Science Behind the Bike: Four Videos from the Open University on the Eve of the Tour de France

in Physics, Science, Technology | June 29th, 2012

Right in time for the Tour de France (which gets under­way tomor­row) the Open Uni­ver­si­ty has released a new video series called Sci­ence Behind the Bike. Dur­ing the past two decades, sci­ence has tak­en cycling to new places — some­times good, some­times bad. The intro­duc­tion of per­for­mance enhanc­ing drugs near­ly dam­aged the sport beyond repair, and it cer­tain­ly destroyed the careers and rep­u­ta­tions of many lead­ing cyclists. But all along, some­where out­side the pub­lic glare, many well-inten­tioned sci­en­tif­ic minds have toiled away, try­ing to find legit­i­mate ways to advance the sport. Phys­i­ol­o­gists, physi­cists, engi­neers, soft­ware design­ers, techies from For­mu­la 1 rac­ing — they’ve all brought a new per­spec­tive to cycling.

In the video above, Sci­ence Behind the Bike looks at how sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy have influ­enced the mak­ing and break­ing of the pres­ti­gious World Hour Record first estab­lished in 1893. Then, below, Forces breaks down the physics of cycling; Phys­i­ol­o­gy explains, well, the phys­i­ol­o­gy that boosts per­for­mance; and Tech­nol­o­gy digs deep­er into the high-tech hard­ware that cyclists push along. If you’re a fan of the sport, you’ll undoubt­ed­ly appre­ci­ate appear­ances by Chris Board­man, Francesco Moser, Graeme Obree and Rebec­ca Romero.

Forces

Phys­i­ol­o­gy

Tech­nol­o­gy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Brus­sels Express: The Per­ils of Cycling in Europe’s Most Con­gest­ed City

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

The Physics of the Bike

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The LEGO Turing Machine Gives a Quick Primer on How Your Computer Works

in Computer Science, Technology | June 25th, 2012

This past Sat­ur­day, we cel­e­brat­ed the cen­ten­ni­al of Alan Turing’s birth by pre­sent­ing two films that explore the life and achieve­ments of the great mathematician/father of com­put­er sci­ence: Dan­ger­ous Knowl­edge and Break­ing the Code. Today, before the anniver­sary fades into the back­ground, let us send one more film your way — this one a “short doc­u­men­tary” that brings Tur­ing’s famous com­put­ing machine to life. The device, as Tur­ing imag­ined it in 1936, was meant to sim­u­late the log­ic of com­put­er algo­rithms, reveal­ing the extent and lim­its of what can be com­put­ed. Tur­ing nev­er built the machine. He only offered a con­cep­tu­al blue­print. But two researchers at the Cen­trum Wiskunde & Infor­mat­i­ca in Ams­ter­dam have kind­ly recre­at­ed the Tur­ing Machine with LEGO, and then pro­duced a short film demon­strat­ing how the machine car­ries out the most basic func­tions of your com­put­er. Watch it go.

You can find more infor­ma­tion on the build­ing and inner-work­ings of the LEGO Tur­ing Machine here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es

Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty to Cre­ate a Lego Pro­fes­sor­ship

Two Scenes from Stan­ley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, Recre­at­ed in Lego

New “Women of NASA” Lego Immor­tal­izes the STEM Con­tri­bu­tions of Sal­ly Ride,  Mar­garet Hamil­ton, Mae Jemi­son & Nan­cy Grace Roman

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Magician Marco Tempest Dazzles a TED Audience with “The Electric Rise and Fall of Nikola Tesla”

in Technology, Video - Science | June 22nd, 2012

Mar­ry­ing form and con­tent, Swiss magi­cian Mar­co Tem­pest uses the rel­a­tive­ly new tech­nol­o­gy of pro­jec­tion map­ping to illu­mi­nate sev­er­al vignettes of Niko­la Tes­la, the Ser­bian inven­tor of alter­nat­ing cur­rent, the hydro­elec­tric dam, and hun­dreds of oth­er nec­es­sary, fan­tas­tic, and some­times trag­i­cal­ly unre­al­ized tech­nolo­gies. Over the course of the 20th cen­tu­ry, Tes­la was over­shad­owed by his one­time employ­er, Thomas Edi­son, who is giv­en cred­it for Tesla’s most famous ideas. Edi­son has emerged from his­to­ry as less a sci­en­tist than a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist, arch-mar­keter, and pop­u­lar­iz­er of oth­er, smarter people’s ideas (those of film­mak­ing team the Lumiere Broth­ers, for exam­ple), while Tesla’s rep­u­ta­tion as a mys­tic genius has only grown since his death in rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty and absolute pover­ty in 1943.

