If you set ball bearings at the top of each of these two inclined planes, one linear and the other curved, which ball reaches the bottom faster? Are they Galileo's balls, arriving simultaneously because of gravity? Are they Leonardo's balls, with the linear one arriving first because it has less distance to travel? Or are they Huygens' balls, the undulating one winning because of acceleration?
Ball bearing ramp challenge: which reaches the bottom first?
Physicist Michio Kaku: "Reaching out to aliens is a terrible idea"
Professor Michio Kaku, author of the new book, The God Equation, was interviewed by The Guardian on his thoughts about string theory ("The universe in some sense is like a chess game and for 2,000 years we've been trying to figure out how the pawns move."), Isaac Newton ( "A person like that comes along once every… READ THE REST
Scientists may have figured out how to make a warp drive work
Scientists Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire have submitted a new scientific paper to the peer-reviewed journal Classical and Quantum Gravity, with a proposed plan for a functioning physical warp drive — like the kind of faster-than-light space travel you could otherwise only get in science fiction. As Bobrick explained in a press release: Many people in… READ THE REST
Draw your own iceberg and see if it flips
Glaciologist and climate scientist Megan Thompson-Munson wants to correct the popular image of icebergs. Yes, 90% of an iceberg is underwater, but they don't float the way you see them in stock photos. Read her explanation at Twitter. Inspired by that thread, Joshua Tauberer made Iceberger, a web toy in which you can draw your… READ THE REST
SYQEL is an AI-powered audio visualizer for your music, and it's on sale for $50
If you've ever tried to make a living in the music business, you already know it's a tough racket. Producing music and getting it in front of people is hard enough, but nowadays, just making music won't cut it. Musicians have to be all-around entertainers, not just painting an aural soundscape, but crafting a visual… READ THE REST
This discounted Klipsch subwoofer can take your home theater to the next level
Have you revisited a movie theater this year? While movies like Godzilla vs Kong are helping to bring the theater-going experience back, it may be a long time before the cineplex is a bustling center of activity again. That's likely because, while there's a magic to going to the movies, the quarantine has shown millions there's… READ THE REST
These STEM learning kits fuel a kid's curiosity for coding, robotics, and more
After all the horrible reality of the past year, you've got to try to embrace some of the little victories from this less-than-ideal period. For instance, if your kid wasn't tech-savvy before, they're probably an absolute whiz now that they've had a year of online Zoom school/IT training to make everything work. Necessity is one… READ THE REST