Of course I'm not the first to look at the physics in Super Mario Bros-there was this interesting paper looking at the optimal jump to get to the highest point on the flag at the end of the level. There is also a nice page looking at the acceleration of jumping Mario in the different games. Good stuff. But there's a new game out-Super Mario Run on iOS and Android. This is a great chance to take another look at the physics of Mario. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Dec 23, 2016•7 min
This post is Chad Orzel's fault. It started with this tweet: Hey, @rjallain , is this consistent with your regression analysis of the Lego brick cost a while back? pic.twitter.com/RaTcP07xI1 — Chad Orzel (@orzelc) December 13, 2016 Yes, it's true that I have pondered the price of Lego bricks before, by looking up the cost and number of pieces in various sets. Here is the data, and a link to my original analysis. I arrived at a price of about 10.4 cents per piece. Learn about your ad choices: dov...
Dec 22, 2016•5 min
You unfurl your yoga mat at home, ready to stretch out into downward dog and take some deep breaths. Just for a second, you look away to grab your water bottle and block. But when you turn around, you find that your pup has already staked her territory on your mat, doing some stretches of her own. If you’re an asana-ing dog person, you’ve probably already figured out a way to tap into your canine’s weird yoga mat affinity. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Dec 21, 2016•6 min
Basil Al-Reabi was riding home from school in southern Syria, in the fall of 2014, when a roadside bomb struck. The eight-year-old watched as shrapnel shredded his classmates and reduced them to a collection of body parts. As the remnants of the minibus bounced, rolled, and finally came to rest at the foot of a low embankment, three of his limbs were scythed off, his cheeks peppered with shards of blue vehicle paint. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Dec 20, 2016•10 min
Hurricane Ivan would not die. After traveling across the Atlantic Ocean, it stewed for more than a week in the Caribbean, fluctuating between a Category 3 and 5 storm while battering Jamaica, Cuba, and other vulnerable islands. And as it approached the US Gulf Coast, it stirred up a massive mud slide on the sea floor. The mudslide created leaks in 25 undersea oil wells, snarled the pipelines leading from the wells to a nearby oil platform, and brought the platform down on top of all of it. Learn...
Dec 19, 2016•11 min
Let's look at some volcanic rumblings and eruptions from the last week: Washington Mount St. Helens is keeping up its unsettled 2016, this time with another small earthquake swarm. The USGS detected over 120 earthquakes over the last few days, all occurring 2-4 kilometers (1-2 miles) beneath the volcano and all very small (less than M1). Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Dec 15, 2016•3 min
Even for a particle physicist, Janet Conrad thinks small. Early in her career, when her peers were fanning out in search of the top quark, now known to be the heaviest elementary particle, she broke ranks to seek out the neutrino, the lightest. In part, she did this to avoid working as part of a large collaboration, demonstrating an independent streak shared by the particles she studies. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Dec 14, 2016•14 min
John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth and, later, the oldest human to leave the planet, died on December 8, 2016. He was 95 years old. In 1962, Glenn became the face of American technological triumph. NASA rocketed him upward in a vessel that looked more like a spotlight bulb than a space capsule, not sure that he would make it back. But they knew they had to try, and that this was the time. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Dec 13, 2016•9 min
Today, SpaceX announced it expects to begin launching again in early January—just four months after one of its Falcon 9 rockets burst into flames on a Florida launchpad. But the private space company helmed by Elon Musk is still missing one important thing before it leaves Earth: a license from the Federal Aviation Administration. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Dec 12, 2016•4 min
The International Space Station is currently home to six intrepid astronauts, one Robonaut, and four 14,000-pound payload-holders called ExPRESS Logistics Carriers. Experiments from Earth like the laser-communicator OPALS fly up to Station and Lego-attach to these carriers, which provide them with a place to stay and, just as importantly, the electrical power and data links they need to do their jobs. But since 2013, scientists sending up payloads have had trouble with the on-orbit utility grid....
