Jan 8, 2008

Plasticine, Salt, and Melting Snow

Posted in Chemistry at 1:00 pm by David Bradley -- 7 Comments; add yours

Why do they grit the roads with rock salt in winter? What does the salt do to the water to reduce ice on the roads? Is this somehow related to how salt affects the boiling point of water? Keywords to search for: colligative properties, boiling, freezing, ions, solutions, solvent, Raoult’s law

Meanwhile, I’ll let Plasticine models from Ithaca and cheesy music explain:…

7 Comments; add yours

Dec 7, 2007

Youtube for Scientists

Posted in Science at 4:00 pm by David Bradley -- 3 Comments; add yours

Regular readers will know that I have a penchant for posting science videos every now and then. I’ve written about vids on how to explain Newton’s laws with Lego, A spoof sweet potato battery to power your mp3 player, Einstein meets Hendrix, and desktop hockey with one of the most water-repellent materials ever invented from chemists at Queen’s University Belfast. Youtube has …

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Nov 16, 2007

Video Lecture Search and Natural Language

Posted in Chemspy at 7:54 am by David Bradley -- 2 Comments; add yours

A new speech and language search engine that could help you find particular subjects discussed in a video lecture, has been developed by MIT scientists in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Regina Barzilay, James Glass and their colleagues say the web-based technology currently allows students and others to search hundreds of MIT lectures for key topics.

“Our goal is to develop a speech and language technology that will help educators provide structure …

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