Physics
QUEST
What's Next for Nuclear?
Despite the accident last year at a nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan, here in the United States, some policymakers – including President Obama – are pushing to expand nuclear energy as a source of abundant carbon-free electricity. “To meet our growing energy needs and prevent the worst consequences of climate change, ...
QUEST
"I Flamed Amazement": The Physics of St. Elmo's Fire
St. Elmo's Fire on a cockpit window, by Fly For Fun[/add_caption_link]. Clad in a bright yellow raincoat and a crown of butterflies, laughing and singing, Ariel delighted the audience from the first moments of California Shakespeare Theater's "The Tempest."
QUEST
The Science of Riding a Bicycle
We don’t often think of it this way, but the everyday work of scientists frequently comes down to sewing, welding or hammering together simple materials like elastic, metal tubes and plastic to create the devices that will allow them to conduct their experiments. Mechanical engineer Jason Moore knows this all too ...
QUEST
The Calligrapher's Golden Touch
Illuminated Initial N, Spanish, 1290-1310, on view at the Getty I had a fantastic middle school history teacher named Mr. Saunders. One day, after we had been learning about illuminated manuscripts, Mr. Saunders gave us a class period of complete silence–except for a tape of ...
QUEST
‘Superfast’ Muscles Help Bats Find Their Dinner
As a hunting bat closes in on a flying insect, its echolocation calls get closer and closer together, and shorter and shorter in duration. The calls, more than 160 per second, give the bat rapid-fire information on the location of its ever-moving prey. To the human ear, the calls register ...
QUEST
The Gritty Side of Major League Baseball
Pitchers and serious baseball fan knows that brand-new balls are never used in professional play. The shiny coating applied in the factory makes it too hard for pitchers to get a good grip, so equipment managers in clubhouses around the country rub that sheen off every ball before games. ...
QUEST
Web Extra: Orca Sounds vs. Underwater Noise
FRIDAY HARBOR, SAN JUAN ISLAND – How do we distinguish orca sounds from other underwater noise?
QUEST
Goodbye to the Bevatron
With the demolition of the Bevatron, a chapter of the Bay Area's high-level physics research comes to a close. By 1954, ten years after the first atomic bombs leveled Hisroshima and Nagasaki, many of the scientists who had helped develop America’s nuclear arsenal had returned to the US. After ...
QUEST
Scientists Manipulate Atoms in Real Time
Illustration of a magnetically active iron atom under observation in the scanning tunneling microscope. (Credit: IBM Almaden-Research Center) Reported for KQEDnews.org. Imagine a future where iPods could store hundreds of thousands — or even millions — of songs, where smart phones could hold hundreds of Hollywood films, and where solar-powered ...
QUEST
Producer's Notes: Color By Nano – The Art of Kate Nichols
These glass capillaries contain liquid solutions of silver nanoprisms synthesized by artist Kate Nichols. Image courtesy of Kate Nichols. Originally inspired by the work of Northern Renaissance painters, one could also describe artist Kate Nichols as a “Renaissance” artist herself. Nichols applies a wide variety of skills ...
QUEST
40 Years of the Clean Air Act
Bay Area smog, 1968 Reported for KQEDnews.org For those too young to remember the Bay Area 40 years ago, it’s hard to imagine the mostly clear skies that Bay Area residents enjoy today filled with choking smog from factories, cars and garbage fires. “Air pollution back in the ‘50s and ...
QUEST
All Charged Up Over EMFs
The wireless age has introduced countless devices that many of us can't live without, like cell phones, laptop computers and wifi routers. Like all electronics they communicate using electromagnetic frequencies – or EMFs. Some people worry that EMFs are making them sick – and say that technology should slow down, ...
QUEST
Reporter's Notes: All Charged Up Over EMFs
The wireless age has introduced countless devices that many of us can’t live without, like cell phones, laptop computers and wifi routers. Like all electronics they communicate using electromagnetic frequencies – or EMFs. Some people worry that EMFs are making them sick – and say that technology should slow ...
QUEST
New Laser Could Create Atomic "Movies"
The new X-ray laser at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory could one day produce atomic "movies." Reported for KQEDnews.org Watching how plants transform sunlight into sugars, potentially leading to new fuels. Understanding how magnetic fields switch back and forth, a key step in developing faster computers. Scientists have big hopes for the ...
QUEST
Homegrown Particle Accelerators
QUEST journeys back to find out how physicists on the UC Berkeley campus in the 1930s, and at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in the 1970s, created "atom smashers" that led to key discoveries about the tiny constituents of the atom and paved the way for the Large Hadron Collider ...
QUEST
Producer's Notes: Homegrown Particle Accelerators
Ernest Lawrence above the 184-inch cyclotron. This was the biggest cyclotron he built at his laboratory in Berkeley, which later was named the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The 184-inch cyclotron no longer exists. But the building houses the Advanced Light Source, which uses the X-rays produced ...
QUEST
QUEST Lab: Bridge Thermometer
The roadway across the Golden Gate Bridge rises and falls as much as 16 feet depending on the temperature. When the sun hits the bridge, the metal expands and the bridge cables stretch. As the fog rolls in, the cables contract and the bridge goes up. Curators from the Outdoor ...
QUEST
QUEST Lab: Speed of Sound
Along with cable cars and seagulls, the Golden Gate Bridge foghorn is one of San Francisco's most iconic sounds. But did you know that if you hear that foghorn off in the distance, you can calculate how many miles you are from the bridge? Using the Speed of ...
QUEST
The New Bay Bridge: Earthquake Makeover
It's been more than two decades since part of the upper deck of the Bay Bridge collapsed in the Loma Prieta earthquake. The new self-anchored suspension bridge being built to replace the vulnerable eastern span of the Bay Bridge is scheduled to open in 2013 and will be seismically and ...
QUEST
Behind the Scenes with the Mythbusters
A touching Mythbusters family portrait: Jamie Hyneman (L), Adam Savage (R), and (what's left of) the original Buster. (Editor's note: We have a guest blogger this week, KQED's Michael Kadel who accompanied us on a visit to our explosive San Francisco neighbors, the Mythbusters.) Once one strays from Public Broadcasting into ...
