March now, last post July 2014. Goodness, I have been sleeping. Anyhow, with Symbyartic rallying for a sciart Tsumani, now seems as good a time as any to awaken the blog and scour the archives for sciencey stuff with an arty twist. Here’s a previously unpublished one from me. My better half is a silversmith,
Well, a virtual recreation with a bit of license. This started as a test to see if the physically based render program Luxrender can make a believable simulation of white light passing through a prism. Unbiased render engines like Luxrender send out very many virtual photons and calculate their paths according to physical laws, and
I’ve just finished Richard Dawkins’s self-narrated audiobook of An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist, where, introducing a task given to him by his research supervisor Niko Tinbergen, related to nature versus nurture aspects of animal behaviour, he makes special mention of the White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys nuttalli). As it happens, earlier this
This is my chunk of Lapis Lazuli: mainly lazurite ((Na,Ca)8(AlSiO4)6(S,SO4,Cl)1-2) with some shiny pyrite (iron sulphide) streaks. This piece is about 3 inches high. It’s a semi-precious stone which when ground up becomes ultramarine, the intense blue pigment you see in old religious paintings. Modern ultramarine is most often synthetic. Strangely perhaps, my resonance with
A few pictures from last night’s event at the Natural History Museum in London: Science Uncovered 2013, a once a year special as part of the Europe-wide European Researchers’ Night. I think this format is fantastic. Ideal for Londoners spilling out of work on a Friday evening, with food and drink available and the opportunity
Just a bit of fun really; but I’ve been mugging up on the basics of CGI. Things sure have moved on from the days of Muybridge and flip books ! Here’s my first attempt: Movie made in DAZ Studio 4.6 with Animate2 plug-in.
A Polar Phenomenon In May 1915, as Ernest Shackleton and the crew of Endurance entered their fourth month trapped in ice on the Antarctic’s Weddell Sea, the ship’s navigator added to the gloom by declaring the Sun would be absent from the sky for the next seventy days. You expect this at above 75° South;
Tree frogs in trees are just fine, but tree frogs on plate-glass windows are better – because then you get to see their slightly icky fascinating undersides. I must admit, what struck me most when this guy landed – ‘thunk’ – out of a fig tree onto our window in Los Angeles, was how
“A squib is a type of firework, hence damp squib: something that fails ignominiously to satisfy expectations; an anti-climax.” Oxford English Dictionary The opportunities for non-scientists to do science have never been greater: it’s called Citizen Science. Helping out the professionals can involve anything from counting ladybirds in your back yard, to looking for
An Unfortunate Accident Modern revolvers have a mechanism that keeps them from firing accidentally if knocked or dropped. Before that, savvy owners learned to carry their weapon with an empty chamber under the hammer. Californian real-estate developer Clarence Austin was not among them. Picture Austin, one May day in 1909, setting off on a peaceful
