Physics
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The Many Faces of Carbon
Yesterday the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that this year's Nobel Prize in Physics will go to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene." Graphene is one of many allotropes, or forms, of the element carbon. Car...
October 06, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Science Expressed in Dance
Graduate students spend years researching sometimes obscure topics, writing page after page of text, and then bundling it into a huge dissertation before they can receive a Ph.D. And then someone asks them to express all that work and discovery in dance.Science has asked that three times now, and t...
September 20, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Science of Football
A roundup of how scientists explain America's most popular sport
September 09, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Calculus Diaries
Though I was a very good at math in school, I usually found the subject incredibly boring, so much so that I often slept through class (teachers didn't mind as long as I aced the exams). The one exception was a college math course for biologists that gave us real-world problems like figuring out th...
August 31, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Saturn’s Polar Hexagon
This is definitely one of our solar system's weirder features: a hexagon that circles the north pole of Saturn (image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona). The shape isn't carved into the planet's surface; it's a constant feature in the atmosphere. It has puzzled scientists since it was first sp...
April 09, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Dark Energy: The Biggest Mystery in the Universe
At the South Pole, astronomers try to unravel a force greater than gravity that will determine the fate of the cosmos
April 2010 |
By Richard Panek
Flowers in an Unexpected Place
The winners of the 2009 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge—an annual contest sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the journal Science—were announced last week. The image above, "Flower Power" from Russell Taylor, Briana K. Whitaker and Briana L. Carstens of th...
February 26, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Science of the Olympics
I've always been a fan of the Winter Olympics, but a bout with the flu in 2002 that kept me at home watching TV for a week made me an addict. But it's not just about watching hours of skiing and skating. There's science, too, and it seems to be everywhere this year. Here are some good resources and...
February 17, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Black Hole Rap
I've been reading all the news about the Large Hadron Collider for months, but apparently I missed the most important bit about the LHC: the project has its very own rapper, ATLAS e-News science writer Katherine McAlpine, a.k.a. "AlpineKat." Her Large Hadron Rap went viral, with more than 5.5 milli...
January 25, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Pizza Tossing Physics Gives Insight to Mini Motors
Who would have thought there would be a link between pizza tossing and miniature motors?“At first it started from a conversation I had with a colleague, Dr. Heidi Forde from medicine here at Monash University,” James Friend, coauthor of the study, told PhysOrg.com. “She couldn't understand how our ...
January 06, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Nine Science Stories You Should Have Read This Year
It's also been a good year for science stories in Smithsonian magazine, including our special issue, Exploring the Frontiers of Science. Here are nine you should read if you haven't already:Gene Therapy in a New Light: A husband-and-wife team's experimental genetic treatment for blindness is renewi...
December 30, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Ten Movies We Loved From the 2000s
The last decade has been a pretty good one for science in the movies (though there are exceptions, as we'll see tomorrow). Here are 10 movies we enjoyed: A Beautiful Mind (2001): This is the nearly-true story of John Nash, the mathematician who won a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his work i...
December 16, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Fun with Science Games
Since it's Monday and none of us really wants to settle in and work yet, I thought I'd share some of my favorite science-themed (and science-ish) computer games with you:The Eyeballing Game: How well do you perceive shapes? Can you find the center of a circle or complete a parallelogram? The better...
August 31, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
An Honor and a Party for Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking, the renowned theoretical physicist from Great Britain, was one of two scientists among yesterday's recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Here's what President Obama had to say about Hawking:Professor Stephen Hawking was a brilliant man and a mediocre student when he lost...
August 13, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
An Explanation for the Missing Sunspots
I bet that most of you don’t know that the sunspots are missing. That’s okay. I’m sure many people don’t realize that the sun is more than just a ball of fire: it has a complex internal structure, features that vary based on multi-year cycles, and it can create solar storms that knock out power and...
June 18, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
A Caricature of a Female Scientist
I hadn’t intended on writing about my Saturday excursion to the theater, even though the play, Legacy of Light, was about two female scientists; the play’s run ended on Sunday. However, I’m so disappointed, and I have to tell you why.The play follows two women: French mathematician and physicist Ém...
June 16, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Fingerprints and Friction
Why do humans, other primates and koalas have fingerprints? All are, or have ancestors who were, tree dwellers, and it has been generally accepted that fingerprints help individuals grab onto things like tree limbs by increasing the friction between the skin and the object.Maybe not.Biomechanist Ro...
June 15, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Bach's Forgotten Horn
In 1737-8, Johann Sebastian Bach composed and performed a cantata, "O Jesu Christ, meins lebens licht" ("O Jesus Christ, light of my life"). Among the instruments called for in the score are "two Litui." However, the Lituus is a forgotten instrument. No one has played or heard the instrument in mod...
June 03, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
What is Schrödinger's Cat?
You may have heard the phrase "Schrödinger's cat," but like me, you may not have entirely understood what it meant. But I get it now, having watched the video below. It's from scientists at the University of Nottingham in England, and in their Sixty Symbols project (a companion to the Periodic Tabl...
June 02, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Picture of the Week—Organic Solar Cells
Princeton University held an “Art of Science” competition, challenging students, staff and alumni to submit “found art,” that is, extraordinary images produced in the course of scientific research. Three winners were announced last week, and voting is now underway for a People’s Choice award. And t...
May 22, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
