In the “Atoms In Motion” introduction to Richard Feynman’s famous Lectures on Physics (which you can actually watch, thanks to Microsoft), there’s a very interesting footnote. I saw it in the condensed and immensely enjoyable Six Easy Pieces, which everyone should read:

“One can burn a diamond in air”

That took me by surprise. But it’s true! The video above from Theodore Gray (who is really good at burning stuff) shows that diamond will ignite if brought to a certain temperature and given enough oxygen to latch on to. Like Feynman said, those carbon atoms and oxygen atoms love each other, and want to snap together (which gives off heat), but enough input energy must be applied first to break down the diamond crystal, (which also makes carbon atoms pretty happy).

Interesting note about cheap old zirconium in there, too …

(tip of the torch to Freelance Astrophysicist, where I found the video)

freshphotons: “These three images are snapshots of a spark-ignited expanding flame in different environments of the same hydrogen-air mixture. The top flame shows the ideal, reference case of a stable, smooth flame surface in a quiescent environment at atmospheric pressure. The middle flame is taken under elevated pressure simulating that within an internal combustion engine. The bottom flame is taken in a highly turbulent environment simulating another aspect of the engine interior. All images were taken at 8000 frames per second, using schlieren photography. The radius of the top flame is 11.4 millimeters.”  C.K. Law, Swetaprovo Chaudhuri, and Fujia Wu (Princeton University). Explosive beauty.
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freshphotons:

“These three images are snapshots of a spark-ignited expanding flame in different environments of the same hydrogen-air mixture. The top flame shows the ideal, reference case of a stable, smooth flame surface in a quiescent environment at atmospheric pressure. The middle flame is taken under elevated pressure simulating that within an internal combustion engine. The bottom flame is taken in a highly turbulent environment simulating another aspect of the engine interior. All images were taken at 8000 frames per second, using schlieren photography. The radius of the top flame is 11.4 millimeters.”  C.K. Law, Swetaprovo Chaudhuri, and Fujia Wu (Princeton University).

Explosive beauty.

(via scientificthought)

Source: nbcnews.com

Diagnosed with autism at age 2, told he would never learn to read, now 14 years old and working on a Master’s degree in quantum physics. If you’re looking for an inspiration today, look no further than Jacob Barnett. I like his mom’s concept of “muchness”: Surrond children with what they love, be it art, science, sports or whatever, and they will develop more fully than molding them to a design would ever allow.
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Diagnosed with autism at age 2, told he would never learn to read, now 14 years old and working on a Master’s degree in quantum physics.

If you’re looking for an inspiration today, look no further than Jacob Barnett.

I like his mom’s concept of “muchness”: Surrond children with what they love, be it art, science, sports or whatever, and they will develop more fully than molding them to a design would ever allow.

We never sit here under the weight of all this air, the 5 x 10^18 kg of atmosphere that sits above everyone on Earth, and say “Gosh, that sure is heavy!” You don’t realize just how powerful that 1 bar (~100 kPa) of pressure is until a train car is filled with steam, allowed to cool, and then implodes ohmygod did that just happen? For more implosion goodness, check out this awesome video from Veritasium.
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We never sit here under the weight of all this air, the 5 x 10^18 kg of atmosphere that sits above everyone on Earth, and say “Gosh, that sure is heavy!”

You don’t realize just how powerful that 1 bar (~100 kPa) of pressure is until a train car is filled with steam, allowed to cool, and then implodes ohmygod did that just happen?

For more implosion goodness, check out this awesome video from Veritasium.

The Physics of Baseball Pitches Five ounces of cork, yarn and leather is all it takes to produce high-velocity, mind-blowing physics. The movement of a baseball through the air is due to three things: The pitcher’s arm (moving it forward), gravity (moving it down), and air resistance from the spinning seams (which causes side-to-side, sinking and “rising” motion). Gravity will always pull a pitch down as it travels to the plate, but back and side spin create areas of high pressure on one side of the ball (“The Magnus Effect”, named for its discoverer). This creates a force that pushes the ball in the opposite direction, whether it be sideways (likea  slider), down (a sinker), or causing it to sink more slowly than normal (the “rising” pitch illusion). Check out: The physics behind 7 famous baseball pitches All about The Magnus Effect A 1959 paper studying the aerodynamics of a pitched baseball (where they wind tunnel shot above came from). A Science Channel video all about the physics of pitching For the truly curious, a REALLY in-depth and technical look into the physics of moving baseballs Some believe that current pitchers have reached the biomechanical limits for pitch velocity and movement. When you consider the sheer neuromuscular perfection seen in this jaw-dropping overlaid GIF of the Rangers’ Yu Darvish, I can see how that might appear to be the case (via Reddit): Perhaps more than in any other sport, baseball pitchers embody the astonishing combination of precision and power in the heart of our motor neurons: Producing unbelievable force and grace, with nearly identical repetition, a couple hundred times a week. 
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The Physics of Baseball Pitches

Five ounces of cork, yarn and leather is all it takes to produce high-velocity, mind-blowing physics. The movement of a baseball through the air is due to three things: The pitcher’s arm (moving it forward), gravity (moving it down), and air resistance from the spinning seams (which causes side-to-side, sinking and “rising” motion).

