Caroline Wurden of Los Alamos High School demonstrates making ball lightning in her garage. As Focus Fusion points out, the results can look rather like ephemeral tree ornaments.
May your holiday be filled with high voltage shenanigans!
This fun HOWTO from Caltech shows you how to grow your own snowflakes at home with a coke bottle, a couple of styrofoam cups, some dry ice, and a few other common household items.
I find the effect of electric fields on growing ice crystals particularly fascinating.
Happy holidays!
Philips designed an open MRI that allows enough room for the mother to actually give birth while inside the machine.
Via Medgadget:
This operation was the culmination of two years of research and development work by the “open high-field MRI” task force specialising in radiology. “We had to develop a new type of foetal surveillance monitor whose measuring technology is not adversely affected by the extremely strong magnetic field of the MRI scanner,” says project manager Felix Güttler in explaining one of the challenges the team faced.
Phenomenal macro photos of various spiders, flies, and other insects. Watch in HD for full spider creep-out effect. Via Alex Wild.
Curious about a particular element? Check out the Periodic Table of Videos: a collection of short vids about each element, starring my favorite mad chemist, Martyn Poliakoff.
Of course, if you’re after more of a visual reference of elements, The Periodic Table by Theodore Gray can’t be missed.