Little Glowy Things

See these?

Shiny.

These are called quantum dots. They are incredibly tiny semiconductors, the applications of which are nearly endless. And you’ve probably never heard of them. 

Hair of the Dog

Everyone has that friend who goes out every night of the weekend (starting on Thursday) and seemingly spends at least half of their paycheck attempting to get as drunk as possible. This is not necessarily a bad thing; socially, clubbing is a great way to bond with friends: if not out of enjoyment, then out of collective fear of that one guy in the corner who keeps giving you those looks. You know the one.

Yet when I see someone partying hard, I don’t think about how they feel then, but fast-forward to the next morning when the hangover sets in. Do they even know what their bodies have been through? The struggles their motor skills went through to get them back to their apartment? How they’ve just given themselves the equivalent of a drawn-out concussion? My guess is, probably not.

Fun with Rusting

Why don’t ships rust? 

It sounds like a simple enough question: ships do rust, just not quickly enough to notice. Yet, if one thinks about it, it becomes more of a curiosity. Even iron that’s just been exposed to the air starts to rust; what do boats go through? They never come out of the water, the paint doesn’t stay on forever, and any speed they gain just serves to quicken the reaction. By all accounts, some of the most magnificent ships on the sea should be having a much harder time riding the surf in two or three years. How do these giant boats stay afloat while facing the constant threat of corrosion?

It all has to do with electrolytes.

Yeah, those things.

Mutants!

The recently-released X-Men: First Class (which, for the record, was an excellent film) depicted genetically unique ‘mutants’ with skills so amazing that some of their members saw themselves as a new and improved species. It’s wonderful to think that a lucky few might one day be able to create magnetic fields with a wave of our hand, or hypnotize with a stare, but sadly these things are not even physically impossible, but evolutionarily impractical. Even if nature dictated that it was time for one man to shoot high-powered lasers from his eyes, what evolutionary purpose would this serve?

Thinking a little about that, we’re led to an even bigger question: in what way could humans keep evolving? It sounds like an incredibly pompous question, especially coming from a person that could be outrun, outswam, outflew, and outlived by many other members of the animal kingdom. Yet there is some logic behind it. Humans are unique from any other animal through the way that they utilize the environment around them; more often than not, instead of adapting to it, we make it adapt to us. 

In Soviet Russia...

Have a heart...

For most of my life, I’ve had minor heart palpitations. They’ve never been very serious, at their worst making me mildly uncomfortable for a few seconds, but they've always thrown me a little off my guard. An irregular heartbeat is an uncomfortable thing to experience; that pumping rhythm is there one’s entire life, and the body doesn’t react well when the tempo switches up. 

But what if there was no tempo? Enter science. NPR recently covered a story about an artificial heart that doesn’t act like a heart at all… at least in the traditional sense. In the past, artificial hearts like the Jarvik 7 were designed to mimic the natural processes of the originals – mainly, the electrically-stimulated 'pumping' action – and act as a total replacement for the damaged organs. In most cases, though, damage wasn’t severe enough to cause a total shutdown, and so a total heart replacement would actually do more harm than good.

...in some cases.

Physics is fascinating, I swear.

Physics is fascinating. I’m a physicist, so I’m a bit biased, but I always experience a sense of wonder when experiencing the world around me through such terms. 

Now, this love of science is not universal. Some have big issues with the whole idea; they usually have some valid points: 

1. I’m not a science person. It’s really never interested me in the least.

2. Math.

3. Why do I want to know how to calculate a ball’s flight path? No, honestly, why?

4. I tried to get into it in high school, but my teacher/class/notebook wasn’t good enough. 

Fig. 1: Fun.

Well, I have come up with some rebuttals. You see, in all of its supposed complication and intricacy, Physics is nothing more than the science of change. And, as many of us have experienced first-hand, change happens all the time; anyone who notices this is already a type of scientist. Just like the world around us, change itself is ever-changing, you could say. 

Or not. I probably wouldn’t, it’s a strange turn of phrase. But you understand. 

The goal of this blog is to share with you, dear reader, my sense of wonder and, more importantly, the reason why I’m a scientist. Most teachers fail to put the science in context, which is 100% of the fun. I’ll even admit, the fact that a ball goes up and down is not exciting in itself; anyone who took basic physics in high school will tell you that. Yet it was the idea that prompted Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and hundreds of other great minds to think long and hard about what makes the world go ‘round (in several cases, literally) and transform our universe from one of chance to one of intricate order, from one of blind faith to one of incredible utility. 

This transformation is never emphasized in introductory classes, even though it was the thing that got me and several other people I know hooked on physics, and more broadly science, in the first place. Moreover, observing how other things change, like the body, the stock market, or human emotions, make one just as scientific as a physicist, and those who excel at this study are just as capable as the great minds described above. 

Some would say that comparing a great writer/economist/artist and a great physicist is like comparing apples/bananas/kiwis and oranges, and in a way I suppose they’re right. But while the skill set might be different, the basic concepts that physicists use are the exact same concepts used in every other facet of academia. Anyone who doesn’t like physics, but is able to devote themselves to knowledge in some other way, is unknowingly a kind of physicist themselves. My hope is that by sharing my experiences in science with you, you’ll find a little beauty in it yourself. 

Except for the math part. There’s no getting past that one (See Fig. 1)


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