Tag: physics
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Can electricity read your mind?: Electrodermal Activity
No matter how great your poker face might be, your skin can’t keep a secret. A window into the human mind through physiology exists beyond crystal balls, witches, or horrific psychological control. The very electricity that we associate with changing brain activity in horror movies can serve as a hidden gateway into your mind. Electrodermal activity…
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Why Cathedrals Make You Believe in God: How Acoustics Relate to Neurological Reward Circuitry
Sound surrounds us constantly, and hearing is regarded as one of our most valuable senses (Enoch et al. 2019). But have you ever been in a building where sound seemed to wash over you? Cathedrals are famous for this effect: their high ceilings and stone surfaces cause sound to reflect and linger, causing long reverberations…
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Binaural Beats: The Beats That Beat Cognitive Overload
“It’s always that damn phone.” These devices, alongside many others, have become our most prized companions while simultaneously being major sources of anxiety, stress, and an endless overload of distractions. Ironically, a developing remedy to these issues, present in the problem itself, is an unconventional digital drug called binaural beats. Accessible through a simple pair…
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What’s Inside? Non-Destructive Analysis with XRD and XRF
In archaeology, material characterization is often fundamental to identification and appraisal of artifacts. For example, authenticity assessments of Chinese jade requires confirmation of both mineral composition and microstructure to ensure the correct makeup of tremolite and actinolite (Zhang et al. 2020). However, commonly-used analytical techniques, such as chromatography, require destruction of the sample, which is…
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Skin Pigmentation Bias in Pulse Oximetry Measurements
Pulse oximeters have revolutionized modern medicine, enabling continuous, accurate, and non-invasive monitoring of functional oxygen saturation of hemoglobin (SpO₂) (Chan et al. 2013). Taken as a fifth vital sign, the device’s use is routine in emergency care, general ward, intermediate/intensive care unit, the operating room, and in general practices (Bosch et al. 2024). However, with…
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Unveiling Cosmic Secrets: Dark Energy
In the grandness of space, a recent study with the eROSITA X-ray telescope has revealed new insights into how our universe functions by exploring the fabric of space and time. The extended Roentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array (eROSITA) X-ray, is essentially a space-based observatory designed to survey the sky in X-rays (Eppinga, 2023).…
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How Special is Relativity?
On a warm, sunny evening in the spring of 1905, the notorious Albert Einstein embarked on a fateful ride home. As his tramcar sped away from a turret clock in the distance, the theory of special relativity was born. Einstein imagined that if the tram was to travel away from the clock near the speed…
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The Underwater Symphony
The best musicians also happen to be the largest. Growing from 13 to 16 meters in length and weighing in at 36 metric tons (Clapham, 2000), humpback whales are notorious for their large size, but despite their appearance, these mammals produce wavelengths that are responsible for the ocean’s most alluring and intricate sounds. Situated at…
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Frankly, Fridges
Fridges are appliances with a range of utility, from personal use in homes to commercial use in laboratories. The key component within these machines is refrigerant, a fluid which uses properties of the ideal gas law to allow heat to dissipate away from stored contents (McLinden and Huber, 2020). Despite contributing immensely towards efficient storage,…
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The physics of teaching physics
Education has certainly evolved into the 21st-century, and the way in which physics is taught is not shy to this phenomenon. How is physics taught? What are some problems associated with these teaching methods? How can we fix them? Students in physics classrooms are often sorted into two groups: those who believe that physics consists…