Spandex Spacetime

post from Physics Buzz on 07 August 2012 05:16:57 PM. © Physics Buzz

Every summer, the Society of Physics Students selects a group of physics interns to work in the DC area on a variety of topics ranging from science history to public outreach. These interns aren't simply grabbing coffee and answering phones, however. Instead, you can find them devising new ways to inspire the next generation of scientists or conducting novel research.

The interns presented their final projects today on research, policy and historical science, but we're going to focus on some of the great outreach work a few of the interns have done. We're biased toward outreach here at Physics Central, but you can see highlights of all the interns' work on the SPS website.

For now, let's throw back to the 80's and create some spandex spacetime with a demo some of the interns worked on. Physics never looked so good.

SPS interns Melissa Hoffman and Meredith Woy worked on a spandex analog of spacetime. Using spandex and marbles, the interns could visually demonstrate how celestial bodies alter the geometry of spacetime.

In the video above, Melissa Hoffman and Meredith Woy show how a spandex sheet can mimic the spacetime that comprises the fabric of our universe. Using marbles, ping pong balls and well-placed gravity wells (aka pushing down on the spandex), Woy and Hoffman re-created cosmic motion in a 3rd grade classroom.

Weights placed in the middle of the spandex sheet could act as black holes while they slowly devoured unsuspecting marbles. Add another weight, and now you have a binary star system, significantly changing the marble and ping pong ball orbits. Gary White, the departing director of SPS, has even written an academic paper on the topic that unravels the analogies between Kepler's laws and spandex orbits.

While Woy and Hoffman worked on this and other projects, Physics Central team member the Mathlete guided intern Matthew Goszewski as he developed 12 different demos to compliment our Physics Quest effort. One such demo usually costs hundreds of dollars to create, but Goszewski put the demo together with office supplies costing about five dollars.

The original, more expensive setup for the experiment that Goszewski re-created for about five dollars.
In the video below, Goszewski shows how to pretty thoroughly mix a fluid and then completely revert the fluid back to its original, unmixed state. The setup involves a rotating cylinder resting inside of a larger container, and the intermediate space is filled with corn syrup or some other viscous fluid.

Goszewski's version of the laminar flow experiment.
The experiment shows laminar flow in action. When a liquid with the right amount of viscosity is mixed, it flows in a set of distinct layers. By rotating the fluid several times, the fluid mixes. When you rotate backwards though, the distinct layers unwind back to the original, distinct areas where they started.

Both Goszewski and Woy are working toward degrees in secondary physics education, so hopefully they'll be able to apply their summer work soon. Hoffman hopes to continue her physics research in graduate school, but all of the interns enjoyed their time working on outreach this summer.

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/physicscentral/PhysicsBuzz/~3/ZXnnc9qBVgM/spandex-
spacetime.html

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5 Minutes for UK Climate Change E-Activism

post from Climate Change Action on 07 August 2012 05:16:18 PM. © Climate Change Action

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http://climatechangeaction.blogspot.com/2012/08/5-minutes-for-uk-climate-change-e
.html

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Online Climate Activism Highlight (USA)

post from Climate Change Action on 07 August 2012 04:16:14 PM. © Climate Change Action

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http://climatechangeaction.blogspot.com/2012/08/online-climate-activism-highlight
-usa.html

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Math Trumps Science in Diagnosing Parkinsons
Disease

post from American Biotechnologist on 07 August 2012 03:14:17 PM. © American Biotechnologist

Although there are no existing biomarkers for Parkinson’s, diagnosis may just be a phone call[...]

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http://www.americanbiotechnologist.com/blog/math-science-parkinson/

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Stunning portrait of Earth from a new European
weather sat

post from Bad Astronomy on 07 August 2012 02:30:25 PM. © Bad Astronomy

On July 5, 2012, the European Space Agency launched the Meteosat Second Generation-3 (MSG-3) weather satellite into a geosynchronous orbit about 40,000 kilometers above the Earth. It has several cameras on board, including the Spinning Enhanced Visible[...]

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Cloned Horses Given Okay For Olympics A New Era
Of Cloned Competition

post from Singularity Hub on 07 August 2012 12:49:21 PM. © Singularity Hub

Cloned horses are galloping their way toward the Olympic Games. The organization that presides over international equestrian events has reversed [...]

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http://singularityhub.com/2012/08/07/cloned-horses-given-okay-for-olympics-a-new-
era-of-cloned-competition/

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Plants with personality

post from Top stories on 07 August 2012 12:35:47 PM. © Top stories

Story Source

If you had to be an endangered animal, you?d be better off as a tiger than a toad. If you were a tiger, filmmakers might cast you in wildlife documentaries and journalists might write heart-rending stories about the disappearance of your kind.

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http://machineslikeus.com/news/plants-personality

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Nighttime view of Russian wildfires from space

Wildfires are burning across the United States right now, but we have some very unwelcome company: for months there have been raging fires in Russia as well, conflagrations burning up vast swaths of the forests there. The Suomi National Polar-orbiting[...]

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The economic cost of increased temperatures

Story Source

Even temporary rises in local temperatures significantly damage long-term economic growth in the world's developing nations, according to a new study co-authored by an MIT economist.

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Chinese Team Builds First Quantum Router

From Phys.org - Latest Science and Technology News Stories: With all the talk of quantum computers, little notice has been made of work on what is known as a quantum Internet, which is where data is sent across a web of computers via devices that work at the quantum, rather than atomic l

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