But That’s Not All It Can Do. Microsoft And NASA Teamed Up To “bring” You, Yes You, To Mars.

There's an app for that

A “master list” of apps that are essential to student life.

Flashcards

Quizlet - Flashcard app that has pre downloaded flashcards and you can make your own flashcards. Available on multiple platforms

Duolingo - Language flashcard app

Flashcards+ - Another flashcard app

Math

Luna Calculator - calculator app ($2.99 on iOS)

Wolfram Alpha - online math solver

Symbollab - online math solver

Productivity & Planning

Forest - Grows a tree for every thirty minutes you are off your phone. If you touch your phone, the tree dies. ($0.99 on iOS)

FocusNow - Free version of Forest for iOS. Instead of trees, it grows fruits and vegetables. 

30/30 - Great time management app

Any.Do - Great app for creating to-do lists, organize tasks, syncs with other devices. You can also change the priorities on certain tasks. 

Studious - Great app on Android that reminds you when homework is due, when exams are and even silences your phone during class. 

StayFocused - A chrome extension that you can customize to limit the time on websites to stay productive

Self Control - Allows you to block your own access to distracting websites for a certain amount of time. Useful for people who get distracted on the computer (Also known as Cold Turkey for Windows).

My Study Life - Student planner app

myHomework Student Planner - another Student planner app

To-do List - extensive to do list, like an online bullet journal

Learning

Itunes U - For any apple device users, a app that gives you access to free educational courses 

TED - The whole catalog of TED talks at your fingertip. 

Wikipedia - Free encyclopedia that can be used for general references

Khan Academy - study videos (absolutely amazing app/website)

Music 

Coffitivity - coffee shop soundtrack

8tracks - great playlists, especially study playlists

Wake Up Calls

Alarmy - good alarm that will force you out of bed

Sleep Cycle - measures your sleep cycle

Math Alarm - alarm clock that forces you to do math to turn the alarm off, get’s your brain going 

Class Lectures and Note Taking

Dragon Dictation - takes notes for lectures (useful for classes where professors talk faster than you can type)

XMind - mind mapping tool

Notability - another app for recording lectures. ($2.99 on iOS)

These are just a few study apps that can be useful for studying. I will add more (or make a new list) later as I learn about them; feel free to message me to add some to this list. 

Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Reaching out into space yields benefits on Earth. Many of these have practical applications — but there’s something more than that. Call it inspiration, perhaps, what photographer Ansel Adams referred to as nature’s “endless prospect of magic and wonder.“ 

Our ongoing exploration of the solar system has yielded more than a few magical images. Why not keep some of them close by to inspire your own explorations? This week, we offer 10 planetary photos suitable for wallpapers on your desktop or phone. Find many more in our galleries. These images were the result of audacious expeditions into deep space; as author Edward Abbey said, "May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.”

1. Martian Selfie

This self-portrait of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows the robotic geologist in the “Murray Buttes” area on lower Mount Sharp. Key features on the skyline of this panorama are the dark mesa called “M12” to the left of the rover’s mast and pale, upper Mount Sharp to the right of the mast. The top of M12 stands about 23 feet (7 meters) above the base of the sloping piles of rocks just behind Curiosity. The scene combines approximately 60 images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI, camera at the end of the rover’s robotic arm. Most of the component images were taken on September 17, 2016.

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2. The Colors of Pluto

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft captured this high-resolution, enhanced color view of Pluto on July 14, 2015. The image combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC). Pluto’s surface sports a remarkable range of subtle colors, enhanced in this view to a rainbow of pale blues, yellows, oranges, and deep reds. Many landforms have their own distinct colors, telling a complex geological and climatological story that scientists have only just begun to decode.

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3. The Day the Earth Smiled

On July 19, 2013, in an event celebrated the world over, our Cassini spacecraft slipped into Saturn’s shadow and turned to image the planet, seven of its moons, its inner rings — and, in the background, our home planet, Earth. This mosaic is special as it marks the third time our home planet was imaged from the outer solar system; the second time it was imaged by Cassini from Saturn’s orbit, the first time ever that inhabitants of Earth were made aware in advance that their photo would be taken from such a great distance.

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4. Looking Back

Before leaving the Pluto system forever, New Horizons turned back to see Pluto backlit by the sun. The small world’s haze layer shows its blue color in this picture. The high-altitude haze is thought to be similar in nature to that seen at Saturn’s moon Titan. The source of both hazes likely involves sunlight-initiated chemical reactions of nitrogen and methane, leading to relatively small, soot-like particles called tholins. This image was generated by combining information from blue, red and near-infrared images to closely replicate the color a human eye would perceive.

