Way cool science illustrations, videos, and photographs

Science magazine's winners for visual excellence show that art and science can complement each other well. Some of the winners are truly stunning while still illustrating interesting science. Click on the link to see what I'm talking about.

http://www.sciencemag.org/site/special/vis2010/show/index.xhtml

Lady Gaga and chemistry?

Lady Gaga and chemistry are certainly words that you don't often hear in the same sentence. Yet, chemistry is being used to preserve her infamous meat costume from the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards:  Lady Gaga Meat Dress Designer Tells How To Re-Create His VMA Look.  In an interview on the Graham Norton show, Lady Gaga mentioned that she has a warehouse where all of her costumes are being preserved because she'd like to someday have a museum dedicated to displaying them.  The meat dress obviously poses some interesting challenges. I guess it could have been turned into beef jerky :) but she wants the full effect of the dress to be preserved. That's where chemistry comes in to help. Here's a link to a description of what could be done to save the dress for future display....if anyone really wants to see it after it's been preserved and sitting in a warehouse for years!


Chemical & Engineering News Digital Edition - August 29, 2011
Click here to go to the issue.If you cannot click on the links, paste this link into a browser:
http://www.cendigital.org/cendigital/20110829_sub/?g=50&pm=2&u1=friend&sub_id=CMUSf4QsXdID0

How the metric system is creeping into our lives: Part 1

You often hear about "the global economy" but another thing that's becoming global is "culture". With modern communications, people all over the world can be exposed to ideas and items from other parts of the world. I started noticing about 6 months ago that I'm reading a lot of things on the internet that were created outside the U.S. Since the U.S. is one of only 3 countries that doesn't use the metric system (Crazy!), units on websites are often in metric.  More about how I think the internet is going to influence the use/understanding of the metric system in the United States coming later so stay tuned!

I came across this collection idea while looking at craft sites on the web. Issue 1 of Less Than 100g - Bottle cap collection: Create a collection of things that each weigh less than 100 g.

• What would you collect? 
• What weighs less than 100 g that you could include?

I'm going to post examples of collections of science-related goodies that I have that meet the less than 100 g limit. I checked them all with a kitchen scale that I keep at home.

First off, my wind-up toy collection:



I love these little toys. Each winds up and does something different. I'll try to put together a video to show them off. You might be wondering what this has to do with science. Well, a number of years ago, NASA had a program running on the space shuttles called Science of Toys where astronauts would test the behavior of  toys like these on the shuttle and compare that to what we see on Earth.  Check out these NASA websites for more information about the really neat Science of Toys program.
Toys in Space Investigation   
 http://quest.nasa.gov/space/teachers/liftoff/toys.html
http://shuttleexperience.nasa.gov/KidsCorner/ToysinSpace.pdf