Turns out particle accelerators aren’t just for (potentially) making black holes, you can also figure out the age of wine with them! Leave it to some fantastic French scientists to figure this one out. Turns out you can place a wine bottle in the path of the ion beams a particle accelerator produces and the glass wine bottle will then emit different x-rays dependent on its age. Brilliant! Does this mean that the LHC being the most powerful particle accelerator could give the most accurate readings? So if the people trying to stop the LHC (and these too, awesome) get their way, at least they’ll be something useful to have it do.
No, it isn’t. But, after watching, you’ll know about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC!), and the Higgs Boson (the so called God Particle…it makes gravity. Maybe…if it exists…and doesn’t destroy the universe.)
I’ve always wanted a Grand Unified Theory.
Also, FOX NEWS THINKS WE SHOULD WORRY. But they always think that.
Hey there, blogging public! Ferrrosha here. I’ve been neglecting the lovely TOTC fans and friends while trying to pursue my other career. The library is the chicest new spot to summer. Tell your friends.
But, in all of this “OMG did you get a better grade than me?!” madness, what have I learned? Well, here are the highlights:
- Ethanol as an alternative energy source is a terrible idea, solar power is awesome, and nuclear power has a few practical concerns (nevermind political ones).
- CO2 is the greatest!
- Anything you ever learned about the atom was probably a giant lie. Neutrons? Protons? Pah!
- Columbia sold their cyclotron (the first in North America, a major part in the development of nuclear chemistry and the atomic age, nobel prizing-assisting, scientific-history making) for scrap metal, even though the Smithsonian would have probably taken it.
- You can memorize all of the laws of thermodynamics using the chorus from Michael Jackson’s “You Can’t Win.” The seven minute disco version is especially rewarding.
- Maxwell’s Demon would be a great name for a band. A good band.
- I’ve been pronouncing de Broglie wrong for about 6 months. I should get some of my money back.
- Cats excel at optics, triboelectricity.
- 90% of science is making lines, finding the slopes of said lines, and then going “hmm…”
But, I still haven’t learned how Iron Man’s heart works! Maybe I should ask that on the last day of Physics. Before it’s too late.
A friend of mine sent this to me and said it made her think of me. I am honored. If there had been guys like this wandering around the lab and singing, I probably wouldn’t have quit my job back at Sansum.
Pipetting has never been so sexy…
you know you love it
(Fun fact, the beach that they are at is where I completely cut the toenail of my little toe off climbing the rocks close to the Golden Gate and got a fisherman’s hook stuck in the bottom of my foot. Separate occasions. I love that place, no really, it is a great beach!)
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