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5. Catching Its Own Tail

A huge storm churning through the atmosphere in Saturn’s northern hemisphere overtakes itself as it encircles the planet in this true-color view from Cassini. This picture, captured on February 25, 2011, was taken about 12 weeks after the storm began, and the clouds by this time had formed a tail that wrapped around the planet. The storm is a prodigious source of radio noise, which comes from lightning deep within the planet’s atmosphere.

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6. The Great Red Spot

Another massive storm, this time on Jupiter, as seen in this dramatic close-up by Voyager 1 in 1979. The Great Red Spot is much larger than the entire Earth.

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7. More Stormy Weather

Jupiter is still just as stormy today, as seen in this recent view from NASA’s Juno spacecraft, when it soared directly over Jupiter’s south pole on February 2, 2017, from an altitude of about 62,800 miles (101,000 kilometers) above the cloud tops. From this unique vantage point we see the terminator (where day meets night) cutting across the Jovian south polar region’s restless, marbled atmosphere with the south pole itself approximately in the center of that border. This image was processed by citizen scientist John Landino. This enhanced color version highlights the bright high clouds and numerous meandering oval storms.

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8. X-Ray Vision

X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by our Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by our Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The NuSTAR data, seen in green and blue, reveal solar high-energy emission. The high-energy X-rays come from gas heated to above 3 million degrees. The red channel represents ultraviolet light captured by SDO, and shows the presence of lower-temperature material in the solar atmosphere at 1 million degrees.

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9. One Space Robot Photographs Another

This image from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows Victoria crater, near the equator of Mars. The crater is approximately half a mile (800 meters) in diameter. It has a distinctive scalloped shape to its rim, caused by erosion and downhill movement of crater wall material. Since January 2004, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has been operating in the region where Victoria crater is found. Five days before this image was taken in October 2006, Opportunity arrived at the rim of the crater after a drive of more than over 5 miles (9 kilometers). The rover can be seen in this image, as a dot at roughly the “ten o'clock” position along the rim of the crater. (You can zoom in on the full-resolution version here.)

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10. Night Lights

Last, but far from least, is this remarkable new view of our home planet. Last week, we released new global maps of Earth at night, providing the clearest yet composite view of the patterns of human settlement across our planet. This composite image, one of three new full-hemisphere views, provides a view of the Americas at night from the NASA-NOAA Suomi-NPP satellite. The clouds and sun glint — added here for aesthetic effect — are derived from MODIS instrument land surface and cloud cover products.

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Americas at night

Discover more lists of 10 things to know about our solar system HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Major types of Engines

Straight In-line

This is the type of engine that you find in your quotidian car. Nothing fancy, just all pistons arranged parallel along the vertical direction.

V in-line

Now, this is the sort of the engine that you find on sports cars like the Ferrari. When you hear sports enthusiasts go ‘ Whoa, that’s a V-12! ‘ - it just means that the engine has a V-type arrangement with 12 cylinders.

V +  Inline = V-inline

Commonly referred to as the VR engine.

The name VR6 comes from a combination of V engine (German: V-Motor), and the German word “Reihenmotor” (meaning “inline engine” or “straight engine”)

Volkswagen’s VR6 engines, and the later VR5 variants, are a family of internal combustion engines, characterized by a narrow-angle (10.5° or 15°) V engine configuration.

                    a: straight engine, b: V engine, c: VR engine

W engine

A W engine is a type of reciprocating engine ( again created by Volkswagen) arranged with its cylinders in a configuration in which the cylinder banks resemble the letter W, in the same way those of a V engine resemble the letter V.

Bugatti Veyron’s W16 engine

A W16 engine is used on the Bugatti Veyron. That’s 16 cylinders!

Flat Engine

Flat engines offer several advantages for motorcycles, namely: a low centre of gravity, smoothness, suitability for shaft drive, and (if air-cooled) excellent cooling of the cylinders. You can find them on aircrafts as well

Radial Engine (aka the dancing starfish)

They were used mostly in small aircraft for the propeller

The big advantage of radials was their large frontal area, which meant they could be air cooled, meaning less maintenance, failures, and of course a lower cost of initial purchase and maintenance.

Wankel Engine

This engine has only 3 moving parts and can make a lot of power.However, they are pretty inefficient, the last car to use this was a Mazda RX-8.

Axial Engine

The axial engine is a very interesting design. But they are not widely used because they are just hard to make and running these things at high RPM’s  is a challenge.

