Bones Are Interesting Because You Can Sometimes Read The Patterns Of Wear And Growth Like Reading A Book.

The great esGape

Unlike most elemental metals, gallium will melt in the palm of your hand, or at temperatures above about 30 °C. And that’s not the only unusual thing about this element: It also expands when it freezes. In this video series, warm liquid gallium is poured into a glass vial (top), followed by a little clean-up. As the gallium cools back down to room temperature, it starts to bubble up as its volume expands (third video down). Overall, it expands 3%, shattering the vial (bottom). Water is a substance commonly used to demonstrate this sort of expansion, growing about 8% in volume when frozen, but other elements exhibit this behavior as well, including silicon and plutonium. The final two clips have been accelerated 200 times and 10 times, respectively.

Credit: Periodictable.ru (watch the whole video here; GIFs created by rudescience)

More ChemPics and C&EN stories:

Liquid metals take shape

A melting liquid

Rolling out liquid-metal motors

It’s a good Sunday. 🤗

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Experimental Saturday

Meet the ‘400k pie’

Banana whey protein bread

Interesting and fun stuff

Work vs Hobbies [Comic]

Use a Pencil to Freeze Sauce into Usable Portions

Bake the Perfect Pound Cake

Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Bake Off

Recipe lists

10 PUMPKIN SPICE FAVORITES

Ten Minute Meal Prep Recipes and Prep Ideas

10 DESSERTS AND COOKIES TO TRY FOR FALL

20 PUMPKIN RECIPES FOR FALL

25 APPLE RECIPES TO GET YOU READY FOR FALL

19 OF THE BEST EASY & HEALTHY ONE PAN MEALS

Our Favorite Pumpkin Recipes

Food days

Cheeseburger 🍔

Butterscotch Pudding

Rum Punch 🍹

Pecan Cookies

White Chocolate

Top recipes!

Classic Snickerdoodles

Fresh & Flavorful Strawberry Cake Recipe

Double Chocolate Brownies

RED VELVET SUGAR COOKIES RECIPE

BROWN SUGAR POUND CAKE

Ginger Fig Tart with Chestnut-Almond Crust {vegan & gluten-free}

RED VELVET MACARONS WITH CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

My Mom’s Homemade Spaghetti and Meat Sauce

APPLE FRITTER PANCAKES

Bacon Tomato and Spinach Spaghetti

PUMPKIN PIE SPICE PROTEIN SMOOTHIES

Apple Spice Ricotta Donuts

pumpkin gnocchi with sage butter sauce

Mashed Potato Fries

QUICK POTATO ROLLS

Follow for recipes

Get your FoodFfs stuff here

There's an app for that

A “master list” of apps that are essential to student life.

Flashcards

Quizlet - Flashcard app that has pre downloaded flashcards and you can make your own flashcards. Available on multiple platforms

Duolingo - Language flashcard app

Flashcards+ - Another flashcard app

Math

Luna Calculator - calculator app ($2.99 on iOS)

Wolfram Alpha - online math solver

Symbollab - online math solver

Productivity & Planning

Forest - Grows a tree for every thirty minutes you are off your phone. If you touch your phone, the tree dies. ($0.99 on iOS)

FocusNow - Free version of Forest for iOS. Instead of trees, it grows fruits and vegetables. 

30/30 - Great time management app

Any.Do - Great app for creating to-do lists, organize tasks, syncs with other devices. You can also change the priorities on certain tasks. 

Studious - Great app on Android that reminds you when homework is due, when exams are and even silences your phone during class. 

StayFocused - A chrome extension that you can customize to limit the time on websites to stay productive

Self Control - Allows you to block your own access to distracting websites for a certain amount of time. Useful for people who get distracted on the computer (Also known as Cold Turkey for Windows).

My Study Life - Student planner app

myHomework Student Planner - another Student planner app

To-do List - extensive to do list, like an online bullet journal

Learning

Itunes U - For any apple device users, a app that gives you access to free educational courses 

TED - The whole catalog of TED talks at your fingertip. 

Wikipedia - Free encyclopedia that can be used for general references

Khan Academy - study videos (absolutely amazing app/website)

Music 

Coffitivity - coffee shop soundtrack

8tracks - great playlists, especially study playlists

Wake Up Calls

Alarmy - good alarm that will force you out of bed

Sleep Cycle - measures your sleep cycle

Math Alarm - alarm clock that forces you to do math to turn the alarm off, get’s your brain going 

Class Lectures and Note Taking

Dragon Dictation - takes notes for lectures (useful for classes where professors talk faster than you can type)

XMind - mind mapping tool

Notability - another app for recording lectures. ($2.99 on iOS)

These are just a few study apps that can be useful for studying. I will add more (or make a new list) later as I learn about them; feel free to message me to add some to this list. 

