Prepared by the “How It’s Made” group at the Discovery Channel, this video is an introductory look at the fundamentals of preparing, coating, drawing and annealing the thin threads of glass used in fiber optics. Credit: DiscountLowVoltage, YouTube
Read MoreIf you do a Google search of “top ten,” you get more than 90 million hits – from David Letterman, to New Year’s resolutions, to urinals (which is another ceramics story). The list I want to share with you here deals with the patent strength and research prowess of U.S. universities. I suppose there are…
Read MoreThe state of Kentucky, the University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville and the Argonne National Lab have announced that they have entered into a partnership to forge a national battery manufacturing R&D center on advanced batteries. The center’s would work with with labs, manufacturers, suppliers and consumers to bring down advanced-battery production costs and…
Read MoreAlfred University reports that one of their veteran researchers has come up with a new and practical process for strengthening glass and ceramics. The school claims the technology can allow a glass bottle to bounce even when dropped from 10 feet to a concrete floor. The process is the discovery of William LaCourse, a professor…
Read MoreFirst, I apologize for the length of this post (I’ve saved it for the weekend), but one of biggest “sleeper” stories in science in a long time is the DOE’s announcement concerning the establishment of 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers. These EFRCs have just been commissioned to focus work on a list of “grand challenges”…
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We present an interview with Ed Herderick, the 2009-2010 Materials Societies Congressional Fellow and occasional contributor to this blog. ACerS, along with The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society and the Materials Research Society announced in March that Herderick has been selected to be the groups’ fellow. The Materials Societies Congressional Fellow program is part of…
Read MoreOver three-quarters of the respondents to a survey conducted in 2008 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and The American Ceramic Society say their work would range from difficult to impossible without access to phase equilibria diagrams. The survey verified that access to the critically evaluated phase diagrams, produced via the ACerS-NIST Phase…
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The staff at Science Friday, too, senses the masses growing interest in all things oobleck and is shamelessly trying to ignore this blogs leadership efforts and elbow us out of the way. SciFri does trump us by getting two experts, University of Michigan’s Robert Deegan and University of Texas’ Harry Swinney, to unravel what is…
Read MoreDoes your research project need funding? Money may be available through the 2009 Technology Innovation Program, sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. NIST invites you to submit a “white paper” pitching your project. Here’s how: Who is eligible? Small- or medium-sized businesses or joint ventures involving a private-sector firm coupled with an…
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One can never get enough oobleck! Instead of running across it, this time, our video features Faraday waves, fingers and vortex (and vortices). This video is courtesy of the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics at the University of Texas at Austin.
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