How do potholes form?
Do you want to know how potholes form in the road? Episode One kicks us off with potholes! Watch the video and do the experiment!
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Science Policy Challenges, Part Two: A Strained Electrical Grid
The federal government has a critical role to play in ensuring a smooth transition to a secure and modernized electrical grid.
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New Desalination Tech Turns Saltwater into Drinking Water
New desalination tech, a graphene sieve, has the potential to be smaller, faster, and more easily adjustable than existing methods.
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Improve Your Running with Physics
Are you a runner? You can use some basic laws of physics to improve your running. Understand the forces between the ground and your feet.
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How Nature Creates the Color Blue
Sometimes nature uses physics instead of pigment to create the color blue. Radwanul Hasan Siddique explains how this is accomplished.
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Nanostructured Honeycomb Creates Electricity from Light
By Jonathan Trinastic @jptrinastic Zoom in to the nanometer scale—less than the width of a human hair—and you might think the new device designed by a team of scientists led by Lei Zhang is a honeycomb. Upon closer inspection, you would find that the hexagonal structure is made of gold and that a long string of organic molecules winds up and down through each hexagonal space. And one more thing: this device, so perfectly structured in the world of atoms and molecules, can create electricity from light. These researchers from…
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How Do Shark Teeth Bite?
Shark teeth come in many shapes and sizes. Some are triangular, some have notches or curves, some are like spikes. How do they work?
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Phosphorescent Concrete Lights the Way Home
By Jonathan Trinastic @jptrinastic Imagine a future when, as dusk turns to night during a long drive, the darkening highway begins to glow in soft hues of blue and green to illuminate the path ahead. Such a possibility could become reality after the creation of light-emitting cement by Jose Carlos Rubio at the University of San Nicolas Hidalgo in Mexico. The novel material could provide lighted pathways for cars, trucks, bikes, and pedestrians without using electricity. Countries of Concrete Most developed countries now rely on vast networks of roads to…
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Conductive Concrete May End Flight Delays
By Emily Rhode @riseandsci Every year, thousands of flights are delayed and thousands of car accidents happen due to snowstorms and icy road conditions. Millions of dollars are spent each year plowing and de-icing runways, tarmacs, roadways, and bridges. Salt and plowing cause damage to roadways and waterways, and shoveling heavy snow causes injuries and deaths. Flight Delays (and Snow Days) Could be Things of the Past, Thanks to Science The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is very interested in a special type of conductive concrete made by researchers at the…
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Liquid Graphene: Metal Behaves Like Water
By Jonathan Trinastic @jptrinastic The Liquid Electrons of Graphene Graphene has always been a material full of promise, and now researchers from Harvard University have found one more reason to wonder at this deceptively simple, two-dimensional sheet of carbon atoms. Electrons moving across one graphene layer have been observed to act like a fluid for the first time, showing a collective motion rarely seen in other metals. Potential applications of this new behavior range from electronic devices converting heat into electricity to a better understanding of black holes. A Sheet…
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