Research examines how virus particles behave in different environments, including changing seasons, air-conditioned offices One of the biggest unknowns about the coronavirus is how changing seasons will affect its spread. Now physicists at the University of Utah have received a National Science Foundation grant to tackle the question. Michael Vershinin and Saveez Saffarian are studying the structure of […]
When two National Hockey League hockey players collide, their pads and body tissues can absorb enough energy to power a 100-watt light bulb for a minute and a half. During the 60 minutes of a hockey game, players can burn 6,000 calories and lose up to 15 pounds. These are the calculations of Alain […]
A father wakes, rolls out of bed and drops his toes to cold carpet. He grabs a flashlight and shines it outside the window. The thermometer reads 40 below zero, the only point at which the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales agree. The red liquid within his thermometer is alcohol; mercury freezes at 38 below. […]
“Professor Fuller Drops Dead in Garden.” So reads the headline in the Farthest-North Collegian newspaper of June 1, 1935. In the story, an unnamed writer described how the the wife of the only physics professor at the Alaska Agricultural College and School of Mines screamed when she found Veryl Fuller face down in his garden. […]
A University of Alaska Fairbanks study looking at the physics of tidewater glaciers has yielded new insights into what drives their retreat-and-advance cycles and the role that climate plays in these cycles. Lead author and UAF geophysics doctoral student Douglas Brinkerhoff said the study in Nature Communications reveals that shifting sediments drive the cycles among […]
From bow ties and shoelaces to sailing boats and climbing ropes, knots are not only very useful for our daily lives, but for mathematics too. IBS researchers from the Center for Geometry and Physics, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) reported a new mathematical operation to catalog a special kind of mathematical knots, known […]