By David Ponce

“Ferrofluids are colloidal liquids made of nanoscale ferromagnetic, or ferrimagnetic, particles suspended in a carrier fluid (usually an organic solvent or water). Each tiny particle is thoroughly coated with a surfactant to inhibit clumping.” You’ve probably seen it before in impressive videos of it being manipulated by moving magnets around, looking somewhat like an alien substance. It’s an impressive effect and it’s one that you can now reproduce at will on your desk through this Kickstarter project. Coming in two sizes called Ferrite and Ferro, the desk toys are made from a high quality glass tube and an aluminum base. The larger vessel Ferrite stands 8.5″ tall with a 5″ diameter base. The smaller vessel Ferro is 4.25″ tall and 2″ in diameter. You’re provided with a neodymium stylus so you can play around with the material.

Currently 30% funded, $100 will get you the Ferro while $125 the Ferrite. $175 will get you both.

[ Kickstarter Project ]

By David Ponce

This is a contraption whose sole purpose is to suspend a magnet cube in midair. But if you’re anything like us, you don’t need any more justification to start wanting this. Think of this item as a cross between a toy, a puzzle and a work of art. It’s a puzzle because you’ll be sure to have some fun assembling the 20 laser-cut pieces of MDF. It’s a toy because, let’s face it, it’s more fun than assembling IKEA furniture so the process itself… screw it, alright, it’s not a toy. But it is somewhat of a work of art in that if you like science at all, you can keep this on display to show the world just how much of a geek you are.

Place the cube magnet in between the specially-cast bismuth cones, and let the forces fight. See, gravity will be pulling the magnet cube down, but the super powerful magnet on top of the sculpture will be pulling the magnet cube up. Slowly turn the wheel of your DIY Magnetic Levitating Sculpture Kit (which adjusts the powerful magnet’s distance from the cube). Once you get the forces balanced (so to speak), the magnet cube will hover in mid air!

It’s $50.

[ Product Page ]

By David Ponce

Insane Clown Posse might have had a point all along. Check out the above video and have fun picking up your jaw off the floor. It shows what the science types are calling quantum levitation, and is allegedly taking place in Tel Aviv, at an ASTC (Association of Science and Technology Centers) event. Now folks, this stuff is nothing new. It involves superconducting magnets, liquid nitrogen and supposedly an effect called flux pinning. It’s now apparently being called quantum levitation because frankly, it’s attention grabbing. But to be honest, no one is really thinking about the science behind this. It’s the video, guys. Just check out the video. And we know what you’re thinking.

Hoverboards.

Right?

Well, we’re not quite there yet but holy crap this looks amazing.

VIA [ Geekologie ]

Oh those scientists, always looking out for mankind. Now researchers at the University of California, Davis, have come up with a self-cleansing cloth. They’ve taken regular old cotton and covered it with a new compound called 2-anthraquinone carboxylic acid, or 2-AQC. When exposed to light, 2-ACQ releases chemicals (hydroxyl radicals and hydrogen peroxide) that harm bacteria and break down other organic compounds. More importantly, perhaps, is that 2-ACQ has been shown to bond strongly to cellulose and doesn’t simply wash off like other self-cleaning products. Not that you’d want to wash them. Because we all know what we’re going to be doing with this stuff. And that’s not washing the heck out of it. Just to see…

Better yet, the fabric may not be that far away from hitting the market. Although still at the research phase and “although 2-AQC is more expensive than other compounds, the researchers say that cheaper equivalents are available.”

[ UC Davis Page ] VIA [ MedGadget ]

I know for a lot of people, Monday morning isn’t exactly the time when their brain is functioning at full capacity. But I thought this video demonstrating Eddy currents was certainly worth sharing. The demonstrator is simply dropping a small stack of neodymium magnets down a thick-walled section of copper pipe. And even though the magnets aren’t attracted to the pipe, their descent is still slowed dramatically on the way down. Either that, or this is a brilliant hoax, and that pipe is actually a mile long.

And since I’m one of those persons whose brain doesn’t fully kick in until late Tuesday, I’m including Wikipedia’s description of Eddy currents if you’re curious as to what’s supposedly going on here:

Eddy currents (also called Foucault currents[1]) are currents induced in conductors, when a conductor is exposed to a changing magnetic field due to relative motion of the field source and conductor; or due to variations of the field with time. This can cause a circulating flow of electrons, or a current, within the body of the conductor. These circulating eddies of current have inductance and thus induce magnetic fields. These fields can cause repulsive, attractive,[2] propulsion and drag effects.

