Just How Small are Atoms? Mind Blowing TEDEd Animation Puts It All Into Perspective

in Education, K-12, Physics, Science | April 26th, 2012

In this new video from TED Edu­ca­tion, teacher and author Jonathan Bergmann uses col­or­ful analo­gies to help us visu­al­ize the scale of the atom and its nucle­us. Bergmann is a pio­neer of the “Flipped Class­room” teach­ing method, which inverts the tra­di­tion­al edu­ca­tion­al mod­el of class­room lec­tures fol­lowed by home­work. In a flipped class­room there are no lec­tures. Instead, teach­ers assign video lessons like the one above as home­work, and devote their class­room time to help­ing stu­dents work their way through prob­lems. To learn more about the flipped class­room method you can read a recent arti­cle co-authored by Bergmann in The Dai­ly Riff. And to see more TED Edu­ca­tion videos, which come with quizzes and  oth­er sup­ple­men­tary teach­ing mate­ri­als, vis­it the TED­Ed YouTube chan­nel.

PS Find 31 Free Physics Cours­es in our Col­lec­tion of 450 Free Cours­es Online. They’re all from top uni­ver­si­ties — MIT, Stan­ford, Yale and the rest.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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An Easy, Scientifically-Proven Way to Make Yourself Smarter. Go for a Good Walk or Swim Every Day

in Life, Science, Video - Science | April 21st, 2012

This week, The New York Times gave us some good news. Accord­ing to an arti­cle by Gretchen Reynolds, a decade of research by neu­ro­sci­en­tists and phys­i­ol­o­gists shows fair­ly con­vinc­ing­ly that exer­cise can make you smarter. She writes:

Using sophis­ti­cat­ed tech­nolo­gies to exam­ine the work­ings of indi­vid­ual neu­rons — and the make­up of brain mat­ter itself — sci­en­tists in just the past few months have dis­cov­ered that exer­cise appears to build a brain that resists phys­i­cal shrink­age and enhance cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­i­ty. Exer­cise, the lat­est neu­ro­science sug­gests, does more to bol­ster think­ing than think­ing does.

There’s appar­ent­ly a lot to be gained from a sim­ple dai­ly walk (assum­ing it checks out with your doc­tor). And, as the video below shows, the gains goes beyond cog­ni­tion itself:

The pho­to above was pro­vid­ed cour­tesy of Big­Stock­Pho­to

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The First Images and Video Footage from Outer Space, 1946–1959

in Science, Video - Science | April 17th, 2012

In Octo­ber 1946, Amer­i­can sci­en­tists, work­ing in White Sands, New Mex­i­co, shot a V‑2 mis­sile 65 miles into the air. The mis­sile (orig­i­nal­ly designed by the Nazis dur­ing World War II) car­ried a 35-mil­lime­ter cam­era aloft that snapped an image every sec­ond and a half. When the mis­sile returned to Earth, the cam­era itself was demol­ished by the impact. But the film, pro­tect­ed by a steel cas­ing, remained unscathed, accord­ing to Air & Space Mag­a­zine. And when the sci­en­tists recov­ered the film, they wit­nessed some­thing nev­er seen by humans before — the first images of our plan­et tak­en from out­er space. As one sci­en­tist put it, we got to see (above) “how our Earth would look to vis­i­tors from anoth­er plan­et com­ing in on a space ship.”

By the 1950s, the U.S. Air Force start­ed work­ing with a new line of mis­sile, the Thor mis­sile. And it made his­to­ry in May, 1959. Launched from Cape Canaver­al, the Thor Mis­sile Num­ber 187 car­ried a Gen­er­al Elec­tric-man­u­fac­tured “data cap­sule” and 16-mil­lime­ter cam­era in its nose cone. The flight last­ed 15 min­utes, cov­ered 1500 miles, and end­ed in the Atlantic Ocean. Accord­ing to the GE Film Cat­a­log, when the data cap­sule was recov­ered:

Gen­er­al Elec­tric sci­en­tists began the care­ful pro­cess­ing of the cap­sule’s con­tents. They were not long in find­ing the results they had hoped for—in the sub­dued light of a pho­to­graph­ic dark room, on a still-drip­ping strip of devel­oped motion pic­ture film, the eyes of man beheld for the first time the image of the earth as it appears from beyond the atmos­phere.

You can watch the his­toric video imme­di­ate­ly above.

To get more recent views of the Earth from out­er space, don’t miss these daz­zling videos:

via It’s Okay to be Smart

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NASA’s Stunning Tour of the Moon

