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On July 20th of 1969, an event of epic proportions took place.  Two American astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, landed their lunar excursion module (LEM) Eagle on the Moon, fulfilling the first part of President Kennedy’s challenge in 1961 that the United States “should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this…

Arduino Is Cool!

Based on a casual comment by a colleague at a university where I currently teach, I decided to investigate the teaching potential of Arduino.

Arduinois an online community originally formed by a handful of Italian educators who hung out at a bar in Italy having the name Arduino, named after a king of Italy in the…

A Brief History of Flight – The Space Age, Part 1

John Glenn

Although Yuri Gargarin was the first person to orbit the Earth, John Glenn was the first American to do so, and he did so, in spectacular fashion.

Born in 1916, Glenn was already a distinguished fighter pilot, having served in World War II, China and the Korean War.

Partly…

How Airplanes Fly

A good place to start discussing how airplanes fly is to look at the four forces acting on the plane while in flight:

Thrust comes from the planes jets or propellers, and is a third law effect: as the air is pushed to the rear, it pushes back, causing the plane to go forward.

Weight of course is the Earth’s attraction of the plane to it, and is universally downward.

Dragis just…

The Rocket Age – Part 2

Telstar 1

On July 10, 1962, Bell Laboratories, in conjunction with NASA and other telecommunication organizations, launched the first true transatlantic telecommunication satellite from Cape Canaveral.

Launched from a Thor-Delta rocket, the satellite, known as Telstar 1, occupied a highly elliptical orbit,…

A Brief History of Flight – The Rocket Age, Part 1

Rocket Bombs

During World War II, the Germans were way ahead of the Allies in all matters Rocketry.  Even as they were decisively losing the ground war, London (and later Antwerp, in the Battle of the Bulge) were being bombarded by rocket bombs called the V-1.  The British dubbed…

A Brief History of Flight – Part 3

The Jet Age

Much like the development of FM radio and television, the development of truly operational military and commercial jet aircraft was delayed by the exigencies of World War II.

The “fathers” of turbojet propulsion and jet aircraft were an Englishman named Frank Whittle and a German named…

A Brief History of Flight – Part 2

Lucky Lindy

No other pilot of the 1920s is better known than the American  Charles Lindbergh, who flew his Ryan Monoplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, from Long Island, NY, to Paris, France, in May of 1927.

Lindbergh was the first person to fly a fixed wing aircraft from the United States to…

A Brief History of Flight, Part 1

The Wright Brothers

I am in the process of developing a new physics course for students interesting in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), commonly known as drones.  It occurred to me to put together a brief history of human flight.

Most of us are familiar with the immense and courageous…

Clingy Drones

Vice News’ Motherboard reports that a new type of drone has successfully been designed by researchers at the Createk Design Lab at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec that can semi-autonomously alight on, and cling to, vertical surfaces, both hard and soft.

Besides obvious spy applications which were not…

Tesla Model 3

Well, it’s finally “almost” here, the Tesla Model 3 all electric sedan and sportscar, that promises to be affordable to the masses, and be practical to use.

Over a half million blokes have put down a deposit of $1,000 to purchase what has to be the iPhone of cars.  Although 30 cars have been produced thus far, they…

Quoth The Raven “No Problem!”

A study in the July issue of Science once again demonstrates the stunningly high intelligence of ravens, and other members of the crow family.

Ravens are part of a larger species called corvids, which include crows, jays and magpies.  Tests conclusively prove that these birds can solve problems better…

Deep Space Testing

On July 10th, NASA sealed the James Webb Telescope into a chamber designed to see how well the telescope will work in the environment of outer space.

The telescope is a successor to the famed Hubble Space Telescope, and is expected to pick up the much fainter infrared light of galaxies shining from near the edge…

You Go Frogs

A recent article in National Academy of Sciences Journal asserts that frogs were a primary beneficiary of the asteroid strike some 66 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs.

Known as the Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction Event, the asteroid impact was so devastating that nearly 75% of all life on Earth was wiped…

Colony Collapse Disorder

The ongoing concern about declines in honey bee populations worldwide recently made the news again, with a report that neonicotinoid insecticides may play a significant role in colony collapse disorder, a process wherein a healthy bee colony simply disappears (dies off) within a very short time.

Using 33…

Paris Air Show

This year’s International Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport finishes today, after one week of spectacular surprises.

Perhaps the standout of many competitors is Aeromobil’s Flying Car.  The Aeromobil has foldable wings when used as a car, and retractable wheels when used as a plane.

With a maximum takeoff mass of…

How We All Got Here

In roughly the time it takes for light to get from the Sun to the Earth, astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson explains how the Universe evolved from the Big Bang to us safely ensconced here on Earth.  Courtesy of Minute Physics.

Chocolate and A Fib

C…