Physics

The inside of the Daya Bay Antineutrino Detector in Hong Kong. (Image courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory on Flickr. The MIT Department of Physics has been a national resource since the turn of the 20th century. Our Department has been at the center of the revolution in understanding the nature of matter and energy and the dynamics of the cosmos. Our faculty - three of whom hold Nobel Prizes and 21 of whom are members of the National Academy of Sciences - include leaders in nearly every major area of physics. World leaders in science and engineering, including 10 Nobel Prize recipients, have been educated in the physics classrooms and laboratories at MIT. Our undergraduates are sought both by industry and the nation's most competitive graduate schools. The MIT Physics Department is one of the largest in the nation, in part because it includes astronomy and astrophysics. All undergraduate students at MIT study mechanics, electricity and magnetism.

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/index.htm

45 Life Lessons, written by a 90 year old 1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good. 2. When in doubt, just take the next small step. Physicists Explain "Gravity-Defying" Chain Trick Leaping up out of a jar in an arc before falling to the floor, the fountain-like motion of a chain of beads has puzzled millions around the world with its apparently gravity-defying behavior. Now physicists think they have an explanation. And it is far from intuitive. British science presenter Steve Mould, who made the experiment famous with a video that went viral on the Internet, explained the phenomenon as simply one of inertia: the falling chain has downward momentum, causing an upward momentum in beads leaving the pot.

30 game scripts you can write in PHP, Part 1: Creating 10 fundamental scripts Getting started As both a game master/storyteller and a developer, I frequently find myself writing little utilities and scripts to help me when running, planning, and playing games. Sometimes I need a quick idea. Other times, I just need a whole pile of names for Non-Player Characters (NPCs). Occasionally, I need to geek out on numbers, work out some odds, or integrate some word puzzles into a game. Fur and feathers keep animals warm by scattering light In work that has major implications for improving the performance of building insulation, scientists at the University of Namur in Belgium and the University of Hassan I in Morocco have calculated that hairs that reflect infrared light may contribute significant insulating power to the exceptionally warm winter coats of polar bears and other animals. The research was published today in The Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal, Optics Express. Biophotonics expert Priscilla Simonis, a researcher at the University of Namur and lead author of the Optics Express paper, was intrigued by the ability of polar bears to insulate their bodies to temperatures of 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 F) even during long, cold winters when outside temperatures are a frigid -40 C (-40 F).

Multiple Choice Zombie Apocalypse Survival Game You really aren't awake yet. You never are until at least your second cup of coffee, and this is only your first. You're having a hard time getting your eyes to focus. But it certainly looks like there's a man in your front yard, crouched down on all fours, gnawing at a leg. A human leg.

Seductive Spaces, Sustainable Energy Christoph Reinhart: A new modeling system to evaluate hundreds of buildings at a time. Len Rubenstein The average pedestrian meandering through urban spaces such as Manhattan’s Washington Square Park or San Francisco’s Embarcadero isn’t calculating the ratio of vertical to horizontal building surfaces or the percentage of tree coverage. Einstein for Everyone Einstein for Everyone Nullarbor Press 2007revisions 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 Copyright 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 John D. Norton Published by Nullarbor Press, 500 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260 with offices in Liberty Ave., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15222 All Rights Reserved John D.

Researchers 'design for failure' with model material (Phys.org) —When deciding what materials to use in building something, determining how those materials respond to stress and strain is often the first task. A material's macroscopic, or bulk, properties in this area—whether it can spring back into shape, for example—is generally the product of what is happening on a microscopic scale. When stress causes a material's constituent molecules to rearrange in a way such that they can't go back to their original positions, it is known as "plastic deformation." Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have devised a method to study stress at the macro and micro scales at the same time, using a model system in which microscopic particles stand in for molecules. This method has allowed the researchers to demonstrate an unusual hybrid behavior in their model material: a reversible rearrangement of its particles that nevertheless has the characteristics of plastic deformation on the macroscale. "We are designing for failure," Arratia said.