How Liquipel Will Make Your Phone Waterproof
Adults ScienceWe check in with the team at Liquipel, a company that impressed us last year with its water-resistent nano-coating for smartphones. Dunking an iPhone into a tub of water and watching it still work perfectly is still amazing and something our brains struggle to comprehend.
Mystery of Prince Rupert's Drop at 130,000 fps - Smarter Every Day
Adults ScienceBeing able to calculate the failure front velocity of a Prince Rupert's drop is a pretty big deal. For years this was a scientific mystery. High speed camera technology is only recently fast enough to provide data like this. Thanks to Vision Research for letting me use the V1610 to try to unravel this mystery for the public in general.
3D sound "Holophonics"
Adults Science3D sound must be experienced with headphones and you must close your eyes Holophonics, by inventor Hugo Zuccarelli is the aural equivalent of visual holography, a technology with the capacity to record sound exactly as it is. Spatial dimension, ambience, emotion, and the living spirit of the source are presented in such a way that our brains have little choice but to tell us that the content of the recording is, in fact, real life. No processing, no special effects, just a pure signal, blended with a healthy dose of genius.
Chicken Head Tracking - Smarter Every Day
Adults ScienceChickens have a great ability to keep their heads stable. Our bodies use a gyro-like mechanism in our ears which has 3 mutually orthogonal inertial measurement devices. Modern motion processors use something called an Inertial Measurment Unit (IMU). These devices provide movement data which can be used to compensate for the movement. Chickens apparently have the same type mechanism only with a higher update rate.
CHASING ICE captures largest glacier calving ever filmed
Adults ScienceOn May 28, 2008, Adam LeWinter and Director Jeff Orlowski filmed a historic breakup at the Ilulissat Glacier in Western Greenland. The calving event lasted for 75 minutes and the glacier retreated a full mile across a calving face three miles wide. The height of the ice is about 3,000 feet, 300-400 feet above water and the rest below water.
The World We Dream- Hugh Herr Zeitgeist Americas 2012
Adults ScienceDo you want to have your mind blown? Watch this. (This will cost you 13.5 minutes) Hugh Herr, Director of Biomechatronics at MIT University delivers an amazing talk that will touch your soul. I was in the audience. I was almost in the back row. For the opening few minutes of the talk, I couldn't see his feet. So imagine what happened when I finally stood up and saw his legs.
Felix Baumgartner's supersonic freefall from 128k'
Adults ScienceAfter flying to an altitude of 39,045 meters (128,100 feet) in a helium-filled balloon, Felix Baumgartner completed a record breaking jump for the ages from the edge of space, exactly 65 years after Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier flying in an experimental rocket-powered airplane.
Space Shuttle Endeavour flys over Los Angeles
Adults ScienceThe Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and Endeavour flew over the Los Angeles area on September 21, 2012. It flew directly over Malibu, Dodger Stadium, California Science Center, the Los Angeles Colosseum, downtown Los Angeles, and the Hollywood Sign before landing at Los Angeles International Airport at 12:51 pm PT.
Some People are Braver than Others
Adults ScienceGoeff Mackley descended 400 meters into the Marum, an active volcano on Ambrym Island in the Pacific ocean, and stood just a few meters from a massive lava pool. He and Bradley Ambrose, who filmed the video below, were apparently the first people to ever get this close. About the experience, Geoff wrote: "Climbing down to within 30 metres of the lava it was so hot (1150 degrees) that without protection we could stand the heat for 6 seconds before retreating, with heat suit and BA I was able to stand it for 40 minutes."
Breathtaking! - Mars Curiosity Descent
Adults ScienceUltra-resolution, smooth-motion, detail-enhanced, color-corrected, interpolated from the original 4 frames per second to 30 frames per second. This video plays real-time at the speed that Curiosity descended to the surface of Mars on August 6, 2012. I think it's wonderful that everyone on Earth has a chance to see this amazing footage from Mars :)