Something like Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak might actually be the best way to become invisible in real life. Unfortunately, it surely won’t be here for your next Christmas gifts, although scientists are trying (with some success) to understand how to make one.
If you grab a piece of spaghetti and bend it further and further, it will eventually break. It won’t just break in two, though: most likely it will break in three or more pieces. What sorcery is this?
Don’t believe me? Be a scientist: try it yourself!
Want to win a Nobel prize while discovering a material that’s cheap, transparent, flexible but resistent, and an astonishing electric conductor? Grab a pencil and a roll of adhesive tape. I’m serious.
The secret of perpetually stainless stuff hid for centuries in plain sight—at least for those of us living around lotus leaves. Now physics can help you never to clean again, no matter what you spill.
It all comes down to how water sticks to stuff, in other words, how stuff gets wet. Continue reading “How to make something clean itself”
Capillarity is a staple of school physics. But are you sure you know how it works? And what do dragons have to do with it? Continue reading The thirsty dragon and other capillarity magic
… or at all? To paint the lily might well be excess, but there’s very good reasons to paint rockets (or not) Continue reading Why o why are rockets painted that way?
So it wasn’t gravitational waves after all: the Nobel prize for physics went to David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz. That’s the easy part. The motivation needs a little unpacking: For theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter. We all know and love a few phases of matter: solid, liquid and gas (maybe plasma if you want to get kinky). … Continue reading Theoretical donuts and quantum computers: the Nobel prize 2016
Most predictions for the winners of this years Nobel prize for physics point to the biggest piece of science news we’ve had: gravitational waves. I’ll go out on a limb and say that I’m not convinced they will. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a great fan of team LIGO’s work, too. The discovery of gravitational waves was incredible, but so was the Higgs boson. LIGO … Continue reading What if gravitational waves don’t win the Nobel prize?
Some time ago I came across a fun article. I got curious, and embarked on a journey that took me to the source of a famous internet myth and even to explore what it means to be a physicist. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The article was about the myth that it’s impossible to fold a piece of paper more than 7 times, … Continue reading How many times can you fold a piece of paper?
There’s a beautiful country, with forests and deserts, vast salt lakes and tall mountains. A country where driving can be mortally dangerous. A country where your new plasma TV won’t last very long. ¡Bienvenidos a Bolivia! A plasma screen is basically a bunch of small neon lamps. They work by passing an electric current through a container full of gas (like, you guessed it, neon!): … Continue reading No country for plasma TVs
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