Just watching this video gives me the chills. A HUGE amount of mercury metal is used to demonstrate its density (other metals float on it!), free flowing behavior and high surface tension. This little... continue reading

posted by gluonium 1 decade 7 years 5 months 4 weeks ago • 7,193 views

This video is a clip from "Sonda", a Polish science program broadcast in 1980's. It beautifully demonstrates what superfluid helium (a Bose-Einstein condensate) actually looks like and how it behaves on... continue reading

posted by gluonium 1 decade 7 years 6 months 1 week ago • 6,791 views • 2:39

A lecture on high energy particle physics and the nature of the universe that ISN'T dumbed down to the point of being useless and insulting (ie. NOVA/Horizon), yet remains accessible to the layman. I don't... continue reading

posted by gluonium 1 decade 7 years 6 months 1 week ago • 3,067 views

This is a Crookes railway tube, it is a mostly evacuated tube with electrodes on each end and a spinny wheel on a rail in between. When the electrodes are connected to a high voltage supply, electrons... continue reading

posted by gluonium 1 decade 7 years 6 months 1 week ago • 2,142 views

When a coffeemaker-full of hot water meets a bucket of liquid nitrogen the rapid vaporization of the liquid creates quite an eruption. The gas occupies ~700 times the volume of the liquid. This is not... continue reading

posted by gluonium 1 decade 7 years 6 months 1 week ago • 6,053 views • 12 secs

The effects of an 11 tesla magnetic field (220,000 times the magnetic field strength of earth) from a nuclear magnetic resonance machine on common ferromagnetic objects.

posted by gluonium 1 decade 7 years 6 months 3 weeks ago • 4,169 views

This is what it looks like inside your fire extinguisher. Solid CO2 never goes through a liquid phase at normal atmospheric pressures, it sublimates directly to a gas. At elevated pressure, above the critical... continue reading

posted by gluonium 1 decade 7 years 7 months ago • 3,267 views

How carbon-14 dating via high resolution mass spectrometry works.

posted by gluonium 1 decade 7 years 7 months 2 weeks ago • 1,342 views

In some of the most disturbing images of the Chernobyl disaster ever captured, this video shows what the current state of the burned out former core looks like. Visible in this video at -3:00 is the infamous... continue reading

posted by gluonium 1 decade 7 years 7 months 2 weeks ago • 7,382 views

Making lichtenberg figures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichtenberg_figure involves irradiating a piece of (electrically insulating) plastic with MeV energy electrons from a particle accelerator and then... continue reading

posted by gluonium 1 decade 7 years 8 months 1 week ago • 2,052 views

Nutty chem teacher does some realy great demos with the leftover liquid helium from an NMR refilling session. Probably the only time you will ever see solid nitrogen. Part 6 of 8.

posted by gluonium 1 decade 7 years 8 months 3 weeks ago • 2,880 views

BBC Horizon show on sonofusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_fusion and the controversy surrounding (recently exonerated from scientific misconduct/fraud) Rusi Taleyarkhan and his detractors, namely... continue reading

posted by gluonium 1 decade 7 years 8 months 3 weeks ago • 2,425 views • 48:55

A rhesus monkey has a brain implant in it's motor cortex whose signals are monitored and decoded remotely by a computer. The decoded commands are then sent to a robotic arm which the monkey sees in front... continue reading

posted by gluonium 1 decade 7 years 9 months 1 week ago • 2,366 views

A ferromagnetic bottle is brought near the bore of the super high strength magnet of an MRI machine and is sucked in, oscillating violently in midair. Sadly, this very type of incident did in fact kill... continue reading

posted by gluonium 1 decade 7 years 9 months 2 weeks ago • 7,095 views