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Physics

The Higgs Boson Hoopla Explained

-- All scientists are driven to explain how and why things are the way they are. The differences among the various scientific disciplines lie in the scale and location at which we choose to investigate these basic questions. Two of the most fundamental…

Science at the Summer Olympics

-- Behind every Olympic victory is an incredible amount of physics, biomechanics, and engineering. With the Olympic Games in full swing, let’s take a look at the science behind three of its most popular events: running, swimming and gymnastics.

Nuclear chemistry: Lessons from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster

On December 20th, 1951, four glowing light bulbs in Arco, Idaho heralded the first use of nuclear power for electricity generation [1]. Today, twenty-nine countries operate nuclear power plants, and these produce about 14% of the world’s electricity [2].…

Graphene: The coolest material that shouldn’t exist

In 2004, Konstantin Novoselov, Andre Geim and their colleagues from Manchester, UK and Chernogolovka, Russia reported the existence of graphene, a two-dimensional sheet of carbon that is 1 atomic layer thick. This discovery took the world by surprise…

Keeping Time with Atoms

--It’s ten seconds to midnight on New Year’s Eve, but by whose watch? Like all standards, measurements of time are arbitrary, and only as good as the precision of each ‘tick.’ As no clock is perfect, each will eventually speed up or slow down, making…