Physics & Math, features and articles | Educational Science

Jul 31, 2021

Fusion experiment breaks record, blasts out 10 quadrillion watts of power

Scientists used an unconventional method of creating nuclear fusion to yield a record-breaking burst of energy of more than 10 quadrillion watts, by firing intense beams of light from the world's largest lasers at a tiny pellet of hydrogen. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California said...

Jun 30, 2021

What is a superconductor?

A superconductor is a material that achieves superconductivity, which is a state of matter that has no electrical resistance and does not allow magnetic fields to penetrate. An electric current in a superconductor can persist indefinitely. Superconductivity can only typically be achieved at very cold temperatures. Superconductors have a wide...

Jun 30, 2021

Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize-winning physicist, has died

Steven Weinberg, a Nobel-prize winning physicist whose work helped link two of the four fundamental forces, has died at the age of 88, the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) announced Saturday (July 24). HIs work was foundational to the Standard Model, the overarching physics theory that describes how...

Mar 31, 2021

Scientists paint best portrait yet of closest known fast radio burst

Scientists have uncovered more details about perhaps the most famous repeating fast radio burst, a mysterious phenomenon astronomers cannot yet explain. Astronomers first spotted this fast radio burst, known as FRB20180916B, in 2018, just over a decade after FRBs were first discovered. Although some FRBs are individual flashes in the...

Nov 30, 2022

How much does a cloud weigh?

When you're flying in an airplane above a blanket of clouds, the pillars of white and gray look soft, fluffy and lighter than air. But don't be fooled — those bouncy-looking clouds are much, much heavier than they appear. So just how much does a cloud weigh? And how do...

Oct 31, 2022

Who invented the lightbulb?

Though Thomas Edison is usually credited as the man who invented the lightbulb, the famous American inventor wasn't the only one who contributed to the development of this revolutionary technology. Alessandro Volta, Humphrey Davy and Joseph Swan played a critical role in the development of this technology. Early research &...

Mar 31, 2022

Time might not exist — but that's okay

Does time exist? The answer to this question may seem obvious: Of course it does! Just look at a calendar or a clock. But developments in physics suggest the non-existence of time is an open possibility, and one that we should take seriously. How can that be, and what would...

Feb 28, 2022

Why daylight saving time starts Sunday

Don't forget to move your clock forward an hour overnight Saturday (March 12), as daylight saving time begins Sunday. And yes, this is the time change that takes an hour away from your day, but spring is on its way. Daylight saving time (not savings, as many people say) begins...

Dec 31, 2021

What is the Fibonacci sequence?

The Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers in which each number is the sum of the two that precede it. Starting at 0 and 1, the first 10 numbers of the sequence look like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, and so on forever....

Dec 31, 2021

Stephen Hawking would have been 80 today. Google Doodle honors famous physicist.

The pioneering work of physicist Stephen Hawking is honored in a Google Doodle today (Jan. 8), including a video with Hawking's quotes about everything from cosmology to disability. On what would have been Hawking's 80th birthday, the cosmologist was cited not only with his work in probing the fate of...

Dec 31, 2021

Keeping time: The origin of B.C. and A.D.

The terms A.D. and B.C. have their roots in Christianity. A.D. stands for anno domini (Latin for in the year of the lord), and it refers specifically to the birth of Jesus Christ. B.C. stands for before Christ. The system labels years based on a traditional notion of when Jesus...

Jan 31, 2023

New map of the universe's matter reveals a possible hole in our understanding of the cosmos

Scientists have made one of the most precise maps of the universe's matter, and it shows that something may be missing in our best model of the cosmos. Created by pooling data from two telescopes that observe different types of light, the new map revealed that the universe is less...

Apr 7, 2023

Baseball home runs could increase by 10% in the next 80 years. Here's why

Home runs are becoming more frequent in Major League Baseball (MLB) due to climate change, a new study finds. There's a very clear physical mechanism at play in which warmer temperatures reduce the density of air, study co-author Justin Mankin, an assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth University in New...

Apr 19, 2023

Oppenheimer: Everything we know about the atomic bomb creator's epic new biopic

This summer, renowned filmmaker Christopher Nolan returns to the big screen with Oppenheimer, his second movie based on real wartime events — the first was Dunkirk (2017). This time around, however, he's not taking us to the frontlines of World War II, but instead dealing with the complicated process behind...

Apr 30, 2023

Why do magnets have north and south poles?

Cutting a bar magnet in half won't get rid of its poles. It'll just produce two magnets, each with a north pole that will be attracted to the other magnet's south pole, and vice versa. It's this fundamental property of attraction that makes magnets useful for so many purposes, from...