Some interesting links (under construction)
-
My advisee for the 2009 Intel Science Talent Search,
Anissa Mak, makes the top 40 finalists nationwide
- 3-D optical illusions made from sidewalk drawings and a special camera perspective
- Water slide
followup
- Rube Goldberg Honda
followup
- Cats know how to use angular momentum to stay right side up when falling.
Click here
to see what one does in weightlessness, where there is no such thing
as "right side up."
- In 2004, a political activist, Andy Bichlbaum,
embarrassed Dow Chemical over its handling of the
Bhopal chemical disaster
by impersonating a Dow spokesman in a BBC television interview.
He announced that Dow had decided
to "own up to its responsibilities" to compensate the victims, take
care of their medical needs, clean up the site, and publish a list of
the toxic chemicals that were released there. This immediately became
international news, and the market value of Dow stock dropped by $2 billion
before the hoax was uncovered. It put Dow executives in the
awkward position of publicly acknowleging their unwillingness to take the steps
the Bichlbaum described in the interview.
Click here to see the BBC
interview
- I think I recall seeing actual instances of the now-famous
Monty Hall Problem arising on the '70s game show
Let's Make a Deal, hosted by Monty Hall. I went looking for
actual clips on YouTube. I didn't find one, but I found the following
interesting items.
- DAMN INTERESTING
-
Why cops should be cautioned against entering the MRI room with their guns drawn.
For related pictures, including some janitorial surprises and a movie of
technicians extracting a chair
from an MRI machine (one of the thumbnails), click here.
- Largest dropping ever
recorded from any carnivore, fossil or living. It likely came from
a Tyrannosaurus, and contains the crushed bones of a juvenile
dynosaur the size of a cow.
-
Tank rampage
-
Mountain biker
- Great white sharks ambush seals
- Surfer surfs an enormous wave.
(Slow motion, but otherwise authentic.) One of the many hazards surfers
of such big waves face is getting caught in a large volume of water full
of air bubbles that take time to rise to the surface, even after the wave
has passed. Because water with bubbles in it has less density, it has
less buoyancy, which can make you sink.
-
Motorcycling in the Chernobyl Dead Zone gives an insight what would happen
after a nuclear war.
- Conversation with a Slow Student
- Saturday-Morning Science -- weightless fun with blobs of water, Alka-Seltzer, CD-player gyroscopes and snacks on the International Space Station (47 minutes)
Go to minute 14:45 to see how to blow smoke rings in a blob of water.
Go to minute 18 of the video for an especially interesting segment on blobs
within bubbles within blobs of water. Go to minute 40 to see the challenges
of fixing a watch in microgravity.
- Here's a picture of the world altitude record for skydives, taken
from a weather balloon at 103,000 feet (31 km).
The jumper, Joe Kitinger, wore a space suit, and because there is
virtually no air or air resistance at that altitude, he became the first
person to reach the speed of sound without being propelled by an airplane
or rocket. Though he made his jump in 1960, his record remains unbroken.
Click here to see a movie he took on the way down.