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Episode 5 – Old News

Hindenburg DisasterIn Episode 5 – Old News, we discuss “space” tourism balloons (Hindenburg), photonic crystals applied to photovoltaic solar cells, and million year data storage in fancy Q-R codes (iPods for immortal elves?).

 

 

2:30 we “jump right into it” (after a few minutes of chatter…) with the New York Times’ Article: “Balloon Ride to Offer Expansive View, for a Price”

4:45 this digresses into a discussion of my and chase’s senior design project… designing a variable-lift dirigible.

12:45 some Hindenburg talk!

13:45 Helium has some sustainability concerns.

22:15 we call greg to join us in discussing “High Temperature Stability in 3D Photonic Crystals Could Advance Solar Thermophotovoltaic Approach” (the paper is HERE)

23:00 some complicated semiconductor physics talk (sorry!)

29:00 getting to what this research actually means, finally.

44:45 Remembering to give the authors credit

45:45  Greg is in a rush for this last story,  Million Year Data Storage  (with the free preprint paper HERE)

49:45 I said it was like a record, which would be correct, if records were QR codes…

52:30 the Ahreneus Equation, used for aging, is explained!

54:15 Chase never used the Ahreneus equation at work?

58:00 iPods for elves.

Intro:  Open – Crying (Get Olde)
Song 1:  Where do they make balloons? (They Might Be Giants- No!)
song 2:  Love like a sunset (part II) (Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix)
Outro:  Dreams are Maps – The Wild (Dreams are Maps)

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By Cameron K – 2013-11-20

Pulse! 2 – 3D Printed Liquid Metal Microstructures

adma201301400-gra-0001-mThis week the Pulse! episode is a story we had to cut from Episode 4.  The show would have been way too long otherwise, so we chopped off the last story, and put it here for you!  Alex, Emily, and Greg join me in the discussion.

This episode is about 25 minutes long.

 

Here’s the link to the story we talked about, “3D Printing of Free Standing Liquid Metal Microstructures” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201301400/abstract

We also mention the RepRap a 3-D printer that can print most of the parts to build another one of itself.

and here’s the wikipedia article to explain what a eutectic system is.

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By Cameron K – 2013-11-05

Episode 4 – Rigid Opaque Governing Bodies

nasa_20131001151820_320_240In Episode 4 of LASER, we discuss new ionic conductor materials with applications in biomedicine and in technology, talk with Ben Tippett of the Titanium Physicists Podcast the politics of scientific funding in Canada, and how the US government shutdown affected scientists.

 

 

 

1:30 introductions! We have Emily and Alex, and a new co-host today, Greg! (who plays with knives on air around 2:10)

2:30 the introductions for our primary science show for today; Stretchable, Transparent, Ionic Conductors.  These are pretty neat materials and have all sorts of applications in biomedical sciences, and other technological areas. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/08/transparent-artificial-muscle/ or http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/984.abstract

16:10 Alex has another bug analogy

18:00 We call Dr. Benjamin Tippett of The Titanium Physics Podcast, at UBC Okanagan to discuss the political situation surrounding science in Canada.

53:25 After describing a depressing setting, Ben signs off and we start talking about the effects of the US Government shutdown on science. But instead it diverges into talking about Mad Max and the apocalypse.

56:15 The topic at hand finally gets some background information.

69:30 Transitioning into a story that we decided to cut leads to an awkward signoff.  That story will be released as a seperate “LASER Pulse” episode next week.

71:00 We are on iTunes now! click the iTunes link on the website, or search for “LASER Materials” to find us.

 

Our music this week was:

Intro:  Open – Crying (Get Olde)
Outside – Staind
Au Revoir (Adios) – The Front Bottoms
Outro:  Dreams are Maps – The Wild (Dreams are Maps)

 

 

For information about whats going on with government-funded science in Canada, check out:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/05/13/canada_and_science_nrc_will_now_only_do_science_that_promotes_economic_gain.html

http://www.nature.com/news/canadian-budget-hits-basic-science-1.10366

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/sep/16/canadian-scientists-government-censorship

 

For information about the US Government shutdown, read:

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2013_09_30/caredit.a1300215

http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/national/nasa-government-shutdown-tweet-sort-it-out-humans

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By Cameron K – 2013-10-30

Episode 3 – Lasers, Lasers Everywhere

microscope1_1This week on LASER we discuss Light Sabers, building Atomic Force Microscopes out of LEGO, a short film from IBM Research Labs, water on Mars, and blasting asteroids with tiny laser satellites, with only a little off-topic discussion of webcomics and scifi movies…

 

 

2:00 After the introductions we start talking about new research that has been compared to Light Sabers!  (here’s another link)

12:00 the discussion turns toward America’s Next Top Scientist, and webcomics.

16:45 Some neat people at the Lego 2 Nano summer school in China built an AFM out of Lego!

31:00 some labs look depressingly outdated to the uninitiated, but are still awesome.

35:20  5 seconds of silence for you to watch A Boy and His Atom from IBM Research Labs.

39:00 we decide that Mars is made almost entirely of atoms. and begin discussing the mars rover Curiosity and the water it found.

44:30  Correction: Olympus Mons is the Largest volcano in the solar system, but there are lots of other volcanoes on Mars.  It is so large because there are no active plate tectonics on Mars, so the volcano just keeps getting bigger and bigger instead of moving around and creating different volanoes. There is some geothermal heat on Mars, but not as much as we have on Earth.

46:15  “Nukes solve everything!”

50:30  a paper on the arXiv suggests using short laser pulses from satellites to deflect Near Earth Objects (NEO).

60:30  You could probably stop listening, we argue about sending nuclear waste into space.

63:30 we ARE on iTunes now!!! Give us a rating and write a review of us!

Intro:  Open – Crying (Get Olde)
The Future Soon –Jonathan Coulton (Other Experiments)
Particle Man- TMBG (Severe Tire Damage)
Too Epic For Words- 10-4 Elanor (…Too Bad…)
Outro:  Dreams are Maps – The Wild (Dreams are Maps)

 

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By Cameron K – 2013-10-14