Have You Ever Wondered Just How Detergents Are Able To Get Grease And Oil Off A Surface? This Simple

Dawn O'Mara sitting on the edge of the front cockpit of a de Havilland DH82 Tiger Moth biplane, circa 1953.

Iranian newspaper clip, 1968 which reads: “A quarter of Iran’s Nuclear Energy scientists are women.” The picture shows five female Iranian PhDs posing in front of Tehran’s research reactor.

The United Engineering Center, 345 E. 47th Street, New York City, was headquarters to the major engineering United States engineering societies (ASCE, AIME, ASME, IEEE, AIChE and the UEF) from 1960 to 1997. In 1997, the building was sold to Donald Trump and demolished in 1998 to make room for the Trump World Tower, a 72 floor residential tower.

A page of Willem ’s Gravesande’s 1720 book Physices Elementa Mathematica with Jan van Musschenbroek’s magic lantern, an early type of image projector,  projecting a monster. The depicted lantern is one of the oldest known to be preserved and is in the collection of Museum Boerhaave, Leiden.

“Imagine the earth to be a bag of rubber filled with water, a small quantity of which is periodically forced in and out of the same by means of a reciprocating pump, as illustrated. If the strokes of the latter are effected in intervals of more than one hour and forty-eight minutes, sufficient for the transmission of the impulse thru the whole mass, the entire bag will expand and contract and corresponding movements will be imparted to pressure gauges or movable pistons with the same intensity, irrespective of distance. By working the pump faster, shorter waves will be produced which, on reaching the opposite end of the bag, may be reflected and give rise to stationary nodes and loops, but in any case, the fluid being incompressible, its enclosure perfectly elastic, and the frequency of oscillations not very high, the energy will be economically transmitted and very little power consumed so long as no work is done in the receivers. This is a crude but correct representation of my wireless system in which, however, I resort to various refinements. Thus, for instance, the pump is made part of a resonant system of great inertia, enormously magnifying the force of the imprest impulses. The receiving devices are similarly conditioned and in this manner the amount of energy collected in them vastly increased.“

–Nikola Tesla

“Famous Scientific Illusions.” Electrical Experimenter, February, 1919.

Why is Glass Transparent?

We are now in ‘The Glass Age’. It is impossible to imagine a world without glass. From Mobile phones to glass panels, it is omnipresent.

Such a pivotal role does Glass play in our day to day to lives, but yet when confronted with the question - “why is glass transparent?”, we are speechless! But hey! This post is dedicated to answering that burning question.

How do we see things ?

Lights travels in straight lines. When light hits an object, it bounces off other objects (reflects) and enters our eyes. And this information is processed by our brain and this is how we see the object.

An atomic interlude.

You may know that an Atom consists of a nucleus with electrons orbiting around it. These electrons are confined to a trajectory known as an Orbit. And there exists a gap between two subsequent orbits where no electron can exist. Known as an energy-gap or a band gap( Band gap ).

And for an electron to jump from one orbit to another:

It must gain energy and jump to a higher level. ( Away from the nucleus )

It must lose energy and jump to a lower level. ( Closer to the nucleus)

The energy to make such transitions is provided by light.

What decides whether an object is Transparent, Translucent or opaque?

Imagine you are now a photon. And you are in a collision course with a material.There are three possible outcomes:

The substance absorbs the photon. This occurs when the photon gives up its energy to an electron located in the material. Armed with this extra energy, the electron is able to move to a higher energy level, while the photon disappears.

The substance reflects the photon. To do this, the photon gives up its energy to the material, but a photon of identical energy is emitted.

The substance allows the photon to pass through unchanged. Known as transmission, this happens because the photon doesn’t interact with any electron and continues its journey until it interacts with another object.

Glass, of course, falls into this last category. Photons pass through the material because they don’t have sufficient energy to excite a glass electron to a higher energy level. And due to this, we are able to see through glass!

If the material absorbs the photon, it is said to be opaque. And if it allows some photon to pass through and others get absorbed, the material is termed Translucent.

Smart Glass.

Glass does not necessarily have to transparent/ translucent/ opaque all the time.

Smart glass  is glass whose light transmission properties are altered when voltage, light or heat is applied. Generally, the glass changes from translucent to transparent, changing from blocking some (or all) wavelengths of light to letting light pass through.

Technical drawings of an F4U Corsair

Hydro Robotics! 1/3

Back to School Resources

Need help with your science homework? We’ve got you covered! Here are some out-of-this world (pun intended) resources for your science and space questions.

Let’s take a look…

NASA Space Place

From questions like “Why does Saturn have rings?” to games that allow you to explore different galaxies, NASA Space Place has a variety of content for elementary-age kids, parents and anyone who likes science and technology topics. 

