June 22, 2014 David Latchman 3Comment

Invisibility is just one of the many features of Kiera Cameron’s (Rachel Nichols) City Protective Services (CPS) uniform. A cloaking device, such as the one used by CPS officers, deflects light around it rendering it invisible. Such a device would be based on metamaterials; an artificial material specifically engineered to have properties not be found in nature. Prof. Sir John Pendry, the father of metamaterials. The idea for such a material was first proposed by English physicist, Sir John Pendry in 2006 in a paper published in Science, “Controlling Electromagnetic Fields”. In this paper, Pendry describes…

June 9, 2014 David Latchman 2Comment

MUTO meet to mate In the 2014 Godzilla reboot, Dr. Joe Brody discovers that the M.U.T.O. (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism) may be using a form of echolocation to communicate with another of its kind hidden in the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Depository in Nevada. How exactly can a creature in Japan communicate with another all the way in Nevada? It uses ultrasound. To learn more, read my new MoviePilot article.

June 2, 2014 David Latchman

There is nothing as intimidating or awe-inspiring as the most famous Kaiju’s roar. Though fictional, this is one of the things that defines him other than his massive size. But there are problems were physics is concerned. Sound is generated by the larynx in one of two ways: either purring mode or flow-driven mode. Purring mode depends on how quickly the vocal folds or vocal cords contract and vibrate. Flow-driven mode depends on how passing air vibrates those folds. The sound produced in flow-driven mode depends on the size of the larynx. The larger the larynx, and hence the vocal…

March 2, 2014 David Latchman

The second week of the FutureLearn course “The Discovery of the Higgs Boson” looks at physics of the 20th century–special relativity and quantum mechanics. These two branches of physics represented a fundamental shift in the way we view the world. It may come as a surprise to some that these deep philosophical shifts have very unexpected origins. Our view of a quantized world came from the need to create a more efficient light bulb while the connection between space and time came from our need to run a more efficient railroad network and international time conventions. Need for a more…

February 15, 2014 David Latchman 1Comment

The Higgs boson has captured the world’s attention from the moment it was announced the Large Hardron Collider was being built to find it. The elementary particle’s discovery was announced by CERN on 4 July 2012 and is nothing short of monumental as it appears to confirm the existence of the Higgs field. This pervasive field is pivotal to understanding why some fundamental particles have mass. As interesting and exciting as this discovery may be, its consequences and implications remain out of reach for the general public. Future Learn, a privately company owned by Open University, along with the University…

August 14, 2013 David Latchman

Season 06, Episode 03: “The Higgs Boson Observation” http://youtu.be/RvX9Evd3MyM In “The Higgs Boson Observation”, we learn that the subject of graduate student and Sheldon’s (Jim Parsons) new assistant, Alex Jensen (Margo Harshman), is on Trojan asteroids at the Earth-Sun L5 Lagrange point. This also happens to be Raj’s (Kunal Nayyar) area of expertise. But what exactly are Trojan asteroids and why are they of interest to astronomers and astrophysicists? Trojans are minor planets or satellites that share an orbit with a planet but does not collide with it because it orbits around one of the two stable Lagrangian points (trojan…

July 9, 2013 David Latchman 1Comment

Season 01, Episode 06: “The Middle-Earth Paradigm” Sheldon Cooper dresses as the Doppler Effect on the Season 1, Episode 6 “The Middle-Earth Paradigm” of the Big Bang Theory Yes. It’s the apparent change in the frequency of a wave caused by relative motion between the source of the wave and the observer. -Sheldon Cooper In the “Middle-Earth Paradigm” episode, Sheldon Cooper dresses as the “Doppler Effect” for Penny’s Halloween party. The Doppler Effect (or Doppler Shift) describes the change in pitch or frequency that results as a source of sound moves relative to an observer; moving…

June 24, 2013 David Latchman 3Comment

Season 01, Episode 02: “The Big Bran Hypothesis” Sheldon and Leonard contemplate using the stairs as an inclined plane to move Penny’s furniture to her apartment. In Season 1 Episode 2 of The Big Bang Theory, “The Big Bran Hypothesis”, Penny (Kaley Cuoco) asks Leonard (Johnny Galecki) to sign for a furniture delivery if she isn’t home. Unfortunately for Leonard and Sheldon, they are left with the task of getting a huge (and heavy) box up to Penny’s apartment. To solve this problem, Leonard suggest using the stairs as an inclined plane, one of the six…

June 8, 2013 David Latchman

Big Bang Theory Season 2, Episode 5: “The Euclid Alternative”In the opening scene of the “The Euclid Alternative”, we see Sheldon (Jim Parsons) demanding that Leonard (Johnny Galecki)needs to drive him around to run various errands. Leonard, after spending a night in the lab using the new Free Electron Laser to perform X-ray diffraction experiments. In the background, we can see equations that describe a rolling ball problem on the whiteboard in the background. Scene with Sheldon Cooper. The background shows a whiteboard with the physics equations of a rolling ball. Rolling motion plays an important…