Physics – Page 2 – GOLLYGEE!

10.09.2013

2013 nobels

The 2013 Nobel prizes in medicine, physics, and chemistry were awarded this week, with the medals for literature, peace and economics are yet to come.

In medicine, James Rothman, Randy Schekman and Thomas Südhof received the prize for elucidating trafficking mechanisms within cells. Cells use vesicles (membrane enclosed bubbles) to transport different cargo between cellular compartments or to other cells. The three researchers won the award for discovering how these vesicles get directed to their intended target and how the cargo is eventually delivered. The Nobel summary can be found here.

In physics, the award goes to François Englert and Peter Higgs. Admittedly, I understand next to nothing about the Higgs boson, except that it is a subatomic particle that was confirmed to exist earlier this year. Particle physics is astonishing. You can read the summary here.

And in chemistry the prize goes to three scientists, Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel. These three chemists, have developed computational models for complex chemical systems. The researchers are being recognized for basically pioneering this whole field. The computations are relevant to multiple areas of chemistry including protein folding, electron transfer and catalysis. The Nobel report is here.

Congratulations to the newly minted laureates.

04.04.2013

crystal scaffolds

Crystalline sponge with guaiazulene guests (light blue). Image from Nature

Cyrstallographers everywhere will attest to how hard it can be to get some molecules to crystalize. Sometimes, there might not even be enough material there to attempt crystallization. Someone is working on a solution though. C&EN reports that researchers have generated a nanoscale scaffold that captures molecules in pores and allows x-ray crystal data to be collected on samples with as little as 80ng of material. From the magazine:

In X-ray crystallography, X-rays are shot through a single crystal of a compound. How they bounce, or diffract in crystallographic lingo, reveals the structure of the molecule that makes up the crystal. The technique has helped scientists visualize innumerable molecules, including antibiotics, industrial catalysts, and even artificial sweeteners.

A team led by Makoto Fujita, of the University of Tokyo, in Japan, reports it can use porous metal frameworks with large cavities as “crystalline sponges” that soak up guest molecules within their voids, putting the molecules in an ordered array that can be studied via X-ray crystallography (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature11990). The technique works on as little as 80 ng of material.

In one example, the researchers used a zinc-based crystalline sponge to soak up just 5 µg of miyakosyne A, a scarce marine natural product with a central methyl group that had defied stereochemical assignment. Using their crystal-free crystallographic technique, the team was able to identify the compound’s stereochemistry.

Check out the full study at Nature.

10.11.2012

using physics to beat the wheel

Roulette wheel.

If you know a few key inputs you can predict where the ball will land in a game of roulette using basic physics equations. Check out this abstract from a recent edition of the journal Chaos:

There have been several popular reports of various groups exploiting the deterministic nature of the game of roulette for profit. Moreover, through its history, the inherent determinism in the game of roulette has attracted the attention of many luminaries of chaos theory. In this paper, we provide a short review of that history and then set out to determine to what extent that determinism can really be exploited for profit. To do this, we provide a very simple model for the motion of a roulette wheel and ball and demonstrate that knowledge of initial position, velocity, and acceleration is sufficient to predict the outcome with adequate certainty to achieve a positive expected return. We describe two physically realizable systems to obtain this knowledge both incognito and in situ. The first system relies only on a mechanical count of rotation of the ball and the wheel to measure the relevant parameters. By applying these techniques to a standard casino-grade European roulette wheel, we demonstrate an expected return of at least 18%, well above the −2.7% expected of a random bet. With a more sophisticated, albeit more intrusive, system (mounting a digital camera above the wheel), we demonstrate a range of systematic and statistically significant biases which can be exploited to provide an improved guess of the outcome. Finally, our analysis demonstrates that even a very slight slant in the roulette table leads to a very pronounced bias which could be further exploited to substantially enhance returns.

Now go apply it and win tons of money!

GOLLYGEE!

Category: Physics (page 2 of 3)

2013 nobels

crystal scaffolds

using physics to beat the wheel