Gravity will always pull a pitch down as it travels to the plate, but back and side spin create areas of high pressure on one side of the ball (“The Magnus Effect”, named for its discoverer). This creates a force that pushes the ball in the opposite direction, whether it be sideways (likea  slider), down (a sinker), or causing it to sink more slowly than normal (the “rising” pitch illusion).

Check out:

Some believe that current pitchers have reached the biomechanical limits for pitch velocity and movement. When you consider the sheer neuromuscular perfection seen in this jaw-dropping overlaid GIF of the Rangers’ Yu Darvish, I can see how that might appear to be the case (via Reddit):

Perhaps more than in any other sport, baseball pitchers embody the astonishing combination of precision and power in the heart of our motor neurons: Producing unbelievable force and grace, with nearly identical repetition, a couple hundred times a week. 

I want to assure everyone that just because we are overlooking all the fatal parts of being in space without a spacesuit (cold, heat, vacuum, radiation, etc.), we are still going to be scientific up in here. You are absolutely right that energy can’t be destroyed, even if you’re really mad at it and hit it with a goblin sword. This is a fundamental Law of Physics™. And to review, the reason that sound doesn’t travel in space is because there is no medium with which to transmit it. We can take that one step further, though. Not only does sound not travel through space, there is literally no sound in space. And it doesn’t violate any laws of physics. Promise. I think what you’re really wondering is “If my vocal cords vibrate, then where does that vibrational energy go?” Well, your vocal cords can’t vibrate in the vacuum of space. Making sound in our throats requires building up air pressure behind our larynx, bringing the vocal folds together like two blades of grass pressed between your thumbs, and then pushing that air upward in order to create a vibration. The oscillating folds of your vocal cords displace air in a repeating pattern, many times per second. Just like when you move your hand through water, it is the displacement of the air by the vocal folds that creates the wave, and the sound is simply the effect of that wave traveling through air. Make sense? If there’s no air to be displaced, there’s no wave (and no sound). Also, even if you had a lungful of air before you took your space helmet off, you wouldn’t be able to hold the air back from rushing into the vacuum of space. “Woosh” is the sound the last breath in your lungs (doesn’t) make as it is sucked out into the vacuum. No breath control? No vibration. But what about vibrations that don’t require a lungful of air? What about something like a tuning fork? Well, a struck tuning fork would vibrate in space. And like the above case, it still wouldn’t make any sound, because no air, etc. Would a tuning fork vibrating in a vacuum vibrate forever? If you let it float away, with no air or other medium to vibrate in, would it still be buzzing a hundred thousand years from now, should aliens find it? Nope.  Vibrating objects like tuning forks or space stations struck with large hammers will lose the vibration over time thanks to something called “thermoelastic damping”. A vibration is slowly converted to heat thanks to the atoms in the metal (or whatever’s vibrating) being compressed. And because of the very physics that we mentioned at the start of this question, the vibration dies away, the energy is converted to heat, and Newton is happy! Of course, don’t try this at home.
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I want to assure everyone that just because we are overlooking all the fatal parts of being in space without a spacesuit (cold, heat, vacuum, radiation, etc.), we are still going to be scientific up in here.

You are absolutely right that energy can’t be destroyed, even if you’re really mad at it and hit it with a goblin sword. This is a fundamental Law of Physics™. And to review, the reason that sound doesn’t travel in space is because there is no medium with which to transmit it. We can take that one step further, though. Not only does sound not travel through space, there is literally no sound in space. And it doesn’t violate any laws of physics. Promise.

I think what you’re really wondering is “If my vocal cords vibrate, then where does that vibrational energy go?” Well, your vocal cords can’t vibrate in the vacuum of space. Making sound in our throats requires building up air pressure behind our larynx, bringing the vocal folds together like two blades of grass pressed between your thumbs, and then pushing that air upward in order to create a vibration. The oscillating folds of your vocal cords displace air in a repeating pattern, many times per second. Just like when you move your hand through water, it is the displacement of the air by the vocal folds that creates the wave, and the sound is simply the effect of that wave traveling through air. Make sense?

