yay science – Scott A McKinley

Of coffee rings and ballistic deposition

A friend mine shared a gorgeous video show how coffee rings form at a microscopic level. Apparently he found the video through a impressive blog called Empirical Zeal that’s maintained by a Physics grad student. The blog post, entitled “The Universal laws behind growth patterns, or what Tetris can teach us about coffee stains,” doesContinue reading “Of coffee rings and ballistic deposition”

Stardust

Maybe it’s the recent flyby (and impact) that has space on people’s minds, but here are a couple of worthy links, but the sentiments one of my personal inspirations, Carl Sagan, seem to be popping up all over. This morning for example, I read over at Brainpickings that there is a kids’ book out thatContinue reading “Stardust”

Curiosity has landed!

NPR’s news report: “Mars Rover Pulls Off High-Wire Landing”

Landing on Mars looks somewhat difficult

NASA’s newest Mars rover, Curiosity, is apparently the size of a compact car and is due to land August 5. This has got to be the best promotional video I’ve ever seen for anything: “Challenges of Getting to Mars: Curiosity’s Seven Minutes of Terror” Unfortunately, this may be our last rover for a long time.Continue reading “Landing on Mars looks somewhat difficult”

Space is pretty. And smells metallic?

This is cute: a one paragraph answer to the question, “What does space smell like?” And for good effect, here’s a recent image of the Orion Nebula that recently had the honor of being The Atlantic’s photo of the day.

xkcd: Relativistic Baseball

Over at xkcd, the new project is to answer physics-based “What if …” type questions. It’s off to a good start! “What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?”