There's a way for police to test you for meth now (apart from checking for lesions and loose teeth and general sketchiness), and it apparently works. This in USA Today:

Greg Story, an atomic physics professor at the University of Missouri-Rolla, said the technology used in the scanner is not new.

Molecules energized by ultraviolet light emit a unique color spectrum that can be measured, Story said. Even when meth is created from different chemicals, the methamphetamine molecule would emit its own unique spectral signal, he says.

"I can't speculate on (the scanner's) accuracy, but yes, in principle, it's absolutely possible," Story said.

Read the full story here.

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Legendary Queen guitarist Brian May, 60, is completing a Ph.D. in astrophysics. His doctoral thesis/dissertation is called "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud." Kinda makes you wonder what Tom Shipley would call his dissertation -- but we digress. Mindy Limback will give ten bucks to the first person who can explain what "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud" means in three clear sentences or less. Leave comments.

Posted by Lance Feyh at 08:18 AM | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Although retired, Josef Podzimek, a UMR professor emeritus of mechanical engineering , remains an active student of atmospheric phenomena. The former researcher at UMR's Cloud and Aerosol Sciences Laboratory has been working with University of Missouri-Columbia student researcher Christina Crowe and a couple of graduate students to figure out how the phenomenon "thundersnow" may affect snow accumulation. Focusing on 22 storms, the researchers discovered that "within a 68-mile radius of thundersnow occurrences, 6 or more inches of snow fell 86 percent of the time, 10 or more inches fell 45 percent of the time and the maximum accumulation in the Midwest that date was recorded 36 percent of the time." The study will be published Friday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

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A little understanding of physics could get you out of a speeding ticket. At least it worked for 20-year-old Gavin Matthews, who used "schoolboy science" to beat the rap in Wales.

Convinced of his innocence, he wrote off asking for photographs of the incident and used the classroom formula 'speed equals distance over time' to prove he was travelling at 44.8mph in the 50mph zone. ...

"The photographs show the back of my car and the white lines at the side of the road. The second photograph shows that it was taken 0.5 seconds later by which time I had moved five white lines along."

He remembered from school you could calculate speed if you had the correct distance and time. He said he looked on the internet and found an official website stating that lines on the motorway are spaced two metres apart.

"That meant I had driven 10 meters in 0.5 seconds or 20 meters per second. That works out at precisely 44.8mph."

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Pluto has been demoted. Our solar system has been reduced to eight planets, now that Pluto has been reclassified as a "dwarf planet." Meeting in Prague this week, the International Astronomical Union set new standards for what it takes to be a planet and Pluto didn't make the cut.

Although you can't see Pluto, you can check out the moon and other celestial bodies at the UMR Observatory, which opens its doors to the public for Visitors' Nights every spring and fall. It's free! Upcoming dates are:

8:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 1
7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 29
7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 1

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UMR physicist Alexey Yamilov is part of a team researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and UMR that has developed an ultrasound version of the laser. Called the uaser (pronounced WAY-zer), the instrument produces ultrasonic waves that are coherent and of one frequency, and could be used to study laser dynamics and detect subtle changes, such as phase changes, in modern materials.

"We have demonstrated that the essential nature of a laser can be mimicked by classical mechanics - not quantum mechanics - in sound instead of light," said Richard Weaver, a professor of theoretical and applied mechanics at the University of Illinois. Weaverwill present the findings today at the annual Acoustical Society of America meeting. Yamilov plans to present the research to the Optical Society of America in the fall.

Technorati tags: physics, acoustics, science, lasers, ultrasound, materials science

Posted by Andrew Careaga at 09:44 AM | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

UMR physicists have developed a process to embed tiny particles of semiconducting materials into an ultra-lightweight material, called an aerogel. That in itself is pretty cool. But what's even cooler is that these quantum dots -- semiconducting specks only a few nanometers in diameter -- also emit and absorb light. At the same time.

Massimo Bertino, an associate professor of physics at UMR, is leading the team of researchers developing this method of embedding quantum dots into aerogel surfaces. Recently, Bertino demonstrated the method by embedding a miniature version of the UMR wordmark into an aerogel surface. The photo, taken by UMR graphic designer/photographer Ian Nance, shows how the dots emit light.

Continue reading "Connecting the quantum dots, UMR style" »

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