The second major type of telescope is the reflecting telescope. The reflecting telescope was invented by Newton and considered an improvement on Galileo's design. Most reflecting scopes still use Newton's design. Reflecting scopes use a wide concave mirror at the back of the tube to bring light to a focal point in front of the mirror which is then usually reflected sideways toward the eyepiece by a flat, angled mirror. There are also compound scopes that work like reflecting scopes but there is
Kickstarter is full of cool stuff but a project called Altergaze really caught my eye. What it is is a 3D printed platform with a set of up to 3 lenses inside and a holder for your smartphone. The lenses magnify the screen so that it takes up your entire field of view, allowing you to watch video and whatnot in giant, beautiful panoramic views. And the beauty of it is that since it it 3D printed, the firm starting it is making the templates open source and offering partnerships to just about any
I just found a video of a man playing a Tesla coil as a musical instrument. With a guitar. Basically, the guitar still works the same way but rather than sending its MIDI signals (notes and such) to an amp, it is being sent to a Tesla coil. Tesla coils work by sending alternating current through a wires coiled into a torus (donut shape). The changing current charges a larger torus trough electromagnetic induction. The voltage induced in the second coil is much greater than the first which allows
I would like to take a step back from physics to propose another law on the effects of procrastination on the APlusPhysics blogs. I have already explored the relationships between amount of procrastination and both quality of blog posts and hours slept the night they are due. Every time I refresh the "dashboard" page five new posts pop up, and I have noticed that the same posts don't stay on the front page for very long. It would seem that we are all hurting ourselves in terms of views by all wa
In December of 2013 physicists discovered a way to approximate the amplitude of scattering sub-atomic particles in a way that is much, much simpler than the old method. The idea is that given a set of parameters and whatnot, a geometric object, which is being called an amplituhedron, can be constructed such that it's volume equals the amplitude of a scattered particle from a quantum interaction. The old method involved using hundreds to millions of Feynman diagrams, which show possible ways the
