Tag Archives: science
Sally Ride, first woman astronaut to go into space 32 years ago
Grumpy Cat loves Math
5 salt tricks that look like magic
How deep is the ocean?
Kindergarden girls show Obama their science project
Why do we find giant pandas so cute?
Pi: 3,14… a magical number put into music
As you might recall from math class, pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. This irrational number—approximately 3.14159—shows up quite frequently in many mathematical applications, including geometry and trigonometry.
The first attempts to calculate pi can be traced back to ancient Babylonians, who calculated the area of a circle as three times the square of its radius, making the value of pi equal to 3. One Babylonian tablet indicated they got as close as 3.125 and later calculations by the ancient Egyptians (ca. 1650 BC) approximated pi as 3.1605.
The number today is celebrated around the world on March 14, which when written out numerically is 3.14.
On YouTube, Michael Blake decided to pay tribute to Pi. By assigning a number to each musical note, he was able to create a composition by playing out the digits of pi. View the video of his piece below.
Women can rule at science!
Facts about left-handed people
25 bizarre animals with outrageous body proportions
Empty space in atoms
Science is for everyone!
Calculating love
How do to Math
“The Hour of Code” : celebrities are telling you to learn to code
Math or medical problem?
Save the Arctic
Solid or liquid?
Math books… where they belong?
North America to scale on various planets
The vast majority of objects out there in the universe are pretty big…moons, planets, stars, galaxies, so it can be difficult sometimes to get your head round their actual size.
With the huge continent of North America dwarfed by Jupiter’s storms, the universe seems an even larger place. In the other direction, Mars looks so much more human-scaled.
This is how North America looks like in relation to Jupiter, one of the giant planets:
But this is what it lookslike on Mars:
Read more about it here:
http://astronomycentral.co.uk/astronomy-the-size-of-stuff/
Philea robot lands on comet
Congratulations, European Space Agency, you’ve made history! After departing from the Rosetta orbiter this morning, touchdown of the robot named Philae onto Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was confirmed at 16:05 GMT. This is a momentous occasion for space exploration as it marks the first time that a spacecraft has ever landed on the surface of a comet.
The Rosetta mission was dreamt up in the ‘80s, but it was not until 1993 that the $1.6 billion (€1.3 billion) project was approved and construction of the crafts could be initiated. That means the probes were fabricated using some systems that were undoubtedly invented in the 1980s, making the mission’s accomplishments even more remarkable.
Rosetta’s rocky voyage began in 2004 after two ditched launch attempts. It took a decade to reach the comet in August this year, a journey that covered six billion kilometers (3.75 billion miles) of our inner solar system.
More on IFL Science.
Marie Curie
How to make oobleck – part liquid, part solid
You can make this with two simple ingredients: water and cornstarch (cornstarch is fine flour made from corn). This stuff is really fun!
The grumpiest frog ever!
This frog with a perpetual frown isn’t actually grumpy — that’s just how the Black Rain Frog looks! This grouchy-faced amphibian has the most intimidating face around.
The Black Rain Frog is a burrowing amphibian that is native to the southern coast of Africa. One characteristic possessed by this frog is that they burrow to create tunnels up to 150 mm deep.
This frog has a special defense mechanism in case of attack. When someone scares him or tries to grab him, he puffs himself up with air to make his body more rotund. So, he ends up looking like a grumpy little balloon…
Human headphones…
Newton – Gravitation
Magic water?
“NeverWet”: miracle product repels all liquids!
Freezing a hand in hot ice
In this video a man sticks his hand into a jar full of molten sodium acetate and has it crystallize with his hand inside.
This works because the substance is not “ice” as in water, but a different substance called sodium acetate trihydrate. Normally solid sodium acetate was melted into a liquid that was then supercooled to below its melting point. In this state, adding nucleation sites, like the crystals on the man’s hand, rapidly causes the rest of the sodium acetate to crystallize.