Blogs / Discoblog

The next time you’re interested in a healthy dose of physics (with a generous splash of literature), resist the temptation of your Wikipedia bookmark, take a step back from the harried, irreverent blogosphere, and dive into the enrapturing prose of pre-Soviet Russia.

In 1913, Yakov Perelman wrote an enchanting book called Physics for Entertainment, and it’s just what Jules Verne and H.G. Wells would have turned out—had they any desire to teach the fundamental laws of the universe. Perelman’s book was only recently translated to English, and seeks (successfully) to “arouse the activity of scientific imagination, to teach the reader to think in the spirit of the science of physics…with all that he normally comes into contact with.”

In chapters like “How to Work Miracles,” “Mathematics and Imagination,” and “Fairy Tale Railway,” Perelman associates the laws of physics with an ample variety of both everyday phenomena (knots, eggshells, fire, jumping from a moving vehicle) and the wildest fantasies of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Cyrano de Bergerac, Gogol, Mark Twain, Voltaire, Pushkin, and Edgar Allan Poe. Blending flowery prose with equations, neither of which are burdensome, he weaves his own delightful narrative with the imaginations of a great writer, producing a highly engaging piece of educational literature.

Some excerpts, illustrating Perelman’s merging of science fiction with physics non-fiction: (more…)

On Sunday at New York’s Javits Center, hundreds of teens gathered to compete in the finals of the FIRST Robotics Competition regionals. The winners will go on to the National Competition in Atlanta—for the rest, this competition was the end of the assembly line.

On the track, the competition was fierce and students eyed each others’ handiwork warily. But behind the scenes in the pit, where goggle-clad kids wielded screwdrivers and tinkered with their machines, the students shared their knowledge with each other, with experienced groups often lending a hand to first-timers. The Capri-Sun flowed freely.

(more…)

Over one thousand high school students scurry around 64 robots along about the floor of the Javits Center in New York City. They are here to compete in the NYC regional contest to prove they have what it takes to put together the fittest, most agile, robot to rule them all. In this year’s competition the students, with the help of their teachers and outside engineers, designed robots that will fight—well, let’s say “compete”—to move on to the nationals (and get a shot at scholarship money) in a game of Overdrive.

The goal is simple: two teams of three robots each race around a 1500-square foot track, earning points for successfully completing each lap. On top of this teams can get points for manipulating huge red and blue balls that sit atop a 6-ft-plus scaffold in the middle of the track. The robots get 6 points for bringing the balls down and 8 points if they can hoist them back up.

(more…)