Recently, I had the chance to see a presentation of cool scientific magic: the Meissner-Ochsenfeld effect.
What you can see here is a magnet (the yellow-red cylinder) levitating above a small dish of superconductive material, and consequently free to spin in mid-air. The superconductor must be kept at liquid nitrogen temperature (-196 degrees C) to provide [...]
The Large Hadron Collider just achieved the first collisions among protons at 7 tera electronvolts (TeV) at center of mass, smashing together two beams of protons at 3.5 TeV each. The setup has been compared to shooting needles from opposite sides of the Atlantic and have them impact halfway.
What we have today in front [...]
It is always a pleasure when scientific findings are used for impressive exhibitions of beauty and harmony. Sachiko Kodama is a Japanese professor and artist who took advantage of new materials to produce an amazing display of beauty
The Morpho Spirals work by applying a music-controlled magnetic field to a ferrofluid, a class of substances also [...]
I found this very interesting site about the periodic table of elements, from the University of Nottingham. For each element, there’s a video showing the characteristics of the element, and a brief commentary. Worth checking out if you always had some curiosity about the chemical elements, what they look like, and how they behave.
They also [...]
I must confess: I have a crush on non-newtonian fluids. They are so strange and beautiful… They defeat intuition by respecting the laws of nature… and they are fun to play with!
Fluids can be characterized by a parameter known as viscosity. We all have direct experience of viscosity, as it measures the “ease of flow”: [...]
Since I moved abroad, I rediscovered good TV. And Mythbuster is definitely an interesting show. Adam and Jamie are so fantastic in exceeding expectations every time. But this time, they did more.
So, the legend says that two trucks smashing onto each other pancake a car so badly that nobody is able to spot it in [...]
How to stop a beam of protons traveling at 99.99 % of the speed of light and able to melt 500 kg of copper in less than a second ?
I’ve found this interesting article about how to dispose of the proton beam from the Large Hadron Collider. The amount of energy and the focus of [...]
A few days ago I received a letter. While opening it, I was able to spot a considerably bright blue luminescence coming from the line where the glue separated. I heard many times about this phenomenon, but never able to witness it. It is called triboluminescence, and arises by charge separation created by the mechanical [...]