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | April 2nd, 2012

On 18 June 2009, NASA launched the Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter (LRO) from Cape Canaver­al to con­duct inves­ti­ga­tions that would pave the way for future lunar explo­ration. The main objec­tives? To scout for safe and pro­duc­tive land­ing sites, locate poten­tial resources (with spe­cial atten­tion to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of water ice) and char­ac­ter­ize the effects of pro­longed expo­sure to lunar radi­a­tion. All along, the LRO has col­lect­ed sci­en­tif­ic data about the moon’s topog­ra­phy and com­po­si­tion, result­ing in some of the most spec­tac­u­lar images ever tak­en of the moon. NASA’s God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter has assem­bled some of these images into a won­der­ful ani­mat­ed tour of the moon.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Richard Dawkins Rallies for Reason in Washington DC

in Current Affairs, Religion, Science | March 27th, 2012

This week­end, an esti­mat­ed 20,000 agnos­tics, athe­ists and ardent sec­u­lar­ists gath­ered on the Nation­al Mall in rainy Wash­ing­ton DC. They were attend­ing the first Rea­son Ral­ly, an event intend­ed to “uni­fy, ener­gize, and embold­en sec­u­lar peo­ple nation­wide, while dis­pelling the neg­a­tive opin­ions held by so much of Amer­i­can soci­ety… and hav­ing a damn good time doing it!” Lawrence Krauss, Michael Sher­mer, Eddie Izzard — they all spoke to the crowd. And then came Richard Dawkins, the high priest of rea­son, the author of The Self­ish Gene, who spent decades teach­ing evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy at Oxford. In the mid­dle of his 16 minute talk, he tells the audi­ence, “We’re here to stand up for rea­son, to stand up for sci­ence, to stand up for log­ic, to stand up for the beau­ty of real­i­ty, and the beau­ty of the fact that we can under­stand real­i­ty.” I’m with you Richard on that. But then comes the scorn we’re now so accus­tomed to (“I don’t despise reli­gious peo­ple; I despise what they stand for.”), and my guess is that chang­ing per­cep­tions of agnos­tics, athe­ists and sec­u­lar­ists will need to wait for anoth­er day.

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Filmmaker James Cameron Going 36,000 Feet Under the Sea

in Film, Science | March 23rd, 2012

This week, film­mak­er James Cameron (Titan­ic, Avatar, The Abyss) hopes to go where only two men have gone before, div­ing 36,000 feet beneath the sea, to the Mar­i­ana Trench, the deep­est known place on Earth. It’s basi­cal­ly Mount Ever­est in the inverse. Cameron plans to make the his­toric solo jour­ney in The Deepsea Chal­lenger, a 24-foot-long ver­ti­cal tor­pe­do, built secret­ly in Aus­tralia over the last year eight years. (More on that here.) And when he reach­es his des­ti­na­tion, he’ll spend six hours shoot­ing 3‑D video of the trench and col­lect­ing rocks and rare sea crea­tures with a robot­ic arm. Or so that’s the plan.

Above, James Cameron describes his mis­sion in a Nation­al Geo­graph­ic video. Below, you’ll find an ani­ma­tion of the Mar­i­ana Trench dive cre­at­ed by The Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion (NOAA). You can track Cameron’s voy­age on the Nat­Geo web­site and find a detailed descrip­tion of the actu­al dive right here.

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Astronaut Films Auroras from Above

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | March 20th, 2012

As the sun’s 11-year cycle of mag­net­ic storms moves clos­er to peak inten­si­ty some­time ear­ly next year, peo­ple who live at high­er lat­i­tudes can expect to see col­or­ful auro­ras light­ing up the night sky. But what would it be like to look down at the auro­ras, or to move through them? In these strik­ing images from NASA, we find out. Astro­naut Don Pet­tit has been orbit­ing the Earth since Decem­ber, as a Flight Engi­neer for Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion Expe­di­tion 30, and while up there he’s been tak­ing advan­tage of the increased solar activ­i­ty by film­ing some of the fire­works in the Earth­’s mag­ne­tos­phere. “We can actu­al­ly fly into the auro­ras,” Pet­tit says in this NASA Sci­ence­Cast. “It’s like being shrunk down and put inside of a neon sign.” To learn more, you can read the arti­cle at NASA Sci­ence News, and to watch oth­er episodes in the series, vis­it the Sci­ence­Casts home page. Find more excel­lent clips in our col­lec­tion of Great Sci­ence Videos.

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Albert Einstein Archive Now Online, Bringing 80,000+ Documents to the Web

in Physics, Science | March 20th, 2012

It’s not hard to jump online and learn about Albert Ein­stein’s intel­lec­tu­al con­tri­bu­tions. Thanks to Yale, you can get a 60 minute primer on Ein­stein’s the­o­ret­i­cal work. It’s called Ein­stein for the Mass­es. Or you can embark upon a longer, 10-lec­ture explo­ration of Ein­stein’s ground­break­ing ideas (iTunes – YouTube) with Leonard Susskind, a Stan­ford pro­fes­sor known for his own ground­break­ing work on String The­o­ry.

And then there’s this: Start­ing this week, the Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty of Jerusalem is bring­ing online an exten­sive archive of papers and let­ters belong­ing to the great human­ist and sci­en­tist. The col­lec­tion cur­rent­ly fea­tures 2,000 doc­u­ments and will even­tu­al­ly sur­pass 80,000. And it all gives a round­ed view of Ein­stein’s life and work. The doc­u­ments shed light on his per­son­al rela­tion­ship with his moth­er, wife and many mis­tress­es; his views on the Arab-Israeli con­flict; and his work on physics itself. A quick way to sam­ple the archive is to enter this gallery, where, among oth­er things, you’ll find Ein­stein’s man­u­script intro­duc­ing his famous equa­tion, e=mc2.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sir Isaac Newton’s Papers & Anno­tat­ed Prin­cip­ia Go Dig­i­tal

Roy­al Soci­ety Opens Online Archive; Puts 60,000 Papers Online

Free Physics Cours­es: 28 Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

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