Wednesday, October 5, 2011
In high school science class, you probably saw a picture of an atom that looked like this: The picture shows a stylized nucleus with red protons and blue neutrons, surrounded by three grey electrons. It’s an attractive and iconic image. It makes a nice logo. Unfortunately, it’s also totally wrong. There’s an extent to which [...]
Filed in Math, Music Theory, Physics, Science
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Also tagged chemistry, einstein, harmonics, linkedin, Math, Music Theory, orbitals, Physics, quantum mechanics, visualization
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Today in the NY Times there’s an article about NASA’s new Solar Dynamics Observatory. Check out this amazing video of the sun in action. The sun was on my mind today anyway, it being so nice and cloudless outside. But days like today also cause me anxiety. I’m a fair-haired sunburn-prone type, and my dad [...]
Filed in Physics
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Also tagged antimatter, beatles, fusion, george harrison, gravity, nina simone, paul simon, Physics, quarks, Science, space
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People had been playing electric guitar for decades before Jimi Hendrix. Mostly they used it as a louder, less effortful version of the acoustic guitar. Jimi was one of the first musicians to think of the guitar amp as a musical instrument unto itself, an early analog synth, with the guitar as a very sophisticated [...]
Filed in Hardware, Interfaces, Key Musicians, Math, Music, Physics
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Also tagged analog, electricity, electronica, feedback, guitar, harmonics, harmony, interface, jimi hendrix, Music, Music Theory, recursion, remixes, resonance, tuning, wah pedal
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I’m a humanities guy, but I’ve never lost my childhood love of math and science. I’m looking forward to the Large Hadron Collider being fired up next year the way normal male Americans look forward to the NBA playoffs. I like to be an informed fan, and since Einstein is the Michael Jordan of scientists, [...]
The parts of the computer that do the “thinking” are mostly made of little electronic switches called transistors. If you connect two wires to a transistor, you can use the voltage on one wire to control the voltage on the other. What’s especially handy for engineering purposes is that the presence or absence of a [...]