Tag: Physics and Chemistry

• 12.17.07

  The Grapes of Math

  Science is Putting New Wine in New Bottles The basics of winemaking haven't changed in generations: picking the fruit at the optimum time, extracting the juice, adding yeast to ferment the wine by turning sugar into alcohol, then aging the product until

• 12.17.07

  Screwing with Wine

  Your Wine May be Better off with a Screw Cap - but the Planet Isn't High technology is transforming how wines are made, as Ziya Tong found out. But there's another big change afoot in the world of wine that's a lot more obvious to the average drinker. Fr

• 10.22.07

  Experiment Cave

  Scientists Search for Remnants of the Sun Deep Underground This summer's feature movie Sunshine portrays Earth 50 years into the future, when scientists discover the sun is failing and humanity is doomed. While the scenario is certainly fantastical, it&r

• 10.15.07

  Physics for Pitchers

  Why Does a Curveball Curve? What makes a curveball curve and a slider slide? Basic aerodynamics, as manipulated by a skillful pitcher. Three forces act on a spinning baseball as it flies toward the plate: the downward pull of gravity, the slowing drag o

• 10.15.07

  Sounds of Silence

  Scientists learn about Earth from inaudible whispers Though we might not be aware of them, the sounds we are unable to hear can tell us a lot about the world around us. Geophysicist Milton Garces of the University of Hawaii, for instance, uses special in

• 10.15.07

  Listening for Nukes

  How the UN uses Infrasound to Monitor Nuclear Testing Milton Garces is a busy man. When the director of the Infrasound Library at the University of Hawaii is not busy monitoring volcanoes, he's using infrasound to listen for something at least as importa

• 10.15.07

  Constructing an Infrasound Detector

  High School Science Teacher Reports From the Island of Maio Some 300 miles off the West Coast of Senegal lies a very small, dusty island named Maio. It is here that Professor Michael Hedlin of the University of California at San Diego built an infrasoun

• 10.15.07

  Ball Busters

  The Scientists Who Keep Major League Baseball Honest Back when baseball was young, it was a rare major league batter who had hit more than 50 home runs in a career. Then all of a sudden in the 1990s, the number of heavy homer hitters started going up lik

• 9.27.07

  No Chemistry Set? No Problem

  Long Distance Learning Brings Chem Labs into the Comfort of Homes You may not be able to get your kicks from a chemistry set anymore, but that doesn't mean you can't learn chemistry at home. More than half of all U.S. colleges and degree-granting institu

• 9.21.07

  Dangerous Science

  In Search of an Old-Fashioned Chemistry Experience Fifty years ago, you'd be hard-pressed to find an American family without a chemistry set lurking somewhere in the house. It was one of those rare toys that was both fun and educational, helping kids equ

• 9.21.07

  Fired Up

  New Techniques and Technology to Fight Fire For centuries, people have fought fires with the same basic formula: Put the wet stuff on the hot stuff. But today, firefighters are using new techniques and technology to battle their old enemy  And they

• 9.21.07

  Fighting Fire from Above

  Airborne High Tech Gives Firefighters a Hand Today's firefighters aren't only equipped with high-tech tools on the ground--they've also got them in the sky. Networked NASA satellites spot wildfires and alert the US Forest Service. Closer to Earth, unmann