I recently received Secret Science by Steve Spangler. I finally got some time to try out the Floating Ping-Pong Balls and Flying Toilet Paper experiment with Jackson and Charlie. They can barely say Bernoulli, but really got a kick out of floating balls and various toys with a leaf blower. We even go a Mr. Potato Head to float! They do not fully understand the principles, but it sure gets them excited about science and experiments.
I can’t wait for our next experiment.
MacBreak Video 174 reviewed the Griffin AirCurve at Macworld. The AirCurve is a non-powered acoustic amplifier.
AirCurve looks like a simple, elegantly minimal stand for your iPhone. But inside is a coiled waveguide “horn’ that collects the sound from the built-in speaker of your iPhone, amplifies it (by about 10 decibels), and projects it into the room.
At first glance, it appears to be using the Fibonacci Spiral. I can see how it uses the same principles as the cochlea of the human ear. It is hard to tell for sure, but a pretty neat device for your ipod.
Categories: Math · Science · Technology
The Golden Ratio, Phi, shows up again.
Snail Car Is Born When Math, Dreams Collide:
In a project that would make Franz Kafka grin, a 30-year-old bug has metamorphosed into a snail. The resulting creation, an art car called The Golden Mean, is a golden gastropod that glows in the dark and shoots rings of fire from its feelers. It also seats six comfortably.
Blacksmith John Sarriugarte, who fabricates custom home furnishings, worked with his wife, Kyrsten Mate, to transform a 1966 VW Bug into the rolling piece of art. The Golden Mean is making its debut at the Burning Man art festival this year.
The Periodic Table of Videos is an amazing web site that has a video demonstration for each element. I wish I had something like this in high school chemistry.
Tables charting the chemical elements have been around since the 19th century – but this modern version has a short video about each one.
Check out Sodium (Na).
Categories: Science
Any ideas? It is 1 mile. Convert other units of measure to everyday objects using Sensibleunits.com.
Try this one:
50 kilograms = 37 MacBooks Air
The converter will go both ways!
Categories: Just For Fun · Math · Science · Think About It
Storage is a hot commodity in my organization. We have 100TB’s and still need more. We have many databases that grow daily, some with millions of records. When I take a step back, I say “Wow, that’s a ton of data”. I have heard that Yahoo has an open “tab” with NetApp buying terabytes per day.
I was recently asked what I thought the human brain capacity was in terabytes. I recalling hearing around 10TB. I dug a bit on the Internet and found these estimates:
Robert Birge (Syracuse University) who studies the storage of data in proteins, estimated in 1996 that the memory capacity of the brain was between one and ten terabytes, with a most likely value of 3 terabytes. Such estimates are generally based on counting neurons and assuming each neuron holds 1 bit. Bear in mind that the brain has better algorithms for compressing certain types of information than computers do. Source
The human brain contains about 50 billion to 200 billion neurons (nobody knows how many for sure), each of which interfaces with 1,000 to 100,000 other neurons through 100 trillion (10 14) to 10 quadrillion (10 16) synaptic junctions. Each synapse possesses a variable firing threshold which is reduced as the neuron is repeatedly activated. If we assume that the firing threshold at each synapse can assume 256 distinguishable levels, and if we suppose that there are 20,000 shared synapses per neuron (10,000 per neuron), then the total information storage capacity of the synapses in the cortex would be of the order of 500 to 1,000 terabytes. (Of course, if the brain’s storage of information takes place at a molecular level, then I would be afraid to hazard a guess regarding how many bytes can be stored in the brain. One estimate has placed it at about 3.6 X 10 19 bytes.) Source
The brain has about 100 billion nerve cells, so at least that many bits (about 10 gigabytes) could be stored, assuming the brain uses binary logic. But it probably doesn’t do so. Instead, information is believed to be stored in the many connections that form between the cells. This is a much larger number: Current estimates of brain capacity range from 1 to 1000 terabytes! It would take 1,000 to 10,000 typical disk drives to store that much information. Source
It looks like we could replace all of our storage systems with one human. Any volunteers?
Categories: Science · Technology
A fascinating video demonstrating Ruben’s Tube a.k.a the Standing wave flame tube.
Categories: Just For Fun · Math · Science · Think About It
I would have never believed it!
MythBusters Episode 97: “Airplane on a Conveyor Belt”
Myth: An airplane cannot take off from a runway which is moving backwards (like a treadmill) at a speed equal to its normal ground speed during takeoff.
Busted: First some small-scale tests were performed with a model airplane on a treadmill and the plane was able to take off. For the large-scale test, the MythBusters used a 400 pound ultralight aircraft with a 2000 foot tarp under it. The tarp was pulled backwards to simulate a moving runway. The ultralight pilot had no trouble taking off. This is because the thrust of the airplane engines acts on the air, not on the ground.
Categories: Entertainment · Just For Fun · Science · Technology · Think About It
For those not paying attention, their is quite a battle going on between the Scientology and a confederation of hackers calling themselves Anonymous. Wired News writes:
A loose confederation of online troublemakers who call themselves Anonymous have declared war on the Church of Scientology by flooding its servers with fake data requests, describing the attacks as punishment for the Church’s alleged abuse of copyright laws and alleged brainwashing of its members.
The attack on Scientology, which Anonymous has dubbed Project Chanology, started in recent days, set off by the Church’s most recent attempt to censor the internet by forcing sites to remove a creepy Tom Cruise Scientology video. A wiki set up for the project directs Anonymous members to download and use denial of service software, make prank calls, host Scientology documents the Church considers proprietary, and fax endless loops of black pages to the Church’s fax machines to waste ink.
The original Tom Cruise video Scientology attempted to censor is still up on YouTube.
As is Anonymous’s manifesto.
I am not sure who I would rather mess with, the mob or an organized guild of hackers!
Categories: Entertainment · Religion · Science
Riddle me this:
If you place a tall candle and a short candle under a glass jar, which will run out of oxygen first?
The answer can be found on the discussions following the original video post by Robert Krampf.
Categories: Just For Fun · Science · Think About It
