Have you ever made lightning in a pickle? I have. It involves putting two iron nails in a pickle and applying 110 volts of electricity. It’s pretty smelly, but it is worth it to see what looks like yellow-orange lightning in the pickle. What’s going on? The principle of “put in electricity – get … Continue reading
In the 1930s, microscope designer Royal Rife made a splash with reports that he had designed a new microscope that could view nanoscale objects such as viruses!1 The only problem was that it didn’t work. In fact, it couldn’t work, based on the basic physics of light. Rife was attempting to improve upon the optical … Continue reading
Why do glaciers sometimes look blue? Hint: it’s not for the same reason we see blue as the color of the sky!
On this episode of the podcast, we have an interview with Dr. Robert Hamers, following up on his recent blog post. Bob is the Director of the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology, and he tells us about a recent family trip to Alaska that got him wondering about why some glaciers have an amazing blue color. Continue reading
Recently I had the fortune to visit the state of Alaska. While there, I took a boat trip around the Kenai Peninsula, where there are glaciers moving from the Harding Icefield toward the ocean. As our tour boat approached Holgate Glacier, I was awed by the immense size of this giant wall of ice, but … Continue reading
Last July, IBM announced that it had developed a new computer chip that could boost computer speeds by 50%.1 The company achieved this performance boost by building their chip with transistors a mere 7 nanometers in diameter. To put this incredible feat of engineering into perspective, the building blocks of these new chips are smaller … Continue reading
It’s Sunday night and I am watching one of my favorite shows, which of course revolves around food. In this particular episode, competitors were challenged to incorporate blue into their baked delights without using artificial coloring. That may not seem to be much of a challenge, but there are actually very few naturally occurring blue … Continue reading
