Whether you’re a kid or a nerdy adult, you’ll probably agree that the interactive exhibitions at the museum are the best. If you happened to get down to the Oregon Science Festival in the last couple of years, you might have enjoyed “Catch The Wave!”—a public education project to teach people about electromagnets and waves. […]
Static electricity often just seems like an everyday annoyance when a wool sweater crackles as you pull it off, or when a doorknob delivers an unexpected zap. Regardless, the phenomenon is much more fascinating and complex than these simple examples suggest. In fact, static electricity is direct observable evidence of the actions of subatomic particles […]
To anyone who has spent some time in photovoltaic (PV) power circles, the word ‘perovskite’ probably sounds familiar. Offering arguably better bandgap properties than traditional silicon cells, perovskite-based PV panels also promise to be cheaper and (literally) more flexible, but commercialization has been elusive. This is something which Oxford PV seeks to change, with the […]
[Project 326] wanted to know exactly what gas was in some glass tubes. The answer, of course, is to use a spectrometer, but that’s an expensive piece of gear, right? Not really. Sure, these cheap devices aren’t perfect, but they are serviceable and, as the video below shows, there are ways to work around some […]
What is the size of a single molecule of oil? What may initially seem like a trick question – answerable only through the use of complicated, high-tech scientific equipment – is actually as easy to calculate as the circumference of planet Earth. Much like how [Eratosthenes] used a couple of sticks to achieve the latter […]
Structure of the Ramtron FeRAM. The image is focus-stacked for clarity. (Credit: Ken Shirriff) Although not as prevalent as Flash memory storage, ferroelectric RAM (FeRAM) offers a range of benefits over the former, mostly in terms of endurance and durability, which makes it popular for a range of (niche) applications. Recently [Ken Shirriff] had a […]
Everyone knows that time’s arrow only goes in one direction, regardless of the system or material involved. In the case of material time, i.e. the ageing of materials such as amorphous materials resulting from glass transition, this material time is determined after the initial solidification by the relaxation of localized stresses and medium-scale reordering. These […]
One of the hardest things about studying electricity, and by extension electronics, is that you generally can’t touch or see anything directly, and if you can you’re generally having a pretty bad day. For teaching something that’s almost always invisible, educators have come up with a number of analogies for helping students understand the inner […]
[Lynnadeng]’s team wanted to monitor the Los Angeles River over time and wanted citizen scientists — or anyone, for that matter — to help. They built a dual phone holder to allow random passersby to use their phones to take photos. A QR code lets them easily send the pictures to the team. The 3D […]