Monthly Archives: September 2009

Building ATLAS

This video is amazing: the entire ATLAS detector build process in five minutes, a com­bin­a­tion of pho­to­graphs and time-lapse pho­to­graphy. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9q0XLMkeGc[/youtube] Make sure to click through to YouTube to watch in HD.

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Violets are blue

Dominic Tinley has a great post about the colour violet on his blog, fol­lowing up his talk from Interesting2009. I par­tic­u­larly like (and will be stealing) his “pigments of your imagination” line.

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Physics bookends

The always awesome Evil Mad Sci­entist Labor­at­ories have a super-easy how-to for making perfect bra-ket physics bookends.

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Variables

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Careers in Science

WIRED magazine has a long-running feature on Careers in Science. Already covered: Game Developer Neutrino Phys­i­cist Team Doctor Geo­chemist Astro­naut Journalist

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How many people are in space right now?

This is abso­lutely my favourite single serving website ever: http://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/

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Kopp-Etchells Effect

The Kopp-Etchells effect is the name given by Michael Yon to a phe­nomenon he wit­nessed in Afgh­anistan. As a heli­copter comes in to land a great cloud of dust is stirred up; the impact of this dust on the rotor … Continue reading

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Mine your own bismuth

This image, from Wiki­media Commons’ Image of the Day col­lec­tion is one of the most beau­tiful pictures of bismuth I’ve ever seen.

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Interesting2009

I had the good fortune to speak at Interesting2009 this weekend; below is my Roo Reynolds-style round-up. Tom Loosemore fought with the laptop to bring us a foul-mouthed (“Larry Ellison’s penis exten­sion”) tour of attempts to break the 50 knot … Continue reading

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Floating in mercury

Whilst planning a lesson yes­terday I dis­covered that there aren’t many good pho­to­graphs of objects floating in mercury on the web. This post is an attempt to rectify this problem. Pound Coin: Slotted Mass: Brass Weight:

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Kill or cure?

Kill or cure? “helps to make sense of the Daily Mail’s ongoing effort to classify every inan­imate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it.”

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