Duke engines are equipped with this type.

Jet engine

Commonly jet engines refer to the engines that are found on, well Jets!

Suck,squeeze,bang and blow

Air is sucked in through the front and  squeezed. A controlled explosion follows and the exhaust is blown out through the back

But, Jet engines also include the engines that are found on rockets, hybrids and water-jets. And their mode of operation is different than the one mentioned above.

Pretty cool eh?

Have a great day!

PC: Howstuffworks, Duke, MichaelFrey, Azure.km

** There is also the Stirling Engine. It’s amazing and a topic for an another post. But if you are interested do check out more about it here.

EDIT :  Had forgotten about the VR and the W-engines. My bad! Thanks for pointing it out.:D.

EDIT2: The suck squeeze bang and blow illustration was incorrect. Ergo, changed that.

What is glass?

When most people think of glass, their mind probably jumps straight to windows. And perhaps they’ve heard that old myth - that glass is actually a liquid, not a solid.

So what is glass?

Well, you’ve probably seen something like this before:

The three common phases of matter - gas, liquid, and solid. But you’ll notice that the solid picture is labeled crystalline state. Most people consider glass to be a solid, but it doesn’t quite look like that.

Crystals have a well defined structure, exhibiting long-range order. Glass is what’s called an amorphous material, exhibiting only short-range order. 

Basically, glass is a different kind of solid:

The quartz shown above is an example of a crystalline material. The molecules of glass on the other hand are disordered - yet still solid. 

To create glass, the liquid melt has to be cooled fast enough to prevent the substance from crystallizing. This fast cooling locks the atoms or molecules in the disordered state that looks like the liquid phase. 

Characterizing a substance as a glass also means that this glass transition is reversible. 

While most glass is optically transparent, the properties depend on the composition of the glass. Most of what you see every day is soda-lime-silicate glass, but there are many different kinds of glasses, including sodium borosilicate glass (Pyrex), lead-oxide glass, and aluminosilicate glass.

Sources: x x

Human fingers can detect nano-size objects. This means you not only have the ability to feel a tiny bump the size of a large molecule, but if your finger was the size of Earth, you could determine the difference between a house and a car. Source

Behold the awesomeness that is the heart of a blue whale. This colossal organ weighs 440 pounds and was retrieved from the carcass of a whale that had washed up on the shore of Newfoundland in 2014. Despite decomposition the heart was still in such great condition that it was a perfect candidate for preservation via plastination, which is precisely what was done by mammalogy technicians at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

Head over to Wired to learn how museum scientists went about preserving this titanic ticker.

[via Wired]

Here’s every total solar eclipse happening in your lifetime. Is this year your best chance?

On Aug. 21, a total solar eclipse will be visible from the continental United States. It’ll be the first to traverse coast to coast in nearly a century. Learn more about past and future eclipses: See full graphic.

Looping thunderstorm gifs by Mike Hollingshead

Students fortify concrete by adding recycled plastic

Adding bits of irradiated plastic water bottles could cut cement industry’s carbon emissions

Discarded plastic bottles could one day be used to build stronger, more flexible concrete structures, from sidewalks and street barriers, to buildings and bridges, according to a new study.

MIT undergraduate students have found that, by exposing plastic flakes to small, harmless doses of gamma radiation, then pulverizing the flakes into a fine powder, they can mix the plastic with cement paste to produce concrete that is up to 20 percent stronger than conventional concrete.

Concrete is, after water, the second most widely used material on the planet. The manufacturing of concrete generates about 4.5 percent of the world’s human-induced carbon dioxide emissions. Replacing even a small portion of concrete with irradiated plastic could thus help reduce the cement industry’s global carbon footprint.

Reusing plastics as concrete additives could also redirect old water and soda bottles, the bulk of which would otherwise end up in a landfill.

Read more.

Impressive artwork.

Dr. Greg Dunn (artist and neuroscientist) and Dr. Brian Edwards (artist and applied physicist) created Self Reflected to elucidate the nature of human consciousness, bridging the connection between the mysterious three pound macroscopic brain and the microscopic behavior of neurons. Self Reflected offers an unprecedented insight of the brain into itself, revealing through a technique called reflective microetching the enormous scope of beautiful and delicately balanced neural choreographies designed to reflect what is occurring in our own minds as we observe this work of art. Self Reflected was created to remind us that the most marvelous machine in the known universe is at the core of our being and is the root of our shared humanity.

h-t New Scientist: Brain images display the beauty and complexity of consciousness