Astronaut Scott Kelly Has Spent More Time In Space Than Any Other American. He Has Also Played Solo Ping

Whisper Of The Heart Vertical Pan Shots - Dir Yoshifumi Kondo (1995)

Entering the house owned by a friend working in the private sector, the grad student anxiously reassesses many of his life choices.

Theodore Isaac Rubin, American Psychiatrist (via books-n-quotes)

Have you considered that if you don’t make waves, nobody including yourself will know that you are alive?

“I want to empower women through dance. I think you can build confidence through movement. When a woman starts moving her body, and becomes comfortable with herself, and realizes that she can do the steps — it connects back to life. Because all of life is movement. Technically we’re dancing every day. And it doesn’t matter how you look. It matters how you move.”

Irving Langmuir, who won the 1932 Nobel Prize for ‘Surface Chemistry’, demonstrates how dipping an oil-covered finger into water creates a film of oil, pushing floating particles of powder to the edge.

The same phenomenon can be used to power a paper boat with a little ‘fuel’ applied to the back: as the film expands over the water, the boat is is propelled forward:

With experiments like this he revealed that these films are just one molecule thick - a remarkable finding in relation to the size of molecules.

In the full archive film, Langmiur goes on to demonstrate proteins spreading in the same way, revealing the importance of molecular layering for structure.

First, he drops protein solution onto the surface, and it spreads out in a clear circle, with a jagged edge: 

Add a little more oil on top, and a star shape appears: 

By breaking it up further, he makes chunks of the film which behave like icebergs on water:

You can watch the full demonstrations, along with hours more classic science footage, in our archive.

Your blog is super cool! I have a few questions. How do you get your equipment and chemicals to carry out your experiments? I was just wondering as I'd like to start doing experiments at home. What would be a good experiment to start with also? Sorry if you have already answered these questions

Hey, thanks for the kind words! This is going to be a long answer! Let’s start with equipment:

Keep reading

Sketching out magnetism with electricity

In a proof-of-concept study published in Nature Physics, researchers drew magnetic squares in a nonmagnetic material with an electrified pen and then “read” this magnetic doodle with X-rays.

The experiment demonstrated that magnetic properties can be created and annihilated in a nonmagnetic material with precise application of an electric field – something long sought by scientists looking for a better way to store and retrieve information on hard drives and other magnetic memory devices. The research took place at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.

“The important thing is that it’s reversible. Changing the voltage of the applied electric field demagnetizes the material again,” said Hendrik Ohldag, a co-author on the paper and scientist at the lab’s Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL), a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

“That means this technique could be used to design new types of memory storage devices with additional layers of information that can be turned on and off with an electric field, rather than the magnetic fields used today,” Ohldag said. “This would allow more targeted control, and would be less likely to cause unwanted effects in surrounding magnetic areas.”

Read more.

“I always wanted to be a mental health therapist.  Ever since high school, I’ve enjoyed encouraging people and giving them hope.  But I lost my way.  I got caught in a world of addiction.  I lost ten years of my life to drugs.  I stopped when I became pregnant with my child, but by that time it was too late to go back to school.  I started working as an office manager.  I never completely lost my dream.  But I just put it on a shelf for thirty years.  Then five years ago I to…ok it off the shelf.  I heard a lady in my choir talking about how she enrolled in community college.  I drove there the very next day.  I was so nervous when I filled out the application.  I was so nervous the first day of class.  All the old voices were telling me: ‘You never finish anything.’  But I said ‘fuck you’ to the old voices.  And I started getting A’s.  On my first test, I got the only perfect score in the class.  I graduated at the age of 50.  I got my Masters at 55.  And just last night I completed a mental health first aid course.  I’m so close now.  There’s still fear there.  I used to be afraid of it never happening.  Now I’m afraid of it happening.  The old voices try to come back sometimes.  They tell me: ‘You can rest,’ or ‘You’ve earned a break.’  But I’m not stopping this time.  Somebody out there is waiting for me to finish because they need my help.“