Category: 2010
Figure 1. An IR image of a freshwatercup and a saltwater cup after an icecube was added to each.Will an ice cube melt faster in freshwater or saltwater? Why do we salt the road in water? How does an iceberg melt and how might it affect the ocean curren…
Figure 1. A page with some colorstrips under a table lamp. Click theimage to enlarge it to see the details.We all know black objects absorb more light energy than white ones. What about red, green, blue, and any other colors? With an infrared (IR) came…
Figure 1. A top view of a floatingice cube.If you have done a convection demo using a container of water and some ink, you may have had to change the water after each demo since the ink had diffused everywhere, which may make the convection pattern les…
Figure 1. The salinity gradient and temperature gradient observed in anopen cup of saturated saltwater.This is the fifth follow-up of the blog article: “A perfect storm in a cup of salt water?” This investigation focused on the…
Scientific theories differ from other belief systems in that they are testable; in other words, they can be disproved. Imagine reading, for instance, any of the following headlines: “Modern Chicken Fossil Found Side By Side with Dinosaur Bones” “Chimpanzee DNA Radically Different From Human” “New Data Shows Earth Only 10,000 [or 100,000 or 10,000,000] Years […]
iPhone for the blind. Stirring description by a blind person about the power of accessible media. My favorite part is his realization that, with an app called Color Identifier his iPhone can *tell* him verbally what colors he’s “seeing.” However, he mistakenly tries it for the first time in the dark: I have never experienced […]
Microsoft is moving beyond one surface onto multiple surfaces now. With their LightSpace research project, they are tracking virtual objects as they move off a surface and onto users’ hands to be carried around the room. Projectors keep the virtual objects in sync with the real-world objects. So you can write a virtual note, carry […]
Figure 1. Two shallow plastic containers. The left one holds a lot of salt and the right one is plain water. A small amount of water was added to the left one.This is the fourth followup of the blog article: “A p…
They just measured relativistic effects between two atomic clocks differing by the speed of a fast bike rider and on length scales shorter than two feet. Boy, this world is amazing.
I met with Dennis Bartels and Rob Semper from the Exploratorium staff since I was nearby at the end of last week, and they shared the plans for their new building, scheduled for moving into around 2013. I’m already excited for them – they’ll be taking over two full piers of Fisherman’s Wharf in San […]