A big Thank You to the Harvard Physics Department for again letting us use the SciBox for rehearsals of a new Ig Nobel mini-opera. This photo was taken by David Kessler: The opera will premiere this Thursday night, Sept 17, as part of the Twenty-Fifth 1st Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, at Sanders Theatre. The entire […]
Tag: Physics
How Do Bumps Form in Carpets?
We’ve all had this experience: we are walking on a carpet, and we suddenly trip over an annoying bump (or “ruck”) that we didn’t know was there. So how did it form? My colleagues Alpha Lee, Clément Le Goullec, and Dominic Vella from the Mathematical Institute at University of Oxford have just posted a new paper that endeavors to explain […]
The Enigma of the Two Phonebooks, pulled apart
Here’s a reported answer to a question only old people — people old enough to know what a “telephone book” is — will understand. Here’s video of the question: And here, the suggested new answer: “The Enigma of the Two Interleaved Phonebooks,” Hector Alarcon, Thomas Salez, Christophe Poulard, Jean-Francis Bloch, Elie Raphael, Kari Dalnoki-Veress, and […]
Cat dropping, for curiosity’s sake
The Skull in the Stars blog writes about the practice, back when, of cat turning: One thing I’ve learn from studying the history of science is that scientists are human beings. Often incredibly weird, weird human beings. For example: in the mid-to-late-1800s, an exciting era in which the foundations of electromagnetic theory were set and […]