Cool app lets you zoom in from a coffee bean to a carbon atom, so that you can compare sizes. Along the way, you see a grain of sand, a skin cell and many other tiny things. This is the first time I've ever had a sense of these objects' sizes. Cells are actually bigger than I thought they were. I wish the zoomer would keep going. I want to see some sub-atomic particles on the scale.
posted by grumblebee on Oct 28, 2009 - 43 comments

Atomic and nuclear explosions. [more inside]
posted by swift on Oct 15, 2008 - 77 comments

Jack "Marvel" Whiteside Parsons was the right hand man to Aleister Crowley, a founder of modern US rocket science, and early partner to L Ron Hubbard. Celebrate July 4th by investigating this major character in the birth of our age. [more inside]
posted by unpoppy on Jul 4, 2008 - 36 comments

Atom. -- The Clash of the Titans -- The Key to the Cosmos -- The Illusion of Reality
posted by empath on Nov 24, 2007 - 20 comments

How to Read 600 RSS Feeds a Day for Pleasure and Profit. Video of Robert Scoble showing how he culls 600 RSS feeds a day for his weblog, Scobleizer, using Google Reader.
posted by shivohum on Jul 17, 2007 - 40 comments

"A Hydrogen Atom is only about a ten millionth of a millimeter in diameter, but the proton in the middle is a hundred thousand times smaller, and the electron whizzing around the outside is a thousand times smaller than THAT. The rest of the atom is empty. I tried to picture it, and I couldn't. So I put together this page - and I still can't picture it." Awesome illustration on perspective and particles - *warning* very wide page, may be dangerous to your browser. Also, the relative size of planets (via the always interesting 37signals blog.)
posted by rsanheim on Aug 29, 2006 - 26 comments

So. Paul Bausch of all sorts of fame rolled-out an update to his amazing Amazon feed-builder. What's the big deal? Well, I'm a big fan of Wendell Berry and Craig Thompson, of Naguib Mahfouz and books about New Urbanism... and now, with the help of PB's delicious feed-builder, I'll be notified whenever something new comes from any of these authors or meets the "New Urbanism" search criteria, so I can add them to my Amazon wish list... and I think that's pretty darn cool. Add that to Amazon's pre-existing wish list feeds, which let you monitor other people's wish lists for additions ( you can find a wish list's feed on its "home" page ), and I'm in heaven.

( As a direct result of the feeds I subscribed to this weekend, my Amazon wish list has grown from 1600 to more than 1800 items. I blame Paul... he's such an enabler! )
posted by silusGROK on Jun 12, 2006 - 17 comments

The Ariel Atom is a pretty nifty car. No doors, no screen, no roof. Just a frame and the bare minimum to get you from 0 to 60mph in 2.9 seconds. This video review of the Atom is worth it just to see the driver's face get distorted a little more than three minutes into it.
posted by furtive on May 13, 2005 - 38 comments

So the Japanese, still firmly plunged in the midst of their very own "Great Depression," are considering a proposal that would have the government spend 50 billion yean a year over three decades to develop a humanoid robot with the mental, physical and emotional capacity of a 5-year-old human. The proposed name of this venture? The Atom project, named after the Japanese cartoon character known to Americans as "Astro Boy."
posted by Pinwheel on Aug 20, 2003 - 44 comments