Giant paint explosion
Gav and Dan blow up paint tins in what easily is the messiest and bloodiest episode ever.
Physics
Coriolis Effect
Does your toilet water drain differently than in the other hemisphere? Is it because of the Coriolis effect? Hank has some things to clarify about these questions, and more in this edition of I Don’t Think It Means What You Think It Means.
Make your own Van De Graaff generator
Fran Scott shows us how you can make your own Van de Graaff using household objects. How big a spark can you create?
Small scale von Karman Vortices
The photo above shows von Karman vortices observed in a muddy puddle near Eger, Hungary. A pebble caused the saber-shaped perturbations in this approximately 12 by 16 in (30 by 40 cm) puddle — the result of melting snow flowing through a tire track. The direction of flow here is from left to right. In a fluid, be it air or liquid, an [...]
Water boiling at Everest
Boiling water at various altitudes on the trek from Lukla to Everest Base Camp.
Your mass is NOT from Higgs Boson
The Higgs mechanism is meant to account for the mass of everything, right? Well no, only the fundamental particles, which means that electrons derive their mass entirely from the Higgs interaction but protons and neutrons, made of quarks, do not. In fact the quark masses are so small that they only make up about 1% of the mass of the proton (and a similar fraction of the neutron). The rest of the mass comes from the energy in the gluon field. Gluons are massless, but there is so much energy in the field that by E=mc^2 there is a significant amount of mass there. This is where most of your mass comes from and the mass of virtually everything around you.
The Connected Universe
This is a film trailer for an upcoming documentary, that explains the new scientific theory in Nassim Haramein’s physics paper titled “Quantum Gravity and the Holographic Mass”.
Tags: Nassim Haramein
What happened to antimatter?
Particles come in pairs, which is why there should be an equal amount of matter and antimatter in the universe. Yet, scientists have not been able to detect any in the visible universe. Where is this missing antimatter? CERN scientist Rolf Landua returns to the seconds after the Big Bang to explain the disparity that allows humans to exist today.
The times and troubles of the Scientific Method
Science is working tirelessly night and day to disprove its own theories about how the universe works (or at least, that’s what science thinks it’s doing). Hank tells us a quick history of how we came to create and adopt the scientific method and then gives us a vision of the future of science (hint: it involves a lot more computers and a lot less pipetting).
The Vacuum is NOT Empty
An atom is mostly empty space, but empty space is mostly not empty. The reason it looks empty is because electrons and photons don’t interact with the stuff that is there, quark and gluon field fluctuations.
What Is Déjà Vu?
Dr. Michio Kaku explains one theory behind déjà vu and asks, “Is it ever possible on any scale to perhaps flip between different universes?”
Jetpack rocket science
Jetpacking was awesome fun! Despite the fat lip I had a great time. I think knowing a bit about physics actually helps fly the jetpack. It works on the same principle as a rocket (Newton’s 3rd law) but unlike the shuttle, you don’t carry your own propellant with you. Instead, water is pumped out of the lake by the jetski at up to 60 litres a second. It is then fired out of the nozzles at around 15 m/s creating 1800 N of force, the equivalent of about 150 fire extinguishers. On me this can produce acceleration of about 1.5g’s.
Einstein right again! Rapidly spinning Pulsar follows general relativity
Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope along with other radio telescopes, John Antoniadis, a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn and lead author of the paper, says the bizarre pair of stars makes for an excellent test case for physics.
