Vantablack Absorbs 99% Of Light And Is The Darkest Material Ever Made.

Curves of constant width

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The width of a circle is constant: its diameter.

But the circle is not the only shape that holds this pristine title. For instance let’s look at the Reuleaux triangle

Reuleaux triangle

A Reuleaux triangle is a shape formed from the intersection of three circular disks, each having its center on the boundary of the other two.

The Reuleaux triangle is the first of a sequence of Reuleaux polygons, curves of constant width formed from regular polygons with an odd number of sides.

Some of these curves have been used as the shapes of coins

To drill square holes.

They are not entirely square, their edges are fillets i.e the edges are rounded and not sharp.

This animation offers a good insight as to why that is so.

And in china, apparently on bicycles.

The man Guan Baihua shows his self-made multi-angle-wheel bicycle on May 6, 2009 in Qingdao of Shandong Province, China. Guan Baihua spent 18 months to complete this strange bicycle.

Other shapes of constant width

There are other shapes of constant width beside the Reuleaux triangle ( that has been discussed in this post ), a whole bunch of them really. Do take a look at them. ( links below )

I will leave you guys with my favorite one.

More:

If this post fascinated you, i strongly suggest you check these out. They go in-depth with the mathematics that underlies these curves and talk about other cool stuff:

An animation of non-circular rollers

Shapes and Solids of Constant Width - Numberphile  

Shapes of constant width

Reuleaux Polygons,           

Edit:

For those who are wondering if these are something that one would stumble upon on a regular basis. You may not find perfect ones but similiar ones definitely.

I found mine on a really old BMI calculator thingy. ( not sure what you would call it )

Have fun exploring !

What have eclipses ever done for science? Quite a lot, actually!

The first measurement of the width of the Atlantic ocean in the 16th Century

When British settlers arrived in Virginia in the US, they weren’t sure how far across the globe they’d gone. They recorded the local time of a total eclipse of the moon - which is seen all across the night-time side of the planet. Their colleagues in London did the same, and when the travellers returned they could figure out the five hour time difference.

Edmond Halley discovered that the moon is moving away from the Earth

Halley realised you could back-calculate when previous eclipses would have occurred. But he noticed a mismatch between his predictions and the history books. The reason, he discovered, what that he was assuming the moon stayed the same distance from the Earth. It is actually getting further at about the rate your fingernails grow. And that means that one day (in a few million years, that is), the moon will be too far away to create any more total solar eclipses.

In 1919 a solar eclipse proved Einstein’s theory of relativity

Einstein’s theory predicted that the sun’s gravity should bend the light of nearby stars, meaning that in theory we should be able to see stars that are hidden just behind the sun. However, sunlight always blocks our view of these stars, and it was only during a solar eclipse that there was a short window to see if hidden stars were visible, as predicted. Astronomer Arthur Eddington travelled to West Africa and took photos that proved Einstein right.

Scientists still use solar eclipses today

It’s very hard to study the sun’s corona - a tenuous hot gas, which just one millionth of the light intensity of the sun. The shapes and lines of the corona show the nature of the sun’s magnetic field, and are only visible to study during an eclipse. NASA are also using this opportunity to help create the first thermal map of Mercury!

Want to know more? Watch our full video.

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.

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.

Fibonacci sequence in the hiding…

Okay, I’ve really missed talking about teratology.

These dogs have polydactyl, but what’s interesting is that the extra dew claws can move independently of one another and grip things. They’re only found on the hind feet giving the dogs a distinctly velociraptor look

The Beauceron is an ancient breed, and no one has a definitive answer of why they have these, but the prevailing theory is that they were bred to do a lot of rock climbing because they were used for herding and hunting over rocky mountainous terrain.

Other places to see my posts: INSTAGRAM / FACEBOOK / ETSY / KICKSTARTER

5 things you didn’t know about... Concorde

Credit: British Airways

1. Operated by British Airways and Air France, Concorde went into operation in 1976, following 5,000 hours of flight testing. Seating 100 passengers, it catered to the privileged or business traveller. Concorde was withdrawn from service in 2003, after 27 years.

2. The most popular route for the British carrier was from London Heathrow to New York JFK in just three hours and 20 minutes. Cruising at Mach 2.02, passengers experienced heights of 60,000ft, a vantage point from which they could see the curvature of the Earth below and dark skies above at midday.

3. The four Olympus 593 engines that powered Concorde were twin spool turbojets.

4. The materials used for Concorde’s structure needed to withstand temperature extremes – subsonic speeds, the aircraft fuselage would experience lows of  -35°C, but at Mach 2 the temperature reached 127°C at the nose.

5. Concorde’s long, pointed nose cone played a key role in landing. Formed of resin-bonded glass fibre, as metals would interfere with the signals detecting storm clouds, the hydraulically powered nose cone could be moved independently to an angle of 12.5° on landing, allowing the pilot to see the approaching runway.

To find out more see page 60 of the June issue of Materials World or visit http://bit.ly/2qDPjJC. 

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

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

What can we learn from ants and plants?  

That’s what IBMer Mauro Martino set out to answer in his award-winning data visualization, Network Earth. It explores nature’s interconnected relationships, and how they affect each other and our planet. By making the complex but important topics easier to visualize, we hope to help make more of them accessible to all.