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Have a Great Summer!

Mr. Faust — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 21:18:26 +0000

Thanks for all the great posts this year. I’ve learned loads about current events in science…and I hope you have too! I won’t be grading any posts for the 2010-2011 school year after this post. Feel free to post if you feel the need, however!

Stronger Than Steel.

romeromn — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:53:56 +0000

Professor Yuntian Zhu, a matierals scientist at North Carolina State University, was included in a project of a stronger, yet lighter steel. They created nanostructures, which can be used on many different metals, to help create the Nano-Architectured Aluminum. Professor Zhu had explained how the aluminum alloys, that when combined to form hierarchical structure to many high levels of nanoscale levels make a powerful and flexible sort of steel. Professor Zhu is now working on making a strong magnesium, that will be lighter than aluminum.

The success of scientist making a new element is really interesting. They could re-invent the airplane and make it safer, lighter, and stronger, therefore saving more lives each and everyday. same with cars or anything else made with a hard, breakable element. Replace it with the Nano-Architectured Aluminum. Here is a link to the website.

Q1-1

Longest-Lasting Light Bulb

dangln — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:39:48 +0000

The longest-lasting light bulb is the Centennial light. It is located in Livermore, California. It is still giving off light in the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department. It is 109 years old and has been turned off a small amount of times. Part of the reason why light bulbs burn out is caused by the turning them on and off, not by just keeping them on. Each time someone turns on and off that light switch, the filament of the bulb is heated and cooled which causes parts of the filament to expand and contract, which causes small stress cracks to develop. So every time someone turns on and off a light switch, the crack gets bigger and bigger until the bulb eventually burns out.

Bulbcam

To learn more click here.

Q4-2

Inside Science of Iron Man 2

yangjk — Thu, 06 May 2010 18:24:11 +0000

I guess many people saw or watched Iron man 1 and this Friday Iron man 2 is comming out too. The power that able to move the Iron man is a particle accelerator. But Tony Stark came up with a new way of power reactor to make him alive. So, the film producer wanted to show what the acutal particle accelerator looks like.

The Hollywood called “The science and Entertainment Exchange”. A program of the National Academy of Sciences that connects experts in ntertainment with experts in science and engineering. Latcham the senior vice president of production at Marvel studio was able to find experts in particle accelerator in Cal Tech in Pasadena.

“They wanted to use the science to show what the particle accelertor would really look like and they wanted to do it in a way that was entertaining” said Wise (theoretical physicist)… etc.

Thoughts to speech?

matteuje — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 05:50:23 +0000

A milestone has recently been reached by a team of scientists. Their goal is to let people who are unable to speak because of accidents or diseases speak in real time. Through an implant that changes neural signals to modified FM radio signals and eventually to synthetic speech, a person can “say” something in fewer than 50 milliseconds. That is about as long as it takes a person to speak. While only able to do vowel sounds, the group is hoping they will be able to speak consonant sounds down the line. You can read more here.

It is amazing to see how far technology has gone. We are able to use our knowledge of radio, synthesizers, and many other technologies to allow people to do something otherwise impossible: have the ability to speak. They would be able to go from one word a minute to being able to carry out a conversation. Technology similar to this one could probably help many other medical problems. There seem to be few problems technology cannot solve.

Light From Black Holes

cichocet — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:58:28 +0000

As far as most people know, black holes are the darkest things out there. Their gravity is so intense that not even light can escape their grasp. Black holes aren’t studied with telescopes, but with computers, because you really can’t see them. Black holes might not be as dark as we thought though. Gases being sucked into the black holes canbe heated to tempuratures 1000 times hotter than the sun and become an intense sourse of x-rays. “As these black holes magnetic field pulls these gases into its center, it creates a light show.”

This information gives us a whole new understanding as too how complex black holes are. It could be essential to studying how they form and how they grow.

Too read more about this click here.

FASTER COMPUTERS?

williacd — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:39:14 +0000

team of French physicists say they have used a femtosecond laser (ultra-fast bursts of laser light) to alter electron spin and this would speed up retrieval and storage. The technique could increase the speed up to 100000 times.

imagine the possibility to be able to surf the net even faster computer work and computer operated mechanisms could operate all the faster. and you think we get stuff done now. Now i just wonder if computers can handel this type of speed.

Radiation in the Sky.

yangjk — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:29:20 +0000

“The frequent flyer is susceptible to more radiation in particularly high latitudes,” Chris Mertens, Ph.D., a space physicist at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., said.
We’re all exposed to some radiation every day, but the earth’s atmosphere shields us from most of it. At higher latitudes, near the poles, and altitudes above 30,000 feet, the earth’s protection is weaker, putting flight crews and passengers at risk.

How many people do think knows about this information? More surprising thing is that we are all exposed to some of the radiaton. Imagine pilots and flight and flight attendant who were in the sky many times, their health and their babies might turn bad. I hope engineers could find material to block radiation during flight.

http://www.insidescience.org/discoveries_breakthroughs/flying_and_radiation_risk

New Technology Helps Parkinson’s Patients Speak Louder

watsonme — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:27:25 +0000

One of the affects of Parkinson’s disease is a speech problem. People with Parkinson’s tend to speak very quietly and sometimes unclearly. One attempt to help was speech therapy sessions. However, after the sessions the patients would forget to speak louder. Jessica Huber found a better solution to this problem. Huber told her patients to talk while the sound of a large group of people talking was played. The result was that the patients did speak louder. This background noise causes the Lombard effect to take place. This is a reaction in which people automatically begin to speak loud because of background noise. Huber developed a device that would use this background noise to help the patients. A sensor placed on the back of the neck detects whenever the person speaks. When the person speaks the background noise automatically plays, making the person speak louder.

I found this article to be very interesting. This new device could help many people with their speech problems, weather they have Parkinson’s or any other type of disease that may cause speech problems. This will definitely help those who suffer from Parkinson’s and their families.

Go to http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090825151006.htm for more information.

Detecting Water

matteuje — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:06:48 +0000

Many of us remember the terrorist attack in 2006, and all of us deal with its consequences whenever we board a plane: We aren’t allowed to bring water (or any drinks for that matter) into airports. However, physicists in Germany believe that by using a technique from spectroscopy, which uses electromagnetism to detect different signals in the molecular structure of the liquid (kind of like finding a thumbprint), will help create a “fast and reliable” way to check for dangerous substances in water. They are already working on tests, and have proven that what they are working on will be fast and reliable in detecting different liquids. You can read more of the article here.

I believe that this is something that will affect the world. Many people complain about not being able to bring their own water into the airport, and will be grateful for a way to be able to bring it. It is also a good thing that scientists are finding ways to fix any problems that society has. There are many benefits to this project, and it is one of the few scientific advances that will be in the public eye.