Recently, I gave my introductory physics course a fairly standard problem, based on the Matter and Interactions textbook. I've modified the question, but it goes something like this: Here's a diagram showing the spacecraft at the two different positions (along with a vector indicating the velocity). I suppose I should state that the only significant…
Science and the people who study it have taken a pretty big beating during the first year of the Trump administration. Trump has appointed climate science skeptics and outright deniers to head the Environmental Protection Agency (Scott Pruitt), the Department of Energy (Rick Perry), and the Council on Environmental Quality (Kathleen Hartnett). Trump’s nominee to…
If you want to do big, serious science, you’ll need a serious machine. You know, like a giant water-cooled computer that’s 200,000 times more powerful than a top-of-the-line laptop and that sucks up enough energy to power 12,000 homes. You’ll need Summit, a supercomputer nearing completion at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. When…
To get to work in the morning, Omar Akbari has to pass through a minimum of six sealed doors, including an air-locked vestibule. The UC Riverside entomologist studies the world’s deadliest creature: the Aedes aegypti mosquito, whose bite transmits diseases that kill millions each year. But that’s not the reason for all the extra security.…
The collapse of the diagnostic company Theranos shook the world of venture-funded biotechnology. Theranos was a “unicorn,” valued by its investors at $9 billion at one point. That made its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, the youngest woman billionaire in the world for inventing a technology that, she said, allowed pharmacies and doctors’ offices to do a…
Now that Spider-Man: Homecoming is available on DVD and digitally, I can start analyzing the physics in my favorite parts of the film. Normally, I love looking into the physics of superheroes—the flying, the swinging, the clobbering. But this time, physics shows up in a different way. Near the beginning of the movie, a scene…
No two screams sound alike. They can swing in pitch, like the The Wilhelm; blare cacophonous, like The Donald Sutherland; or fire off spasmodically, like (my favorite) The Shelley Duvall. Few vocalizations are as nuanced as the fearful shriek. And yet, no matter the cry in question, you always know a scream when you hear…
No one can deny that there are some great physics videos out there in the wild internet. Today, I found this one floating around—featuring what appears to be a worker that needs to get out of a cone-shaped hole. Oh sure, he could possibly climb up the side or maybe even use a rope as…
This story originally appeared on CityLab and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. During this year’s record-breaking hurricane season, oil rigs and refineries were just as exposed as any structure on the precarious Gulf Coast, and their owners were limited to the same options as everyone else: evacuate, prepare, and hope the storm was merciful. The devastation Harvey…
The new GOP regime looks to be catastrophic for science: The first Trump budget proposed slashing funding on everything from ocean research to satellites. And work on climate science? “We consider that to be a waste of your money,” Trump’s budget director said. Science is under attack; there’s no other way to put it. Apart…