The special NON-QUANTUM PHYSICS (volume 30, number 4, July/August 2024) issue of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research has just gone out to subscribers. Even if you are not a subscriber you can read several of its articles online free, for looks at some physics of Detangling, Whipping, Kicking, Walking, Telescoping and many other familiar things; and at […]
Nature Physics has a nice essay today about the Ig Nobel Prizes. We take the liberty of reproducing it here: Editorial Published: 11 October 2023 Levity and gravity Nature Physics, volume 19, page 1375 (2023) The Ig Nobel Prize celebrates research that makes us first laugh and then think. We look at some of this year’s not so […]
Willfully or not, some leaks can under certain circumstances stop themselves. This study explores that notion: “How a Leak Can Stop Itself,” Caroline D. Tally, Heather E. Kurtz, Rose B. Tchuenkam, and Katharine E. Jensen, arXiv:2202.02644, 2023. The authors explain: We often consider how to stop a leak, but here we ask a different question: […]
Much can be learned from a calculating study of cartoon animals behaving in ways that are natural to them. Here is a new example: “Tauberian identities and the connection to Wile E. Coyote physics,” Roberto Camassa and Richard M. McLaughlin, arXiv:2304.06127, 2023. (Thank to Mason Porter for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at […]