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ekisom

Science

How Much Can You Really Learn With a Free Online Education?

By Posted on 9.2.2009 12 Comments
I was not screwing around. When I took the first physics class of my life, at age 35, it was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and my professor was Walter Lewin, one of that institution's most respected instructors. Lewin is a man so comfortable with his vectors that he diagrams them in front of a classroom audience while wearing Teva sandals. OK, I wasn't really "at" MIT. And "took" the class may be a stretch. I was watching the video of one of Lewin's lectures from the comfort of my backyard in Brooklyn, and I too was wearing sandals (but not Tevas; I have standards).

9.2.2009 at 12:51am - Comment by ekisom

holy crap i'm going back to school. well not school but home computer screen school! this is a good thing, distribute fine education on a massive scale and you end up accelerating progress. this is exactly what the world needs right now. no i'm not being sarcastic.
Entertainment & Gaming

LG Announces 15-Inch OLED; Teases Massive 40-Inch Follow-Up

By Corinne Iozzio Posted on 8.31.2009 7 Comments
Making consumer OLED screens hasn't been easy. Sure, pocketable gadgets like the upcoming Zune HD have had them for a couple years now, but so far Sony has been the only company to get a screen on the market with a size in the double digits.

8.31.2009 at 10:52pm - Comment by ekisom

needs 2 to 3 thick books to bring the screen up to ergonimic height =P very sleek tho
Gadgets

Electrolux Design Challenge Envisions Your Automated Future

By Posted on 8.28.2009 16 Comments
Meet your kitchen of the future. Electrolux Design Lab has announced the finalists in their annual design competition. Undergrad and graduate industrial design students were challenged to envision new home appliance ideas for the year 2100 that create new ways to prepare and store food, wash clothes, or do dishes. Of 900 entries, these eight were selected as the most inventive, eye-catching, and forward-thinking.

8.29.2009 at 04:03am - Comment by ekisom

c'mon davids, why would you deny credit to these innovative thinkers?? form is the step forward after function. it would have been much easier if they just said "hey! this works well already so thats that, who cares about how it looks" in any case. we need become more active in future thinking. its the only way to speed up progress. the past few years have been stale and dull (relatively speaking). it is as if we became too comfortable with the way things are. progress should outpace everything else.
Science

Gallery: A Scouting Guide to the Top High School Inventors

By Posted on 8.24.2009 5 Comments

8.27.2009 at 11:15pm - Comment by ekisom

10,000 dollars?! kid must be thinking "all that high tech work for just 10 grand!?! i'm quitting this inventing crap!"
Science

Solar Panels Built Into Roads Could Be the Future of Energy

By Adrian Covert Posted on 8.27.2009 219 Comments
The Department of Energy just gave $100,000 to upstart company Solar Roadways, to develop 12-by-12-foot solar panels, dubbed "Solar Roads," that can be embedded into roads, pumping power into the grid. The panels may also feature LED road warnings and built-in heating elements that could prevent roads from freezing.

8.27.2009 at 11:10pm - Comment by ekisom

surface is made of glass and has great traction... WHEN ITS DRY!
Science

Homage to Rube Goldberg

By Adam Weiner Posted on 4.15.2009 2 Comments
Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration -- a real-life Rube Goldberg machine! As you may or may not be aware, Rube Goldberg was an early 20th century cartoonist (and engineer). His cartoons depicted imaginary machines capable of performing ordinary tasks in an extremely complicated way. Here in these modern times, we see the Rube Goldberg legacy in the children's game called "Mousetrap." In the educational arena, the building of Rube Goldberg machines has become a popular project in high school and college physics classes, and for hobbyists dabbling in this whimsical genre. Why? Because these contraptions beautifully illustrate a number of fundamental physics principles.

8.12.2009 at 02:28am - Comment by ekisom

mom n pops went of a vacation for 3 years or something? damn... amazing =P
Entertainment & Gaming

A New Spin on Bowling

By Adam Weiner Posted on 4.29.2009 1 Comments
Enter the two-handed bowler. Increasingly, we are seeing this novel technique cropping up in bowling alleys across the country. Notice the formidable hook you can generate with this type of delivery -- it looks like the ball is headed straight for the gutter, but then, seemingly at the last second, it cuts back into the pocket for another strike. It's this superior hooking ability that makes two-handed bowling a force to be reckoned with. In order to get some insight into the issue, let's examine some of the physics involved in tossing a 12- to 16-pound sphere down a lane of polished oily wood. In order to get a strike you probably already know that the ball needs to strike the pins in one of the "pockets", which are the regions halfway between the head pin and the pins on either side of the head pin. But why do we need to hook the ball at all? Why not just throw it straight up the alley and directly into the pocket? The answer has to do with conservation of momentum.

8.12.2009 at 02:06am - Comment by ekisom

hehehe only in the philippines
Science

Cambridge Physicists Devise Working Scientific Model for Successful Revolutions

By Posted on 7.13.2009 2 Comments
Researchers at the University of Cambridge have come up with a model for overtaking the majority leadership in any competitive field. But instead of studying psychology or sociology to derive his conclusion, Hai-Tao Zhang has used a model based entirely from physics.

8.12.2009 at 01:54am - Comment by ekisom

actually i think it does take into account the impact of a rifle butt onto a human head and blood stained street into the model. such factors if considered as a negative input into the model would in turn attract a "positive input" thereby negating the effect of the initiated negative input (the rifle butt onto a human head) keeping the integrity of the above model.
Technology

Danger Zone Arcade: Inside the Military's Ultra-High-Def F-16 Flight Sim

By Dan Smith Posted on 6.10.2009 7 Comments
Top Gun training in Fightertown USA might become obsolete thanks to a new ultra-high definition, immersive F-16 training program. Powered by 120 Intel Dual Core PCs packed with high-end graphics cards, nine overlapping HD projectors display the highest-res flight simulator possible. Creating a stunning 30,000 interactive images in a single simulation, L-3 Link’s SimuSphere offers a realistic training tool for the military that will hopefully lead to a smaller home version for me.

6.11.2009 at 01:25am - Comment by ekisom

the ps2 can conjure up a better simulation that that.. lol
Science

Can This Fruit Be Saved?

By Posted on 6.20.2008 6 Comments
Ed Note: In 2005 Dan Koeppel traveled to Central America to begin his research on the banana—a fruit whose ubiquity, he discovered, may very well prove to be its downfall. His book, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, was recently published to much acclaim. Here's the feature that started it all. "A Banana," says Juan Fernando Aguilar, "is not just a banana." The bearded botanist and I are traipsing through one of the world's most unusual banana plantations, moving down row after row of towering plants and ducking into the shade of broad leaves in an attempt to avoid the Central American midday heat. In an area about the size of a U.S. shopping mall, Aguilar, 46, is growing more than 300 banana varieties. Most commercial growing facilities handle just a single banana type-the one we Americans slice into our morning cereal.

6.20.2008 at 02:48am - Comment by ekisom

i know this may seem like a bad thing. but actually its a good thing. get rid of them sucky Cavendish bananas and try all the varieties of bananas from the Philippines and wake up to what real bananas should taste like.