kontrawize

Optical Illusion

This optical illusion link posted by James Tauber is so fascinating, I had to mention it here. Really funky stuff.

What's slower than watching paint dry?

Actually, I was thrilled to read an ABC news report that the 2005 Ig Nobel prize for Physics has been jointly won by Professor John Mainstone, who was my first Physics lecturer at the University of Queensland. The prize is for the pitch-drop experiment, which has been running 75 years, and is apparently the world's longest running scientific experiment.

The idea was to prove that pitch is a fluid by putting some in a funnel and waiting for drops of pitch to flow out the bottom. It happens about once every 10 years! No-one has actually seen it happen yet, so if you want to join in, there is a webcam link on the experiment's Web site. The next one isn't due until about 2011, though! I seem to remember that one of the previous ones dropped early, and there was suspicion that a student had managed to bump it (the experiment sits in a corridor outside one of the undergraduate lecture theatres). So it may be slower than watching paint dry, but there is that little risk to give it an edge of excitement. Well, perhaps a very tiny edge, anyway.

Giant Squid

Wow! The first pictures of a live giant squid have been taken! See this National Geographic article for the details. Cool.

Jaguar Shark

"The Life Aquatic" was a fun film, especially for those of us who grew up watching the adventures of Jacques Cousteau on television. In the film, they are searching for the elusive Jaguar Shark. While this magnificient beast still eludes real-life marine biologists, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently photographed a magical shark of their own.

The story is here ...