Dec 09, 2016•8 min
Before Steve Bannon was Donald Trump’s campaign advisor, a right-wing media mogul, or a conservative Hollywood documentarian, he helped a group of climate scientists steer a controversial experiment in the Arizona desert back from financial chaos. Twenty-five years ago, a New Agey-experiment called Biosphere 2 set out to recreate life on another planet with eight people locked in a giant glass habitat. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Dec 08, 2016•9 min
Magnets aren’t miracles, but neither are they a phenomenon that physicists completely understand. Particularly big magnets, like the sun. Until recently, the annals of research failed to completely explain how massive currents blooming on the sun’s surface burst into solar flares, releasing incredible volumes of energy in short time frames. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Dec 07, 2016•4 min
Last night, the ONEMI (Oficina Nacional de Emergencias) and SERNGEOMIN (Chilean Geological Survey) in Chile raised the alert status for the area around Cerro Hudson in the southern Andes. Normally, raising the alert status like this is due to an acute change, when the behavior of the volcano shifts suddenly. However, this time, the elevation to Yellow alert status at Cerro Hudson is due to accumulated events over the past month. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Dec 06, 2016•3 min
Kourtney Kardashian hawks its health benefits. Counterfeiters and chemists labor to unlock its molecular secrets. And now it's at the center of an international branding war. It's honey, but not just any honey. It's ManÅ«ka honey, a sweet extravagance from New Zealand that sells for a sticky $2.50 an ounce—six times the cost of conventional honey—and has attracted a slew of famous fans. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Dec 05, 2016•8 min
Theoretical computer science can be as remote and abstract as pure mathematics, but new research often begins in response to concrete, real-world problems. Such is the case with the work of Cynthia Dwork. Over the course of a distinguished career, Dwork has crafted rigorous solutions to dilemmas that crop up at the messy interface between computing power and human activity. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Dec 02, 2016•15 min
I'll be honest. I don't really watchGotham, but it looks interesting. It chroniclesthe events in Batman's city before he became Batman. That's about all I know. However, when I saw a recent commercial for an upcoming episode, I had to do something. I'm not sure what's going on here, but from my research this appears to be Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne doingsomething with a tightrope. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Dec 01, 2016•5 min
You know you’ve struck marketing gold when a brand becomes a so-called “proprietary eponym.” Need to blow your nose? Grab a Kleenex. Track some sand from the beach onto your floor? Hoover it up. In biology, Crispr is the proprietary eponym of the moment. The gene-editing technique is so inexpensive and easy to use that, in just four years, it’s become a ubiquitous tool in labs across the world. And soon, it could jump from bench-top workhorse to human therapeutic. Learn about your ad choices: do...
Nov 30, 2016•8 min
Sequels rarely live up to the original. And thank goodness for that. Yesterday, a 6.9 earthquake shook the coast of Japan almost exactly where a 9.1 quake hit nearly 6 years ago. Japan is fortified against quakes and tsunamis. But the 2011 quake was so powerful it generated 30 to 60-foot tsunamis, overtopping the island nation's extensive sea walls and shore protections, killing over 15,000, leaving 228,000 homeless, and causing a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Learn about your...
Nov 29, 2016•3 min
Last week, a Royal New Zealand Air Force flight spotted a new pumice raft in the middle of the Pacific ocean to the west of Tonga. Pumice rafts are floating islands of pumice created during a submarine volcanic eruption and they can persist for months or longer. This raft was seen by aircraft and satellite in an area with no known volcanoes. However, from the looks of the raft, it might be a long way from home. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Nov 28, 2016•3 min
November started out pretty normal for the Arctic. The sun had set for the season, temperatures were dropping, ice was growing rapidly. Winter was coming, right on schedule. And then, a few days ago, everything came screeching to a halt. Ice stopped forming. And then it actually started to melt, thanks to a sudden heat wave that blistered the region with temperatures 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit above average. For now, the mass of warm air doesn't appear to be going anywhere. Learn about your ad ...
