NeutralAxis

Wired.com has an experiment you can perform at home with chocolate candies to calculate the speed of light. Its the same principle as behind the method Cliff Stoll used to calculate the speed of sound in this video.   i.e. Frequency x wavelength = speed.  The cleverness is in the means of measurement. (continue reading…)

Can you imagine this guy as your 8th grade science teacher?  Amazing!  When I watched this TED Talk by Clifford Stoll, I couldn’t help but think of the Tigger song.

A wonderful thing is a Tigger;
A Tigger’s a wonderful thing.
Their tops are made out of rubber,
their bottoms are made out of spring
They’re bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, bouncy,
fun, fun, fun, fun, fun,
The most wonderful thing
about Tiggers is:
I’m the only one.

(continue reading…)

What nuclear fuel can be carried safely in your pocket, has a nearly inexhaustible supply in nature, leaves minuscule waste, and can run a reactor that could fit within a medium sized suburban house?  Need a hint?  Its named after a Norse god and was pretty much forgotten about by the nuclear power industry because it was too safe. (continue reading…)

Hot off last night’s viewing of Dead Snow featuring zombie Nazis, today I find this nugget on Wired.com about DARPA’s efforts to reduce battlefield fatalities due to blood loss by inducing a state in which the brain and heart shut down, thus stopping bleeding, until the soldier can be evacuated. (continue reading…)