Tag Archives: physics

Resonance: A whole lotta shakin’ going on

By Ryan | Published: April 25, 2010

Hey, it’s been a while since the previous LSNED story. I hope you’ve been learning some interesting facts on your own, but here we meet again to scratch our collective foreheads and raise a glorious chorus of “Huh, neat.” The topic du jour, for no particular reason, is resonant frequency. The classic image of the [...]

Fluorescent bulb survival tips

By Ryan | Published: March 29, 2010

Last night I lay awake trying to force myself back into a proper diurnal schedule. It’s 4 AM or so and I find myself laying on my back, throwing a white balloon towards the ceiling and watching it glide back down, gracefully curving in whatever direction the nozzle is pointing. (due to aerodynamics, I suppose) [...]

The Shape of the Universe (part 2): Infinity and Beyond

By Ryan | Published: March 8, 2010

Yesterday I was talking about the hypersphere as one of the proposed shapes for the universe, but I ran out of space (trying to keep things snappy) before I got to the more interesting idea. Some theories peg the universe as having no shape at all… it just goes on forever. Have you ever heard [...]

Posted in Interesting Facts | Also tagged natural world, space | 1 Comment

The Shape of the Universe (part 1): the Hypersphere

By Ryan | Published: March 5, 2010

I will begin with the only hard fact I have on this topic: Nobody knows the structure or form of the universe. It’s debatable whether or not we will ever be able to know with any certainty. Still, the scientific process marches on. We observe the available evidence, and make intelligent guesses. One fundamental question [...]

Posted in Interesting Facts | Also tagged mathematics, space | 3 Comments

Do Not Fear the Large Hadron Collider

By Ryan | Published: March 3, 2010

Hysteria, and particularly the act of promoting hysteria, ranks pretty high on my pet peeves list. As such, I have a distaste for FOX news. Here’s one such headline they offered up in January: Scientists Not So Sure ‘Doomsday Machine’ Won’t Destroy World Since knowledge immunizes fear, let’s take a closer look at understanding this [...]

Posted in Interesting Facts | Also tagged science | 2 Comments

Superman, hamburgers, and the Coriolis effect

By Ryan | Published: January 12, 2010

Yesterday I mentioned that if you were standing at the equator you’d be spinning around the earth at about 1600 km/h. You, personally, are probably moving slower than that. Perhaps much slower. The further north (or south) you go in the world, the slower the rotation speed. If you were standing exactly at the true [...]

Posted in Interesting Facts | Also tagged weather | 5 Comments

FACT: when curling plastic ribbons you should go slow

By Ryan | Published: December 21, 2009

Across the world a whole lot of gifts will get wrapped this week, and I’m gonna guess at least 50 percent of those will have ribbons. (the half wrapped by girls… but let’s face it, they’re probably doing the vast majority of wrapping anyways) The really fancy wrap jobs will also have those ribbons curled, [...]

Posted in Interesting Facts | Also tagged household, traditions | 1 Comment