Homely Scientist

Ah science fair projects.  Oddly enough I never participated in any, my school didn’t have them.  But we did have the yearly science project for class.  Let’s see for chem I tested various water proofing agents on leather.  Bio was a bacteria experiment.  Physics, I played with wing design on gliders.  I never considered making a fusion reactor.  Well a 17 year old in Michigan thought about it, and did it:
Now I don’t know what’s most surprising, the fact that it was a 17 year old that made a device that can fuse two hydrogen atoms together, or the fact …read more

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This is just so cool to watch.  A levatating magnet!  It isn’t magic or science fiction, it’s just basic physics and the wonder of superconductivity.
The resulting repulsion is counteracted by the downward force of gravity and the magnet hovers neatly above the superconductor, at least until it warms to above its critical temperature.
Just for completeness, I should also point out that the magnet is effectively pinned in position by an effect known as flux pinning, which is caused by magnetic field lines getting snarled up by impurities in the superconductor. But, if you set the magnet spinning it will spin …read more

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Hsien sent me a link to Science With Me a little while ago, I didn’t have a chance to blog it until now, but she did!  Anyway, it’s a cool site with a free membership so you and your kids can learn about static electricity (which I had my own run it with today) and fingerprints.  Everything seems to be written in nice, kid-friendly language and the experiments are short and easy (maybe messy too!).
Looks like I know what I’ll be doing this weekend with the kids!  Oh, what to choose, what to choose…
Technorati tags: kid science, science education, experiments …read more

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Quick, name Newton’s laws … eh, don’t bother I have them summarized below.  Regardless sometimes the concepts of inertia, equal and opposite reactions, and force can be hard to wrap your head around.  Over on ScienceBase I found this little YouTube video on these very principles. Oh and here’s the list:
Newton’s laws underpin so-called classical mechanics, as opposed to quantum mechanics or relativity theory. I’ve summarised them below, but you’ll get a much clearer understanding of bodies in motion if you watch the video.

Objects stay still or move with constant velocity unless a force pulls on them or gives them …read more

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I can always count on Laura for good links in the morning.  Okay, except the gnome one, but she hadn’t looked at it first, so no hard feelings there.
So here is a scary one, well at least for us caffeine addicts.  A group tested the effect of "mind-altering" substances on spiders and their web making skills.  The results are below:

Eeek!  What I found funny was that the mary jane dosed spiders just lost interest after a while.  Okay if this is what caffeine does, I’d hate to see nicotine.  Oh, wait I know that one.  It would kill them.
Tags: spiders, …read more

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From Wired (which has a cool series of on this day … )

1958: Data sent back by Explorer I confirms the existence of a radiation belt girdling the Earth. Because the mission is under the control of one James Van Allen, this field becomes known as the Van Allen radiation belt.
The Van Allen belt is, in effect, two croissant-shaped belts. Trapped within these belts, which run in depth from roughly 125 to 620 miles above the Earth, are radioactive particles capable of penetrating about 1 mm of lead.

Tags: Van Allen belts

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You have to love bringing the good old chemistry set into the 21st century.  Come on, foaming test tubes is sooo last century.  DNA is hot man (sorry for you DNA folks, yes I caught the pun … old DNA sequencing techniques used radioactive materials, so they are "hot").  Hsien (our faithful leader) highlights a fun DNA kit for kids.
Can you imagine?  Dad, I need a DNA swab from you, we suspect you ate half of the last cookie ….
Tags: science for kids  DNA

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From the BBC,

The researchers found the beetle’s shell was covered with ultra-thin scales, measuring just five micrometres (millionths of a metre), with highly random internal 3D structures.This irregular structure, explained Dr Vukusic, was the cause of the beetle’s whiteness.While colour, he explained, could be created through highly ordered structures, whiteness is achieved through very random features that scatter all colours simultaneously."The degree of whiteness given the scales’ thinness is the really impressive thing," Dr Vukusic added."We can create this quality of white synthetically, but the materials need to be much thicker. This could have many applications."

Why is this a …read more

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Thanks again to Laura for this really cool link (she fessed up she got a calendar for Xmas with a cool link a day).  Ever want to know more about snow and snowflakes than you ever thought possible?  This is the place.  I haven’t scratched the surface of the site, but I’m sure there will be cool (ha ha) projects and stuff to do.
Speaking of snowflakes, on CSY:NY last night one of the CSIs fix a snowflake to a slide with superglue to look at its structure and then be able to set a time.  Okay, I know CSI is …read more

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As a good follow-up to yesterday’s post on middens, is something that I always do when visiting a beach, I look at my feet.  Huh?  Well, what I mean is, I look at what kind of beach I"m standing on.  Sandy?  Pebbly?  Rocky?  I’m not going to get into examining the sand itself (though it is cool if you find a beach made up of crushed shells), but what you’re standing can tell you a lot about how the beach forms, grows, shrinks, etc.
The beach in the midden example (at least above the high-tide line is made up of small …read more

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