Sunrays and Saturdays

freshphotons: One Hundred Nanoseconds. Two 2” diameter acrylic...

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:56:34 +0800

One Hundred Nanoseconds.

Two 2” diameter acrylic rods were irradiated with a 5 million electron volt e-beam while they were rotated in a motorized fixture. The roots of the discharges were mounted facing each other in a frame with illuminates each end with a 5 watt white LED.

whoa! want!!! thedailywhat: Upgraded Childhood of the Day: Big...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:32:47 +0800

whoa! want!!!

thedailywhat:

Upgraded Childhood of the Day: Big kid Devin Graham continues his ongoing series of childhood upgrades (previously, and, also) with the installation of the world’s largest rope swing.

Shot in Moab, Utah on a number of fancy cameras.

[thanks dillon!]

thedailywhat: Early Bird Special: Very few videos express how I...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:04:07 +0800

thedailywhat:

Early Bird Special: Very few videos express how I feel about Friday better than this one.

[colossal.]

science: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Here’s what Erwin...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 21:08:17 +0800

science:

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Here’s what Erwin Schrödinger actually wrote in 1935, translated from the German:

That it is in fact not impossible to express the degree and kind of blurring of all variables in one perfectly clear concept follows at once from the fact that Q.M. as a matter of fact has and uses such an instrument, the so-called wave function or psi-function, also called system vector. Much more is to be said about it further on. That it is an abstract, unintuitive mathematical construct is a scruple that almost always surfaces against new aids to thought and that carries no great message. At all events it is an imagined entity that images the blurring of all variables at every moment just as clearly and faithfully as does the classical model its sharp numerical values. Its equation of motion too, the law of its time variation, so long as the system is left undisturbed, lags not one iota, in clarity and determinacy, behind the equations of motion of the classical model. So the latter could be straight-forwardly replaced by the psi-function, so long as the blurring is confined to atomic scale, not open to direct control. In fact the function has provided quite intuitive and convenient ideas, for instance the “cloud of negative electricity” around the nucleus, etc. But serious misgivings arise if one notices that the uncertainty affects macroscopically tangible and visible things, for which the term “blurring” seems simply wrong. (…)

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.

It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a “blurred model” for representing reality. In itself it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.

WANT!!! thedailywhat: Early Bird Special: Awesome-things-maker...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 23:56:28 +0800

WANT!!!

thedailywhat:

Early Bird Special: Awesome-things-maker Jaimie Mantzel demonstrates his latest creation: The Greatest Toy in the Universe.

By the way, throwing money at the screen does not result in the immediate ownership of this product as expected. Believe me, I tried.

[reddit.]

thedailywhat: Interactive Artwork of the Day: Sick and tired of...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 23:51:07 +0800

thedailywhat:

Interactive Artwork of the Day: Sick and tired of staring at Van Gogh’s Starry Night and being unable to manipulate it with your fingers? Enter: Greek digital artist Petros Vrellis and his interactive Starry Night animation.

Using openFrameworks, Vrellis transformed Van Gogh’s masterpiece into an interactive painting capable of rearranging itself through touch-sensitive gestures. Additionally, background music responds to changes in the animation’s flow.

You can learn more about it here.

[colossal.]

Photo

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 20:51:49 +0800

cannotunsee: Dexter’s Laboratory compared to The Big Bang...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 20:42:15 +0800

cannotunsee:

Dexter’s Laboratory compared to The Big Bang Theory

cannotunsee: Dexter’s Laboratory compared to The Big Bang...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:20:28 +0800

cannotunsee:

Dexter’s Laboratory compared to The Big Bang Theory

Somebody That I Used To Know - WOTE Parody

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:12:08 +0800

Somebody That I Used To Know - WOTE Parody

“Somebody That I Used To Know” cover by Walk Off the Earth

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:11:23 +0800

“Somebody That I Used To Know” cover by Walk Off the Earth

“Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:09:45 +0800

“Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye

Photo

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:51:08 +0800

Photo

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:47:17 +0800

Photo

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 14:30:36 +0800

Video

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 08:31:26 +0800

Video

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 08:31:09 +0800

Video

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 00:29:27 +0800

welcome home! :)

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 00:29:12 +0800

welcome home! :)

thedailywhat: Mathematical! of the Day: Biola University math...

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 01:38:19 +0800

thedailywhat:

Mathematical! of the Day: Biola University math teacher Matt Weathers (previously, and, also) gives his Nature of Math class another one of his patented Pranksgiving lectures.

[mdweathers.]