Tes­la has occu­pied a promi­nent place in pop­u­lar cul­ture for over two decades now: There was David Bowie’s per­for­mance as the inven­tor in 2006’s The Pres­tige, a 2001 biog­ra­phy sim­ply enti­tled Wiz­ard, and, of course, the suc­cess of very earnest 90s hair met­al band Tes­la. Fore­cast­ing the Tes­la revival, Orches­tral Maneu­vers in the Dark record­ed their song â€śTes­la Girls” in 1984. A new Tes­la lega­cy to watch is the pio­neer­ing high-end elec­tric car com­pa­ny Tes­la Motors, found­ed by Pay­Pal bil­lion­aire Elon Musk. Whether or not Tes­la Motors’ expen­sive new ful­ly-elec­tric sedan lives up to its promise, Niko­la Tesla’s name lives as an exem­plar of ambi­tion, futur­ism, per­sis­tence, sci­en­tif­ic won­der, and as Mar­co Tem­pest demon­strates above, the impor­tance of enthu­si­as­tic show­man­ship.

J. David Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Microsoft Rolls Out Its New Tablet in Fine Apple Style

in Apple, iPad, Technology | June 20th, 2012

This week, Microsoft rolled out its new tablet, sim­ply called Sur­face, which gives you anoth­er way to enjoy our cours­es, movies, ebooks, audio books and the rest. In many ways, Sur­face resem­bles the iPad in its look and feel. And when it came to unveil­ing the tablet, Microsoft­’s execs could­n’t think out­side the box cre­at­ed by Steve Jobs. A video made by Read­WriteWeb makes that rather painful­ly yet amus­ing­ly clear.…

Don’t for­get to fol­low us on Twit­ter, Face­book and now Google+

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Rembrandt’s Facebook Timeline

in Art, Technology | June 7th, 2012

The Rijksmu­se­um, locat­ed in Ams­ter­dam, hous­es famous paint­ings by Rem­brandt, Ver­meer, and oth­er Dutch mas­ters. Recent­ly, the 212-year-old muse­um decid­ed to get a lit­tle mod­ern when it imag­ined what Rem­brandt’s Face­book Time­line might look like. “I made a self-por­trait. Let me know what you think!,” Rem­brandt announces (in Eng­lish!) 384 years ago — to which Peter Paul Rubens, a con­tem­po­rary, responds, “Nice one!” And lat­er Rem­brandt announces, “Look what Johannes [Ver­meer] made!,” point­ing to the The Milk Maid, which already has over 5,000 “Likes.” And so the video goes.

You can find The Rijksmu­se­um on Face­book here, and our stim­u­lat­ing Face­book Page here, where we share our posts every day.

via Sci­ence Dump

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Explorer David Livingstone’s Diary (Written in Berry Juice) Now Digitized with New Imaging Technology

in History, Religion, Science, Technology | June 7th, 2012

One of the 19th century’s most intrigu­ing fig­ures, the Scot­tish explor­er David Liv­ing­stone may be best known for words uttered by a reporter when the two men met on the shores of Lake Tan­ganyi­ka: “Dr. Liv­ing­stone, I pre­sume?”

David Liv­ing­stone dis­ap­peared in Africa for six years before meet­ing the famous­ly quot­ed Hen­ry Mor­ton Stan­ley. He was a hero in Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land for his rags-to-rich­es sto­ry of an impov­er­ished boy who went on to become a sci­en­tif­ic inves­ti­ga­tor and anti-slav­ery cru­sad­er. Liv­ing­stone became impas­sioned about the poten­tial of Chris­tian­i­ty to erad­i­cate the slave trade in Africa and took his mis­sion­ary work into the African inte­ri­or.

An avid chron­i­cler of his adven­tures, Liv­ing­stone left behind a num­ber of jour­nals, but one of his most vivid accounts—of a mas­sacre hit wit­nessed in 1871—has been inac­ces­si­ble until now. Liv­ing­stone’s 1871 Field Diary cap­tures a five-month peri­od when the explor­er was strand­ed in a vil­lage in the Con­go. He had run out of paper and ink to main­tain his usu­al jour­nal, so he impro­vised by writ­ing over an old copy of The Stan­dard news­pa­per using ink made from the seeds of a local berry.

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with British and Amer­i­can archivists, the UCLA Dig­i­tal Library Pro­gram used spec­tral imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy to dig­i­tize the del­i­cate mate­r­i­al. Over­all the site offers an inter­est­ing pre­sen­ta­tion of Livingstone’s work, though the diary pages them­selves aren’t too leg­i­ble. Crit­i­cal notes are abun­dant and intrigu­ing, and diary pages appear side-by-side with tran­scrip­tions. View­ers can zoom in to study Livingstone’s spi­dery script writ­ten per­pen­dic­u­lar to the news­pa­per copy. The spec­tral imag­ing process itself is worth a look. With­out this tech­nique, the diaries appear as noth­ing more than ghost­ly scrib­bles.