If there’s no air to be displaced, there’s no wave (and no sound). Also, even if you had a lungful of air before you took your space helmet off, you wouldn’t be able to hold the air back from rushing into the vacuum of space. “Woosh” is the sound the last breath in your lungs (doesn’t) make as it is sucked out into the vacuum. No breath control? No vibration.

But what about vibrations that don’t require a lungful of air? What about something like a tuning fork?

Well, a struck tuning fork would vibrate in space. And like the above case, it still wouldn’t make any sound, because no air, etc. Would a tuning fork vibrating in a vacuum vibrate forever? If you let it float away, with no air or other medium to vibrate in, would it still be buzzing a hundred thousand years from now, should aliens find it?

Nope. 

Vibrating objects like tuning forks or space stations struck with large hammers will lose the vibration over time thanks to something called “thermoelastic damping”. A vibration is slowly converted to heat thanks to the atoms in the metal (or whatever’s vibrating) being compressed. And because of the very physics that we mentioned at the start of this question, the vibration dies away, the energy is converted to heat, and Newton is happy!

Of course, don’t try this at home.

A Boy And His Atom: The World’s Smallest Movie

Scientists are known for loving their work. Biologists tend to their cultures and animals. Physicists polish their exquisite machines like sports car entusiasts treat vintage Ferraris. So do chemists love atoms? Apparently they do. At least enough to write a love story with, and about them.

IBM scientists have created the world’s smallest movie using individual atoms. It’s the story of a boy and his playful atom buddy, drawn in stop motion and with each quantum pixel positioned using a scanning tunneling microscope. Every frame is magnified a stunning 100 million times!

This amazing feat was accomplished by using a charged atomic needle to drag single carbon monoxide molecules (the individual atoms we see are one side of that two-atom molecule) around on a copper substrate. I’ve posted a little bit about these feats of atomic art before, with these “quantum corrals” and “ferrous wheels”. 

See those ripples around each atom? They remind me of pebbles being tossed into a still pond. They are actually ripples in the electron field of the copper surface below! It’s a reminder that, contrary to many textbooks, electrons behave more like waves than particles following an orbit. And like any other wave, they can form intricate interference patterns. Check out this previous post for more on that.

The hope is that manipulating atomic structures like this may lead to even greater information storage capacity. Imaging all the world’s books and movies on your mobile phone at once!

Here’s a “making of” movie from IBM, featuring the sound of atoms being moved as well as the encouraging sight of several female team members.

This makes me as happy as atom boy there.

Check out this ferroputty devouring a magnetic cube. It’s very simple, as the iron-infused putty is being pulled around the magnet using physics we’re all familiar with. But this is pretty much exactly how I would imaging a Gumby-themed alien horror film going down, and that give my nostalgia the willies. Coolest use of magnets since these trippy ferrofluid music videos by Afiq Omar. Find out more (and where you can buy your own ferroputty) at PsVid. As usual, Tumblr’s GIF rules prevent me from posting the cool one above, but here is the animated gulp:
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Check out this ferroputty devouring a magnetic cube. It’s very simple, as the iron-infused putty is being pulled around the magnet using physics we’re all familiar with. But this is pretty much exactly how I would imaging a Gumby-themed alien horror film going down, and that give my nostalgia the willies.

Coolest use of magnets since these trippy ferrofluid music videos by Afiq Omar.

Find out more (and where you can buy your own ferroputty) at PsVid. As usual, Tumblr’s GIF rules prevent me from posting the cool one above, but here is the animated gulp:

via brookhavenlab: Modern science just doesn’t have enough monolithic machinery with elegant curves. This may look like an old science fiction movie set, but this machine actually played a key role in multiple Nobel Prizes. Starting in 1960, Brookhaven Lab’s Cockroft-Walton Accelerator—essentially a multi-level voltage multiplier—provided the initial boost to protons before they raced on into the rings of our Alternating Gradient Synchrotron. I completely agree that modern science needs to engage a little more proto-Dalek in the design of their machines. I mean, why not put a supercomputer in an attractive shell like this? That picture doesn’t do the Cockroft-Walton Accelerator justice in terms of just how BIG it is. Another picture I found:
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via brookhavenlab:

Modern science just doesn’t have enough monolithic machinery with elegant curves.

This may look like an old science fiction movie set, but this machine actually played a key role in multiple Nobel Prizes. Starting in 1960, Brookhaven Lab’s Cockroft-Walton Accelerator—essentially a multi-level voltage multiplier—provided the initial boost to protons before they raced on into the rings of our Alternating Gradient Synchrotron.

I completely agree that modern science needs to engage a little more proto-Dalek in the design of their machines. I mean, why not put a supercomputer in an attractive shell like this?

That picture doesn’t do the Cockroft-Walton Accelerator justice in terms of just how BIG it is. Another picture I found: