This cornstarch, it vibrates. (wmv 4MB)
posted by stbalbach on May 19, 2004 - 23 comments

Time to replace your old Periodic Table. ...a joint American-Russian team has found two new elements—numbers 113 and 115 on the periodic table—hinting at an impending breakthrough in creating novel forms of matter that will test our understanding of atomic behavior.
posted by mcgraw on Mar 29, 2004 - 15 comments

Gallery of Fluid Dynamics. 'One of the most attractive features of fluid mechanics is the beauty of the flows one encounters. Whether one is observing vortex streets, the potential flow around an airfoil or body, shock refraction or diffraction, or waves breaking on a beach the aesthetic appeal of fluid mechanics is impossible to deny. '
posted by plep on Jun 28, 2003 - 6 comments

Perpetual-motion machine being sold on eBay. It's essentially six automotive alternators connected (via motorcycle chain) to an electric motor. One of the alternators supposedly powers the motor, leaving the remaining five to provide 700W of free energy. Sigh...people actually believe this crapola?
posted by Vidiot on Jan 21, 2003 - 25 comments

Mayonnaise. It spawned the discovery of the Casimir effect, which proves that the universe will always expand. Invented in 1756, George Washington Carver seemed to have his hand in it. Not to be confused with its more-disgusting knockoff, mayonnaise has a lot going for it. A favorite Spelling Bee word, a racial litmus test, a hair conditioner--is there anything mayonnaise can't do? Mefi says you can even win prizes with it! What other condiments have spawned theories? Sunday school kids learn about faith and mustard seeds, but is there anything out there for ketchup?
posted by TheManWhoKnowsMostThings on Oct 18, 2002 - 100 comments

A computer aided simulation builds a spiral galaxy from its beginning. In all, 390,000 particles were placed in an arrangement similar to a newborn galaxy. The end result after three months is an event that is believed to take billions of years to occur. (animation)
posted by samsara on Aug 7, 2002 - 7 comments

Teleportation finally? Not quite "beam me up scotty" yet, but a definite surge forward. The mechanics of it aren't quite sophisticated enough yet to handle humans, but this does make quantum computers close to reality.
posted by Espoo2 on Jun 17, 2002 - 12 comments

The Pitch Drop Experiment. Everyone should know by now that 'glass is a supercooled liquid' is an urban legend. But there are true liquids that appear solid at room temperature. Pitch, a petroleum derivative, is one of them. The Blair Pitch Pro Pitch Drop Experiment, begun in 1927, drips pitch out of a funnel, at roughly one drop every ten years. It has a webcam [RealPlayer req.], with a short canned loop of audio explaining the experiment's origins. I tell you, I'm on the edge of my seat watching this thing!
Swiped from The Cellar.
posted by Slithy_Tove on Jun 6, 2002 - 22 comments

Physics inside a microwave oven. I came across this informative link while looking up some physics information. I thought this short movie of a grape in a microwave was amazing. My microwave has never done anything as cool as this.
posted by jragon on May 24, 2002 - 11 comments

Bert Hickman has a ten inch diameter Tesla coil powered from two neon sign transformers in his screened-in (but unheated) porch, along with a device that produces magnetic fields strong enough to shrink coins. One of the byproducts of the coin-shrinking: an eight inch ball of plasma.
posted by tranquileye on May 14, 2002 - 15 comments

Wot, no black holes? Those wacky boffins in science land have already had a pop at the Higg's boson, but now they're moving on to everybody's favourite theoretical singularity, with a new theory about what happens when a star kicks the astral bucket.
posted by stuporJIX on Jan 26, 2002 - 6 comments

After a two-decade search, scientists have found the first direct evidence of one of the most elusive and ghostly subatomic particles in nature -- the tau neutrino.
posted by grumblebee on Jul 21, 2000 - 1 comment

Speed of light broken. But it may be awhile before we can harness it for anything useful. Fascinating, nonetheless.
posted by scottandrew on Jul 20, 2000 - 13 comments

Can the speed of light be broken? It's not 1 April, so this actually might be true. It'll be interesting to see the paper in Nature, if and when.
posted by aurelian on Jun 5, 2000 - 5 comments

Plunge of (near) Death! I took a physics class in college where the professor went off on a 20 minute tirade about fear of elevators, which he said were completely unfounded because elevator cables just don't break.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe on Jan 25, 2000 - 0 comments