Fun Science

Here is a collection of real elements from the Mendeleev’s Periodic Table! Wonder about how airtight this thing is... After all, it contains elements that can be harmful to a person.

Static Discharge Imagine the situation; someone invites you to visit. You come to the door on time, wipe your feet on the mat thoroughly, then touch the brass door handle... and that's when you feel a slight impact. It's a static discharge. Why does this happen? After you had wiped your feet on the mat, your body received a negative electrical charge. Then you touched a negatively charged hand to a positively charged metal object (a door handle in our case) and the electrons transferred from your hand to that object. Such an instantaneous transfer of electrons is called a static discharge. It was precisely at the moment you felt a slight electric shock.

How knowledge of physics and a simple tension on the threads can "break gravity".

CyberDog: Xiaomi First Robotic Dog Does your dog know how to do a backflip? 🤖 Well, Xiaomi dog can. Jetson Xavier NX module from Nvidia, containing 384 CUDA cores, 48 tensor cores, six Carmel processors and two specialized deep learning cores, became the computing center of the robot. The module collects and processes information from 11 sensors. It uses specially designed Xiaomi servos to move, enabling it not only to walk, but also to do backflips and other tricks. In fact, the machine moves at 3.2 meters per second and weighs 3 kilograms. Xiaomi reports that the robot can follow its owner like a real dog. The device also recognizes faces. By the way, the CyberDog can be controlled by voice or through a smartphone app. What do you think, whether the robot is capable of fully replacing a real animal?

A viscoelastic fluid can pour itself, known as the open channel siphon effect.

Ferromagnetic Liquid Ferromagnetic liquids are colloidal systems consisting of nanometer-sized ferromagnetic or ferrimagnetic particles suspended in a carrier fluid, commonly an organic solvent or water.

3D Printed Pizza Chef 3D is a new development of BeeHex 3D printers, initially developed to print food for astronauts. However, the concept has changed as the project progressed, so the printers were redesigned to print pizza. The developers describe the final product as a network of pizzerias, where customers choose their own ingredients for pizza and even watch the process of "cooking-printing".

In spring, Helsinki let an electric, FULL-autonomous sweeper into the streets. Place your bets, in how many years will they appear everywhere?

Nikola Tesla's "Egg of Columbus" As legend has it, Christopher Columbus said he could put an egg upright. When nobody believed him, he broke the egg at one end and set it. Responding to the objection that anyone could do it, Columbus replied, "Anyone can do it, but I did it". Meanwhile, Nikola Tesla showed that an egg (or at least an egg-shaped piece of metal) could be put upright with the help of an electromagnetic field.

What are the hazards of viruses? Viruses are small pieces of DNA containing 10-100 genes. They penetrate cells and take over the control of protein production, subjugating the cell and it starts releasing copies of the virus in large quantities. As the viruses multiply, the normal functioning of the cells and then of the whole body is threatened.

How botulinum toxin works Botulinum toxin causes damage to various structures of the peripheral nervous system: neuromuscular synapse, nerve endings. The toxins selectively block the release of acetylcholine in these structures, and simply put, turn the muscle off 👉🏻 it does not contract. (This is the reason for the smoothing of wrinkles in cosmetology).

Double Pendulum Motion A double pendulum is a pendulum with another one attached to its end. The motion of the pendulum is governed by coupled ordinary differential equations. For some energies, its motion is chaotic.

Sulfur Hexafluoride Is Significantly Denser Than Air Sulfur hexafluoride (also sulphur hexafluoride, SF6) is an inorganic substance, a heavy gas under normal conditions, which is 5 times heavier than air.

Sarrus Linkage The mechanism converts a limited circular motion into a rectilinear one without the use of guideways. It consists of several articulated rectangular plates, with two of them remaining parallel, but capable of moving toward each other.

The way a black hole twists space👆🏻 A black hole is a region within cosmos with so much gravity that it absorbs everything around it, including light. However, the word combination "black hole" itself is just a cleverly invented designation. And it only caught on due to the fact that it's convenient. A hole — because once something gets there, it cannot get back out. And the black one is that the object itself does not emit anything or practically nothing.

💦Acoustic levitation California startup Simplistyk has invented a device to levitate water. The device is called "Levizen". It applies the principle of acoustic levitation: high-frequency sound waves indistinguishable by the ear make a drop of water literally hang in the air.

🐍"The Pharaoh's Serpent" The euphonious name hides a collective image of multiple chemical reactions in the process of which there is a multiple increase in the volume of the used reagents. During the reaction, the resulting substance increases, and it (the substance) wriggles like a snake. What a fascinating sight!

Murmuration (from Latin murmuratio "muttering, buzzing") This is how ornithologists call the association of birds (commonly starlings) in huge flocks, continuously changing their shapes into a variety of figures. An impressive natural phenomenon!

Fluorescein When exposed to ultraviolet light, the green dye fluorescein emits light in the visible range, a phenomenon called fluorescence.