Pre­vi­ous to keep­ing this field diary, Liv­ing­stone embarked on a mis­sion to find the source of the Nile Riv­er, which he misiden­ti­fied. But his the­o­ries about cen­tral African water sys­tems are fas­ci­nat­ing. Liv­ing­stone was the first Euro­pean to see Mosi-oa-Tun­ya, “the smoke that thun­ders,” water­fall, which he renamed Vic­to­ria Falls after his monarch. His diaries pro­vide a peek into a time when explo­ration was dan­ger­ous, dif­fi­cult and even dead­ly. Liv­ing­stone died of Malar­ia in present-day Zam­bia, where his heart is buried under a tree. The rest of his remains were interred at West­min­ster Abbey.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land based free­lance writer. See more of her work at .

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ZeroN: An Amazing, Gravity-Defying New Interactive Technology at M.I.T.

in MIT, Technology | May 25th, 2012

In Stephen Spiel­berg’s film E.T. The Extra-Ter­res­tri­al there is a mem­o­rable scene in which a group of chil­dren ask a strand­ed vis­i­tor from out­er space where he is from, and he tries to com­mu­ni­cate by using an unseen force to lift a group of balls into mid-air and move them around to sim­u­late a solar sys­tem. Now a researcher at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy has tapped into the physics of mag­net­ic lev­i­ta­tion to cre­ate some­thing sim­i­lar: a com­put­er-con­trolled sys­tem that allows users to manip­u­late a met­al sphere float­ing in space.

“I think there is some­thing fun­da­men­tal behind moti­va­tions to lib­er­ate phys­i­cal mat­ter from grav­i­ty and enable con­trol,” writes Jin­ha Lee on his Web site. “The moti­va­tion has exist­ed as a shared dream amongst humans for mil­len­nia. It is an idea found in mytholo­gies, desired by alchemists, and visu­al­ized in Sci­ence Fic­tion movies. I have aspired to cre­ate a space where we can expe­ri­ence a glimpse of this future.”

Lee’s device is part of the M.I.T. Tan­gi­ble Media Group’s larg­er project of giv­ing phys­i­cal form to dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion. The group strives to bring togeth­er the sep­a­rate worlds of bits and atoms in a Tan­gi­ble User Inter­face, or TUI, to allow peo­ple to use their nat­u­ral­ly evolved phys­i­cal dex­ter­i­ty to visu­al­ize and manip­u­late com­pu­ta­tion. To help achieve this, Lee devel­oped a pro­gram­ma­ble inter­face ele­ment he calls “ZeroN.” He describes it in the abstract of a paper pub­lished last Octo­ber with col­lab­o­ra­tors Reh­mi Post and Hiroshi Ishii:

ZeroN serves as a tan­gi­ble rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a 3D coor­di­nate of the vir­tu­al world through which users can see, feel, and con­trol com­pu­ta­tion. To acom­plish this we devel­oped a mag­net­ic con­trol sys­tem that can lev­i­tate and actu­ate a per­ma­nent mag­net in a pre-defined 3D vol­ume. This is com­bined with an opti­cal track­ing and dis­play sys­tem that projects images on the lev­i­tat­ing object. We present appli­ca­tions that explore this new inter­ac­tion modal­i­ty. Users are invit­ed to place or move the ZeroN object just as they can place objects on sur­faces. For exam­ple, users can place the sun above phys­i­cal objects to cast dig­i­tal shad­ows, or place a plan­et that will start revolv­ing based on sim­u­lat­ed phys­i­cal con­di­tions.

You can access the com­plete paper as a PDF. And you can find sim­i­lar videos when you explore our Tech­nol­o­gy sec­tion.

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Manuel Lima Visualizes Knowledge in Our Interconnected World in a Brand New RSA Animated Video

in Animation, Technology | May 22nd, 2012

Through­out 2010 and 2011, the Roy­al Soci­ety of the Arts (RSA) devel­oped a series of catchy videos that fea­ture the words of thought lead­ers accom­pa­nied by the fast-mov­ing ani­ma­tion of Andrew Park. Along the way, we have high­light­ed RSA talks by Stephen Pinker, Slavoj Zizek, Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich, Daniel Pink, Sir Ken Robin­son, and Rena­ta Sale­cl. Now, after a fair­ly long hia­tus, the series returns — this time with Manuel Lima (senior UX design lead at Microsoft Bing) explain­ing how net­works helps us map and cre­ate knowl­edge in our mod­ern world. You can watch the full  unan­i­mat­ed) lec­ture here.

Want to share intel­li­gent media with fam­i­ly and friends? Join us on Face­book and Twit­ter.

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