When Classical Physics and Post-Impressionist artists meet, few results are as hauntingly beautiful or as enchanting as one of Vincent van Gogh’s most famous masterpieces. The Starry Night embodies the inner, subjective expression of van Gogh’s response to Nature. And the churning night sky he depicted tells of the artist’s very unique perception of the World around him… Continue reading A Starry Starry Night or The Unexpected Maths in a Van Gogh’s Masterpiece→
Ever since French physicist Louis de Broglie first described the wave-particle duality in 1926, scientists have struggled to come to terms with this strange particularity of our natural World when observed at the quantum level. Waves can be particles, and particles can be waves. But are entities waves AND particles all at the same time?
Forget about the threat of Ebola for a moment and consider something much closer to home… Meet MRSA – a “superbug”, the bacterium of the decade, the Nemesis of hospitals and operating theatres. A single cell organism that can colonise the living tissues and have a devastating or even fatal impact on the human body. Now. Meet CRISPR – also bacteria. A friend that can potentially help you fight and repel an otherwise deadly bacterial invasion… Continue reading CRISPR, the New Antibiotics Generation – Resistance is Futile!→
Eggs Benedict! The perfect breakfast item. Probably. If both you and I love this indulgent breakfast staple, it’s down to that wonderful creamy and tangy garnish that is really the glue that holds the eggs benedict together. The perfect Hollandaise sauce… Continue reading The Perfect Hollandaise Sauce – More Science in the Kitchen…→
The human nervous system contains roughly 100 billion nerve cells. Worth pausing for an instant… and read it again. That’s right, 100 billions! To give an idea of the scale, the Milky Way, our own galaxy, contains roughly 100 billion stars. And although human beings are way smaller than galaxies, we begin to appreciate how each one of us is as complex, as mysterious, and as magnificent in its own right, as any large astronomical entity in the physical Universe. Continue reading We Glimpse at the Body Electric – An Introduction to the Physics of the Human Nervous System→
Hydraulic fracturing, more commonly referred to as “fracking” in the media, is the fracturing of rock by a pressurised liquid. Some hydraulic fractures form naturally – certain veins or dikes are examples. However, induced hydraulic fracturing or hydro-fracturing is also a long tried-and-tested mining technique that has been most controversial recently… But let’s not panic! Continue reading The Craic about “Fracking” – Technical Facts on Hydraulic Fracturing→
Over millions of years, weathering and erosion of sandstone have produced unique landforms, such as arches, alcoves, pedestals and pillars. Until now, the natural process remained a mystery. It was difficult to study, because of the huge time-scales involved in the erosion of natural slabs of sandstone. Gravity-induced stresses had been assumed not to play any role in landform preservation. Instead gravity was thought to increase the rates of weathering and natural erosion… Continue reading Eroded Earth: The Forge of Gravity→
Geckos are amazing creatures. They scamper up walls, scuttle along ceilings and hang upside down on polished glass surfaces. However, the secret of their amazing climbing ability remained a mystery until relatively recently. The secret lies in weak intermolecular forces, described by Van der Waals in 1873. Continue reading Van der Waals and the Gecko→
What is the difference between heat and temperature? Heat is thermal energy. Temperature is a measurement of the average kinetic energy of the particles which compose the matter being tested. When heat flows into a material, one of two things happen: either the temperature of the material can rise, or there may be a change in its state (such as from ice to liquid, or liquid to vapour).Continue reading Calculating Entropy – The Energy of Change→
Helium is the second most abundant element in the Universe, after hydrogen. On Earth, helium is relatively rare, because it is one of the few elements that can escape gravity and leak away into space. Therefore, helium exists as a finite resource. But as our reserves of the precious element steadily decreases, helium is in increasing demand. In medicine, helium supports the fight against cancer… Continue reading Helium – Lighter than Air→
The future of North Sea oil is one of the key campaign battlegrounds ahead of the Scottish independence referendum. The North Sea oil and gas industry employs 450,000 people across the UK. The industry paid £6.5 billion in taxes to the UK government in 2012-2013. What if Scotland decides to go it alone? Continue reading The North Sea Oil – Beyond the Politics→
Buoyancy is the upward force exerted by a fluid that opposes the weight of an object immersed in a particular substance. Essentially, this is what Archimedes (c.287 BC – c.212 BC) observed when he stated that:
Ten years ago, the discovery of the wonder material – Graphene – was announced. Graphene is thin, stronger than steel, flexible, non-metallic, yet electrically conductive. For all these reasons, graphene promises to transform electronics, as well as other technologies. Because of its potential in industry, researchers have been looking for ways to make defect-free graphene in large amounts. Continue reading Graphite to Graphene… in a Kitchen Blender→
They are found everywhere in Nature. From the leaf arrangement in plants, to the pattern of the petals of a flower, the bracts of a pine cone, or the scales of a pineapple. The Fibonacci numbers are applicable to the growth of every living thing: a single cell, a grain of wheat, a hive of bees, all of mankind. From sunflowers to sea shells, the same recurrent mathematical pattern can be observed in Nature, again, and again, and again… Continue reading Fibonacci’s Golden Spiral – The Relationship between Maths and Nature→
A crisp and perfectly flat white plain lies like freshly fallen snow, 100 kilometres (60 miles) across and 3,600 metres (12,000 ft) up in the remote Bolivian Andes. This hauntingly beautiful place, Salar de Uyuni, could be part of the key to tackling climate change, helping to wean the World away from its love of fossil fuels. Continue reading Salted Earth – At one Corner of the Lithium Triangle→
Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry is a technique for separating ions of different masses by measuring the time taken to traverse a fixed distance through a magnetic field. Sounds a bit arcane? The technique is used daily by forensic investigative teams to research criminal profiling and provide reliable evidence for the prosecution… Continue reading We Delve into Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry Forensics!→
Copper occurs naturally in rocks, as native copper, and the history of its use by the oldest civilisations dates back to at least 10,000 years. These days, copper is in ever increasing demand for its extraordinarily versatile conductive and ductile properties, highly sought-after by the power generation, electronics and communications industries. Remote barren war-torn Afghanistan harbours great stores of the mineral… Continue reading Fuelling our Lust for Copper – Mining in Afghanistan…→
The impacts of climate change include a higher risk of flooding and changes to crop yields and water availability. No single country causes climate change, and no one country can stop it. We need to match the urgency of our response with the scale of the science. Continue reading Global Weirding: Why The World Must Acclimatise→
A new global monitoring system, Global Forest Watch has been launched that promises “near real-time” information on deforestation around the World. GFW uses information from hundreds of millions of satellite images, as well as data from people on the ground. Despite a greater global awareness of the impacts of deforestation, the scale of forest loss remains significant. Continue reading Global Forest Watch Map Recording Tree Loss in “Real Time”→
Ancients called mercury the “first matter” from which all other metals were formed. For centuries, mercury, a heavy metal, was also used in medicine. Yet mercury is now in such disfavour that an international treaty exists to curb its use… Continue reading Mercury: Beautiful Poison→
Engineers have designed a continuous chemical process that produces useful crude oil in under an hour. All from a verdant green algae paste with the consistency of pea soup… Continue reading Algae to Bio-Crude Oil in 60 Minutes?→
Van Gogh’s Starry Night
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