profile of these pulses into that of an Airy beam using a thin plate of glass with a particular variation of thickness across the plate. &#8220;The phase shifts introduced by this plate turn the bullets from round in shape to the Airy beam that looks more like a triangle,&#8221; Polynkin says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The beam ionizes the air along its path, which shifts the trajectory of the beam.  Within limits.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Overall, the self-bending beam does have its limits\u2014the bullets do not deviate from a straight line by more than the beam&#8217;s diameter. &#8220;If the beam is one centimeter [in diameter],&#8221; Polynkin says, &#8220;it won&#8217;t curve more than one centimeter.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thebaseballpage.com\/players\/cummica01.php\">Candy Cummings<\/a> is the purported inventor of the curveball)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The fastball can&#8217;t get any faster, we&#8217;ve seen a changeup (slow light) and a knuckleball (aberration from atmospheric turbulence), so now High-Intensity Lasers Throw Scientists a Curve OK, let&#8217;s start with the bad: Researchers defy the laws of physics by &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/2137\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}