Sound waves could take a tsunami down a few notches

A tsunami’s ferocious force could be taken down a few notches with a pair of counter waves.

Fight waves with more waves!

A tsunami’s immense wall of water may not be stoppable. But there may be a way to take the ferocious force of nature down a few notches, using a pair of counterwaves.

If released at the right moment, a type of sound wave known as an acoustic-gravity wave could subdue a tsunami, applied mathematician Usama Kadri of Cardiff University in Wales reports January 23 in Heliyon. These acoustic-gravity waves, which reach deep below the ocean’s surface, can stretch tens or hundreds of kilometers and easily travel long distances at high speeds.

Smooth Ride, Bumpy Road

Why are wheels circular? Why aren’t they triangular or square shaped?

That is a question that you might have pondered at some point in your life ( perhaps as a shower-thought? ) But sometimes even the most simple questions have the most elegant answers!

A square wheel can roll smoothly if the ground consists of evenly shaped inverted catenaries of the right size and curvature.

What is a Catenary?

Well, it is the curve that a hanging cable assumes under its own weight when supported only at its ends. You find these everywhere!

Those chains on the pavement,

those hanging cables on a power transmission station,

or maybe a chandelier is of your type

All are catenaries!

Although it superficially resembles a parabola, it is NOT!

Practicality

The mythbusters (like always) decided to give the four wheel vehicle a try.

And found out that, get this - with speed, a truck fitted with square wheels can deliver a relatively smooth ride, despite that bouncy start!

Well, although circular wheels still remain as the king of wheels, it is nice to know that we do have some alternatives up our sleeve!

Merry Christmas :)

PC: Etan J. Tal, kamel15

Google’s Wireless ‘Pixel Buds’ Headphones Can Translate 40 Languages in Real Time

If you trace the orbits of Earth and Venus over 8 years, this is the pattern that emerges

apparently one whale years ago was observed doing this for hours and now more and more whales in the area are seen copying it so we think it’s a whole new behavior and it seems to be a response to shrinking food sources.

Instead of expending any energy actively hunting, the whale just holds its mouth open wherever fish are being hunted by birds. To escape the birds, the fish try to hide in the whale’s mouth because it’s a darker area that looks like shelter. …They’re turning into giant, sea-mammal pitcher plants.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/mms.12557?referrer_access_token=bXLTS5BeSw_vlIKHkM0bYIta6bR2k8jH0KrdpFOxC654HjreJ8D19K86UreR5JPsSRb0CuGhiJSV1L1ht-N1Gf_K_1a9MREFzQGU9oJDNctsKDin_HXcYEdsLg3EbcTl

How does sand from Sahara end up in your windshield ?

TBH cleaning your car is a rather mundane task. But when you fill your head with some interesting physics the task actually gets rather pretty interesting. Here’s some good for thought on such an occasion :

The dust on your windshield might actually be from the Sahara desert

To understand how, lets start with some simple physics.

The stacked ball drop

You basically take couple of balls, align them up and drop them to the ground. The ball at the top reaches the most highest due to the subsequent transfer of energy from the other balls.

                                    Source Video : Physics Girl

Here is an exaggerated but amazing slow motion of the same energy transfer with a water balloon. Notice how the transfer of energy takes place between the water balloon and the tennis ball.

                                     Source Video : Slow Mo Lab

Sandstorms in the desert

Sandstorms/ Dust storms as you might be aware, are pretty common in the desert. . Dust storms arise when a gust front or other strong wind blows loose sand and dirt from a dry surface.

And this can cause something phenomenal to happen:

If the wind speed is sufficient then larger sand particles can propel finer ones high into the atmosphere. ( just like the stacked ball )

Then these fine particles are caught in the global wind pattern and are transported across the globe until they fall down to the earth as rain.

How cool is that ! Have a great day!

* Tracking saharan dust in 3D - NASA video

** All the World’s a Stage … for Dust - NASA article

** Wiki on Saltation

Blackest is the new black: Scientists have developed a material so dark that you can't see it...

Puritans, Goths, avant-garde artists, hell-raising poets and fashion icon Coco Chanel all saw something special in it. Now black, that most enigmatic of colours, has become even darker and more mysterious.

A British company has produced a “strange, alien” material so black that it absorbs all but 0.035 per cent of visual light, setting a new world record. To stare at the “super black” coating made of carbon nanotubes – each 10,000 times thinner than a human hair – is an odd experience. It is so dark that the human eye cannot understand what it is seeing. Shapes and contours are lost, leaving nothing but an apparent abyss.