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The physics of how a rocket works, from a wonderful 1953 primer on space travel written and illustrated by a female author.
(via ratak-monodosico)
The shadow of surface tension
An insect like a wasp or a water strider can rest atop the water, held up by surface tension. This means that the cohesive force of the water molecules sticking to each other is stronger than the force of the bug being pushed down by gravity. This works because it spreads its weight out over a large surface area (like snowshoes). That creates a slight indentation in the top of the water, changing the direction that the light coming down is refracted and re-directing it slightly sideways (that’s where the bright halos around the dark areas come from). And what’s the absence of light?
(via valoscope)
Sonic Transit of Venus
Robert Alexander is an astronomical “sonification specialist”. He uses his musical training to take non-audible data and convert them into soundscapes to provide NASA scientists with a novel way to study the emissions from our Sun.
NASA satellites are constantly collecting data along the extreme range of emissions from the Sun. Alexander first compresses days of data into just seconds and then assigns different emissions (such as the various excited states of carbon) to different tones.
Above, he used signals collected during the 2012 Transit of Venus to help create a larger musical composition (listen to the full 17-minute version here). Listen to more of his solarsonic creations at NPR.
Want to know more about the different families of solar emissions? Check out the false-color palette of our solar disk as seen by NASA’s SDO satellite.
(via jtotheizzoe)
Anatomix
scientific… a sort of science, i suppose. every experience mentioned in this piece (may need enlarging!), correlates with a part of the brain. listening to tchaikovskys’ swan lake on record- the right hand side of the brain, the temporal lobe, where our ability to distinguish pitch lies. my inability to tell the time- connected to the parietal lobe, where the ability to understand symbols is developed, etc. enjoy! x
Thanks for the submission!
(via scientificillustration)
