I love working for a company that makes so many clever products. If you think about Clarke's third law, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic., you realize that engineers are the ones creating magic by advancing technology.

There are two particularly awesome 3M products with which I have been impressed recently: ( Read more... )

Bode pointed me to the below YouTube video of the Kaye effect. I remember noticing this in high school, pouring liquid detergent into the top of our front-loading washing machine. Every now and then the flow would bounce off as though there were no friction.

It turns out detergent is thixotropic, or shear-thinning. That is, once it gets flowing, ( Read more... )

It snowed. A lot. Too much for unicycle snow chains. School was canceled so I did some on-campus skiing. This is the hill I walk up and down every day.


( Read more... )