Militantplatypus » Science

Richard Feynman – Why is a mirror reversed left/right not up/down

MILITANTPLATYPUS — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:51:27 +0000

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Why Do Freeways Come to a Stop?

MILITANTPLATYPUS — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:06:24 +0000

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Don’t forget to look up!

MILITANTPLATYPUS — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:16:59 +0000

A total eclipse of the Moon occurs during the night of Wednesday, February 20/21, 2008. The entire event is visible from South America and most of North America (on Feb. 20) as well as Western Europe, Africa, and western Asia (on Feb. 21). During a total lunar eclipse, the Moon’s disk can take on a dramatically colorful appearance from bright orange to blood red to dark brown and (rarely) very dark gray.

Why I don’t break bricks with my hands

MILITANTPLATYPUS — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:11:30 +0000

Gross, but not graphic. And not gross in the way you think it is going to be..

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Sticking you tongue to a pole

MILITANTPLATYPUS — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 19:37:17 +0000

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The how it works, not the why you do it.

Quantity vs Quality

MILITANTPLATYPUS — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 18:00:18 +0000

This is a great article about digital cameras, and the race for higher and higher pixel counts. You may not be getting the higher quality you were hoping for..

A digital camera with 12 million pixels is better than one with 6 million. â€˜That is correctâ€™ is what you would probably say because youâ€™ve always heard more pixels are better.

Itâ€™s not true(!!!), we have to say when it comes to compact cameras. We, the staff of Image Engineering which is an independent testing laboratory that, amongst other things, tests digital camera for the German magazines Color Photo and câ€™t. Quite a while ago we noticed that the image quality of digital cameras was getting worse instead of better. The reason is that todayâ€™s sensors are divided into more and therefore smaller pixels. We want to clarify the consequences on this website.

6mpixel.org

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PMC3

MILITANTPLATYPUS — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 19:58:24 +0000

For my girlfriendâ€™s birthday, I took her to PMC3 silver accessory class. PMC3 consists of fine silver particles suspended in an organic clay. When PMC3 was fired in oven, the clay burns out and leave a 99.99% fine silver piece. Do you see a little clay on the left picture? That is the PMC3 clay, pure silver to be after a few hours.

This sounds like a really fun project. You can follow the link below, for the location of the class.

sada104.com

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Binary Clock

MILITANTPLATYPUS — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:35:09 +0000

Michael Battle over at Footloose Moose has come up with a very novel flash binary clock. The short version, is that he takes the binary composition of the current time, and converts the 1’s and 0’s to ‘left’ and ‘right’.

For the longer explaination, you can check out his site. You can also see the clock in action after the jump.

footloosemoose.com

Inedible

MILITANTPLATYPUS — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 19:37:29 +0000

Custom-built sensors hidden inside coconuts are hung from trees at several public locations to monitor noise produced by overflying aircraft. Detection of excessive aircraft noise triggers automated telephone calls to the airport’s complaint line on behalf of the city’s residents and wildlife.

The best part, is they leave messages like this:

Uh… Hey. Um, yeah. So… Um, this is…. Yeah, no, like, I’m… Shut up, no, I’m talking. Okay, so, yeah. So, all these planes, man… It’s crazy. It’s like a roooaarrrrr. Dude, I need a pizza… Could you send me a pepperoni pizza? Dude, that would be great. Wait wait wait wait wait, put some mushrooms on that. Yeah, mushrooms. Sweet.

Follow the link for more details, and more messages.
mit.edu

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World without us

MILITANTPLATYPUS — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 17:43:56 +0000

This is an interesting look at how long the earth might take to ‘recover’ from its human infestation.

worldwithoutus.com