DIY Lava Flows
Want to get kids interested in science? Well, DIY Lava Flows are one extreme way to go about it. Earth Magazine reports on the Syracuse University Lava Project.
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Earth Science
Metallurgical Eye Candy
Metallography is a method of materials analysis used to characterize the microscopic structure of a metal sample. Generally, the process involves cutting a sample from some object of interest, polishing its surface to high smoothness, and etching it with a chemical agent to highlight grain boundaries, inclusions, and other microstructural features. The sample is then imaged using one of a number of types of microscopy. The resulting pictures are often strikingly (if incidentally) beautiful. That’s OK by me, personally—incidental beauty is usually my favorite kind.
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Top 10: Marvelous Metals
As promised, here’s a tasting menu featuring some of my favorite metallurgical content from our archives arranged, as usual, in mysteriously-appealing (and entirely arbitrary) top-ten format. Narrowing it down to just ten involved some hard choices; this subject is rich, and we’ve covered it a lot. A second round-up, perhaps at the close of the month, may be in order. In the meantime, I’ve got a lot of cool stuff on my to-blog list, and it’s growing fast as your suggestions roll in.
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August is Metals Month
Well, what’s left of August is Metals Month, I should say. A broad subject, to be sure, and with only a couple of weeks to explore it, I want to be fairly ruthless about focusing on interesting and unusual metals themselves, and processes for working with them, rather than more general “cool stuff made from metal.”
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This Sundial Spells Solstice
Four times a year, when our planet is in the appropriate alignment with the sun, the shadow this sundial casts onto the ground spells out either “solstice” or “equinoxe.”
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How-To: Satellite Imagery Throws Pillows
In case you haven’t heard the name before, Spoonflower is a print-on-demand custom fabric service that can indelibly print your images on a roll of fabric up to 58″ wide. Andrew@CRAFT just spotted this promotional project from their guest author, Emma Jeffrey, showing off one of the many cool possibilities this service opens up: pillows, cushions, or other upholstery with customized satellite imagery of your location.
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Engineer Guy vs. The Atomic Clock
Here is the fifth video in Engineer Guy Series #4. The element of the week is cesium, as in “cesium fountain atomic clock.” Watching it, my jaw was on the floor by 0:20, as Bill opens by showing off the Symmetricom CSAC, which is the world’s first fully functional chip-scale atomic clock. It’s about the size of a quarter.
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