My new website!

I finally got round to finishing my website that explains what I do for my research! You can take a look at it here.

Optical Fibres in Eyes

Thanks to one of my students, Logan Hubbard, for telling me about how light is guided in mammalian eyes by Muller cells. The Muller cells act like little optic fibres to carry the light through layers of tissue to the photoreceptor cells without much light being absorbed along the way. Moreover, since light encountering a refractive index change tends to be reflected, the Muller cells also help minimize the reflection and hence loss of signal. I'm going to be talking about biophotonics later on in the semester, but this is very cool indeed!

Levitation and Diamagnetism

Thanks to one of my students, for sending me this link of levitating mice in a magnetic field. It's actually really similar to a bunch of work on levitating a frog in a magnetic field. Of course frogs and mice are not magnetic, but do become so if you apply a strong enough magnetic field (several Teslas) via an effect called Diamagnetism.

When the field is turned off (gently) the frog/mouse is no longer magnetic and returns to the ground. There are apparently no adverse or lasting side effects–you experience similar fields in an MRI machine.

WIreless power

Since nowadays your keyboard and mouse can be used wirelessly, wouldn't it be great if you could power your laptop wirelessly? Or charge your phone without having to plug it in? These people from MIT demonstrate an early prototype of such an application as one of the TED talks.

Virtual Reality displays that you wear on your eyeball

Kudos to one of my students, Jessica Hatch, for spotting this great article about research into displays that you wear like a contact lens. The display opens the possibility of "augmented reality" whereby what you see normally can have computer-generated objects added to it. You might for example see floating arrows that indicate the direction you need to go in as you're walking around (a la Google Maps directions finder).

(I have to admit this sounds like something straight out of a novel by Philip K Dick)

The biggest ever Wimshurst machine

I've been using the Wimshurst in class a great deal as an electrostatic generator --- I supply mechanical work to separate electric charge --- and we've seen some cool effects such as sparks, the electric field and the Parallel Plate capacitor. But how big can you make it? Have a read of this story about the largest Wimshurst ever made.

Structural Color in Butterfly Wings

Several people asked me after class about my comment on the iridescent color in Butterfly wings being due to the interaction of special structures on the wing with light. I thought I'd give you a link to the paper which you can get for free if you're on the Case campus. Also check out Dr Vukusic's website on iridescence in nature.

Looking for Hawking Radiation in SQUIDS

One of the most wonderful things about Physics is that sometimes two completely different systems are described by the same mathematics. When this happens, we find analogues between their behavior. In this article from Physics (a "newsy" journal highlighting cutting edge research), some recent research in looking at on object mathematically similar to a Black Hole exhibits something analogous to Hawking radiation promises to advance our understanding of these objects experimentally.

Society: Displays everywhere

Interesting article in the Guardian commenting on the ubiquity of electronic displays in our lives – especially in advertising around London. What do you think about the ramifications of displays everywhere? Is it great to be connected to information wherever you need it? Or is it intrusive?

Application: Gigantic jets blast electricity into upper atmosphere

There's a cool article in New Scientist about "jets" that transport charge from thunderclouds up into the ionosphere. These were only recently photographed (in 2003): see the article for a cool video. We'll be talking a little later in the course about lightening and thunderstorms.

Welcome to the Blog

Welcome to my blog for the Case PHY122 Introductory Electricity and Magnetism course which is running this Fall semester 2009. In this blog, I'm going to provide cool links to contemporary applications of E&M both in the news and from new science as well as share my thoughts and tips on the topics that we cover.

Enjoy!

--- Tim Atherton