Nov 25, 2016•5 min
I want to analyze a scene from Star Trek Beyondbut don't want to spoil the movie. Let me set things upin the most generic way possible. If you are very allergic to spoilers, maybe you should just move along tothis nice post about radioactive bananas. You have been warned. Here is the scene: Some people have found an old starship at the top of a cliff. They want toget itflying andleave the planet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Nov 24, 2016•8 min
Drunk shoppers beware: Impulse buying online just got even easier. With Apple’s new MacBook Pro launched last month, all you have to do is tap your finger to the Touch ID scanner located on the Touch Bar to buy—no more searching through your wallet for the right card, no more typing in three-digit security codes and expiration dates. On the front end, the new method is faster and probably more secure than using stored credit card info online. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choi...
Nov 23, 2016•5 min
Do you remember President-elect Trump holding forth on the campaign trail about "China beating us at our own game"? Well, it's true, as long as the game in question is editing human DNA using Crispr/Cas9. China is now using Crispr-edited cells in living, breathing human beings. Last month, Chinese scientists at Sichuan University injected cancer-fighting, Crispr-modified white bloodcells into a patient suffering from metastatic lung cancer. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choice...
Nov 22, 2016•8 min
Earlier this year, James Gelsleichter got a call from the Bahamas. A group of researchers had been tracking the movements of some oceanic whitetip sharks off the coast of Cat Island, a long, thin stretch of land in the center of the Bahamas. Maybe, they thought, the sharks were moving certain directions because they were pregnant and looking for a place to give birth. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Nov 21, 2016•8 min
Anyone who has taken introductory physics will recognize this famous question: Why can't you start your car with 8 AAA batteries instead of one 12 volt car battery? Eight AAA batteries do add up to 12 volts, but they still can't provide enough electrical current to run the starter motor. But that's not the whole story. Any battery has a limit on the maximum current it can produce. To explain why, I'll make a model to represent a real battery. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choi...
Nov 18, 2016•6 min
Last spring, mathematician Henry Segerman found a peculiar post on Facebook. It was by a programmer who had could not conjure mental images—a condition called aphantasia. Segerman immediately recognized that he lives with the same limitation. “When I try to visualize something, I don’t see anything,” he says. Which is curious—because Segerman, 37, has made a career out of visualizing complex mathematical shapes. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Nov 17, 2016•6 min
Yesterday, four US states voted to legalize recreational marijuana. Casual smokers in Massachusetts, Nevada, and California are now free from the social stigma—and threat of jail time—that had clouded cannabis use for decades. (Maine is still up for grabs; Arizona voters kept the status quo.) In these states, downlow smokers will become legal consumers, and formerly clandestine growers and sellers will start responding to the demands of bona fide mass market. Learn about your ad choices: dovetai...
Nov 16, 2016•5 min
An HIV diagnosis is a nightmare, but it is no longer a death sentence. Someday, vaccines might bat the virus out of your system without you ever knowing you’d been exposed. If successful, such a vaccine would effectively cure AIDS. Someday, maybe. So scientists are working on it. Like yesterday: Researchers published results to a promising study on primates infected with SIV, a monkey version of HIV. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Nov 15, 2016•11 min
Early in his career, the decorated biologist Richard Lenski thought he might be forced to evolve. After his postdoctoral research grant was canceled, Lenski began to look tentatively at other options. With one child and a second on the way, Lenski attended a seminar about using specific types of data in an actuarial context—the same type of data he had worked with as a graduate student. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Nov 14, 2016•12 min
Forget Nate Silver. There’s a new king of the presidential election data mountain. His name is Sam Wang, Ph.D. Haven’t heard of him just yet? Don’t worry. You will. Because Wang has sailed True North all along, while Silver has been cautiously trying to tack his FiveThirtyEight data sailboat (weighted down with ESPN gold bars) through treacherous, Category-Five-level-hurricane headwinds in what has easily been the craziest presidential campaign in the modern political era. Learn about your ad ch...
Nov 11, 2016•10 min
