An Asteroid As Big As the Vatican?
Speaking of asteroids... "An Asteroid As Big As the Vatican." This title arrested me. Instantly I realized that I should write about it here. How could I overlook it? Dr. Bruce Betts never stops...
View ArticleSuch Stuff As Stars Are Made on
Brother Guy knows I love a challenge. A few days ago Brenda Frye, in her article on the creation of complex nuclei in supernovae, concluded "As Carl Sagan first said, 'We are starstuff!'" Brother Guy...
View ArticleOn the Road to Pluto
I'm stopping in the middle of an epic road trip to post this from a diner in York, Pennsylvania. I am headed for Laurel, Maryland, where the good folks at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics...
View ArticleLand of the Plutophiles
I arrived today in the heart of Plutomania, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The scientists collaborating on the New Horizons team have already been here, keeping long hours,...
View ArticleEncounter Day, Morning: The Heart of Pluto
As I left the Applied Physics Laboratory on the evening of Monday, 13 July—a day I wrote about in "Land of the Plutophiles"—I knew the New Horizons spacecraft would fall silent that night. Across the...
View ArticleEncounter Day, Evening: “We’re Outbound from Pluto”
We spent Tuesday, the 14th of July, in suspense, not knowing whether the Pluto flyby had been a success. Just as planned, the spacecraft had not transmitted any signal since Monday. I was among the...
View ArticleEncounter Fashions: The Hats of New Horizons
When I set out to experience a Pluto flyby, I did not anticipate that I would be getting involved with hats. In the middle of July, I was hanging around the Kossiakoff Conference and Education Center...
View ArticleHow I Found Florence’s Marvelous Cabinet of Physics
I found something amazing in Florence. I had no idea it was there, until the moment I found it. Two years ago, I said goodbye to Brother Guy Consolmagno. He'd accompanied me from Rome to Florence,...
View ArticleFlorence’s Cabinet of Physics: Past, Future, and YouTube
The Cabinet of Physics, a fabulous collection of antique scientific devices I essentially stumbled upon (as I related yesterday) in Florence, has a long history. It may also have a bright future....
View ArticleFrom the Cabinet of Physics: A Machine for Falling
In this brief video from the Cabinet of Physics, we see Morin's Machine demonstrate that uniform horizontal motion, combined with accelerated vertical motion, together trace a path with the form of a...
View ArticleFrom the Cabinet of Physics: Using a Single-Prism Spectroscope
Here is an instrument dear to the hearts of astrophysicists: the spectroscope. We see the steps involved in observing the spectrum of an arc light. The vintage single-prism spectroscope is provided...
View ArticleFrom the Cabinet of Physics: Creating Eddy Currents
Since many of the inventions of the 19th century exploited the interactions between electricity and magnetism, it was important to give students and understanding of these effects. Here are three...
View ArticleFrom the Cabinet of Physics: Lissajous Figures, Old Style
The beautiful and intriguing figures of Jules Antoine Lissajous result from juxtaposing oscillating motion along one axis with another oscillation, along another axis, at right angles to the first. As...
View ArticleFrom the Cabinet of Physics: The Thunder House
The operation of a lightning rod, which is designed to protect a building from lightning strikes, is demonstrated in today's Cabinet of Physics video. A wooden model house is equipped with a metal rod...
View ArticleFrom the Cabinet of Physics: Induction Coils Provide the Spark of Inquiry
Today the curators bring us three devices from the shelves of the Cabinet of Physics. All are induction coils, sometimes called "spark coils." Each is a transformer. Each takes a low voltage, with...
View ArticleFrom the Cabinet of Physics: Seven Mirrors and a Spectrum
Today's video from the Cabinet of Physics illustrates the malleable nature of light. A bright white light illuminates a screen. The curator's gloved hand inserts a prism into the white beam. On the...
View ArticleFrom the Cabinet of Physics: Tracing the Pathway of a Spark
Bringing out the wheel-shaped Wimshurst machine once again, today’s electrostatic demonstration involves a spark discharge into a slab of resin. The resin is an insulator, which means that charge does...
View ArticleFrom the Cabinet of Physics: Many Ways to Look at Centrifugal Force
Today, in exploring the effects of centrifugal force, we see no fewer than seven gadgets demonstrated. Our curator does a lot of cranking. 1. As a spinning glass globe rotates faster, colored liquid...
View ArticleFrom the Cabinet of Physics: In the Days before PowerPoint
If you want to project images on a screen, you need two things: A bright light source, and an optical apparatus to direct and focus the light through the image. Three things, if you count the...
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From the Cabinet of Physics: Sharing a Flea Together
We recently saw the projector based on the Duboscq arc lamp. Today's video introduces a nifty optical attachment: a microscope. Intense light from the projector passes through a slide containing a...
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