Visit the NASA Space Place website or follow @NASASpacePlace on Twitter.

SciJinks

Targeting middle-school students and teachers, this NOAA and NASA partnership has games and useful information about weather and other Earth science subjects. 

Visit the SciJinks website or follow @SciJinks on Twitter. 

NASA Education

The NASA Education website includes an A-Z list of education opportunities that we offer throughout the year, as well as education programs, events and resources for both students and educators. 

We have a diverse set of resources for multiple age groups:

Grades K-4

Grades 5-8

Grades 9-12

Higher Education

Informal Education

Visit the NASA Education website or follow @NASAedu on Twitter. 

Want to get NASA Education materials for your classroom? Click HERE. 

A Year of Education on the International Space Station

Although on different crews, astronauts Joe Acaba and Ricky Arnold - both former teachers - will work aboard the International Space Station. K-12 and higher education students and educators can do NASA STEM activities related to the station and its role in our journey to Mars. Click HERE for more. 

Sally Ride EarthKAM

Also on the International Space Station, the Sally Ride EarthKAM @ Space Camp allows students to program a digital camera on board the space station to photograph a variety of geographical targets for study in the classroom. 

Registration is now open until Sept. 25 for the Sept. 26-30 mission. Click HERE for more. 

NASA eClips™

NASA eClips™ are short, relevant educational video segments. These videos inspire and engage students, helping them see real world connections by exploring current applications of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, topics. The programs are produced for targeted audiences: K-5, 6-8, 9-12 and the general public.

Space Operations Learning Center

The Space Operations Learning Center teaches school-aged students the basic concepts of space operations using the web to present this educational content in a fun and engaging way for all grade levels. With fourteen modules, there’s lots to explore for all ages.

The Mars Fun Zone

The Mars Fun Zone is a compilation of Red Planet-related materials that engage the explorer inside every kid through activities, games, and educational moments. 

Fly Away with NASA Aeronautics

Frequent flyer or getting ready to earn your first set of wings? From children’s books for story time to interactive flight games, we’ve got Aeronautics activities for students of all ages that are sure to inspire future scientists, mathematicians and engineers. 

On Pinterest? We have a board that highlights NASA science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) lessons, activities, tools and resources for teachers, educators and parents. 

Check it out here: https://www.pinterest.com/nasa/nasa-for-educators/ 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Like this book but… I wish I could read the formulas without a magnifying glass! The formulas, for whatever reason, on a Kindle (I have Kindle Keyboard and Kindle Fire HD) are too small to read. I can use a magnifying glass on the Kindle Keyboard, with the Fire some are still unreadable. Go to Amazon

Well worth the money I bought the first edition, and was impressed. As a US Marine Radar Technician and engineering student, I find that so many of us in the electronics fields either never built a solid foundation in the basics of electronics, or have forgotten a lot of the fundamentals. This is a great book for correcting either of those issues. Go to Amazon

Great learning tool I got the book as a basic introduction to electrical engineering. I have messed around with some simple wireing in the past but never really had any idea what I was doing. This book was great, it had enough in depth explanation to cover my ignorance, and enough technical stuff that I had to scratch my head and re-read it a few times. I loved this book and would absolutely reccomend it to anyone looking at entering the field of electrical engineering, or even if you are just interested in becomming a little more familiar with the technical world we live in. Go to Amazon

Thank you. Thank you. Go to Amazon

Not quite for the total beginner! Grammatical and punctuation errors abound! Circuit diagrams unreadable. This is a Kindle review… Go to Amazon

Really a good interesting book Really a good interesting book. May be a good addendum to your text books to help understand the concepts better. Definitely not a text book or by any means all inclusive, but the author has a way of explaining the fundamentals in laymen’s terms, that anyone can understand. That alone is worth the price of the book and I can count the number of EE books that do that on one hand… er finger. Go to Amazon

Oh it is so informative Darren Ashby really give me so many answers to the mysteries that have always baffled and stress me out with electronics and circuits. After just enough electronics training to create confusion, the recent re-pursuit of an electronics degree feels as if it were catered to with this book. Darren Ashby goes into not only speaking of Boolean Logic in the chapter I have just finished, but he also gives the print of how the actual logic gate looks with hardware!! Its like omg! guys, omg! The thought and explanitions in this book is a great un-confuse-er with electronic circuits…….A great read Go to Amazon

Very Informative Book! This one probably one the most well written books for Electrical Engineering I have ever read. Not only would this be helpful for electrical engineers but general electricians as well. Go to Amazon

Four Stars tell a lot of the product . Entertaining style, intuitive, visual approach helps in understanding abstract concepts. Two Stars Five Stars This book and this author, I will say, … Excellent Too basic for any engineer and too vague for a beginner Five Stars Very pleased.