[ YouTube - Copper Pipe Magnet ] & [ Wikipedia - Eddy Current ]

After a visually impaired student signed up for one of professor David Hurd’s introductory astronomy courses at the Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, he started creating tactile astronomy tools so they could partly experience what celestial objects were like. And his latest effort, a new book called Getting A Feel For Lunar Craters, allows the blind and visually impaired to experience the surface of the Earth’s moon with tactile diagrams and braille descriptions that lets readers feel the various craters, crags and other landmarks that dot its surface.

The 17 page book was created by David with assistance from the NASA Lunar Science Institute, and as far as I can tell is available for free from NASA’s website, though you’ll have to wait for the second reprinting of the book which will be ready in a couple of months. In the meantime though, text-only and audio file versions of the book can be downloaded from their site, if you’re curious.

[ NASA - Getting A Feel For Lunar Craters ] VIA [ Medgadget ]

Popular Photography has a brief, but interesting, interview with someone at NASA regarding how a DSLR needs to be specially prepped before it can be blasted into orbit and used on a spacewalk. Most noticeable in the photo above, featuring a camera used for astronaut training, is a white shroud surrounding the flash. It turns out that’s apparently pretty important since the flash won’t fire in the vacuum of space if left completely exposed:

The equipment under the thermal blanket is a Nikon SB-800 flash in a custom housing that is used during a spacewalk (EVA). The flash needed a special housing because it will not work properly in the vacuum of space. The housing holds air pressure so that the flash will function properly. There is also a bracket on the bottom (covered with a white thermal blanket) that the camera and flash mount to.

And, while the cameras do return to Earth after a space flight (instead of simply being jettisoned to lighten the Shuttle’s (RIP) load) they don’t always return to active duty after inspections. Apparently the unshielded radiation of space does quite a number on their sensors.

[ Popular Photography - How Does NASA Get a Nikon D2Xs DSLR Ready to Go to Space? ] VIA [ Popular Science ]

As its creator Nathan Bergey points out: “The International Space Station (ISS) is a marvel of current technology and humanity. It’s a continuously inhabited orbital outpost, floating in space just over our heads. But often we forget it’s there.” So as a constant reminder, and a great way to know when you might actually have a chance of seeing it pass overhead, he created this ISS Notify lamp which lights up and remains glowing as long as the station is more than 10 degrees above the horizon.

The actual data for when the ISS passes overhead (for wherever on Earth you may be) is gleaned from a website called Heavens-Above which already does all of the calculations for the station’s orbit, which can occasionally change unpredictably. And because the ISS is designed to benefit all of mankind, Nathan was also kind enough to post everything you’d need to build your own ISS Notify lamp (minus the hardware) on GitHub.

[ Nathan Bergey - ISS Notify ] VIA [ Craft ]

According to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, more specifically something referred to as Time Dilation, someone in motion will age slower relative to someone that’s not moving. So your co-worker sitting at their desk is actually aging faster than you whenever you head to the break room to get another doughnut. And now, using your iPhone’s GPS capabilities and the Lorentz Transformation, this simple Einstein’s Pedometer app can actually caculate how much time you’ve gained while walking about. Of course even if you spent your life circling the globe in a supersonic fighter jet you’d still only add mere thousands of a seconds to your life, so you better make sure to live that borrowed time to the fullest!

[ iTunes App Store - Einstein's Pedometer ] VIA [ bookofjoe ]

The removal of lawn darts from public availability was kind of understandable. And it’s not like there’s an Olympic event that’s suffering from a dearth of talent because of it. But the taming down of chemistry sets has arguably had a negative effect when it comes to getting kids excited about a career in the sciences. Baking soda and vinegar volcanoes aren’t really that inspiring. So I’m kind of surprised to see this Chem C3000 set from Thames & Kosmos which appears to have slipped past the fun censors unscathed.

It includes all the fun stuff you’ll need like apparatus and chemicals to complete 360 different experiments. And while they vary in complexity and entertainment value, there appear to be a few gems like making your own hydrochloric acid, which I’m going to assume ends up safely diluted. The Thames & Kosmos website lists all the fun stuff the kit comes with, and I’d encourage you to look at the $249.95 price tag as an investment in your kids’ futures.

[ Thames & Kosmos Chem C3000 Chemistry Set ] VIA [ InventorSpot ]