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Tag archives: elements
She’s the greatest dancer, how to name an element, soccer ball finally orbits Earth
By Hamish Johnston
The award for most bizarre title for a scientific paper goes to psychologist Nick Neave and colleagues at the UK’s Northumbria University and University of Lincoln for “Optimal asymmetry and other motion parameters that characterise high-quality female dance”. The team says it used “a data-driven approach to pinpoint the movements that discriminate female dance quality”. Why, you might ask? “The form and significance of attractive dance, however, has been less well studied, and this limits our understanding of its role in human courtship and partner selection.” The above video is from a previous study by the team about what constitutes a good male dancer.
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Schrödinger’s Brexit, ‘The Elements’ remix, physics referees and American football
By Hamish Johnston
On Tuesday I was rushing to finish writing a news story about quantum superposition and got a phone call out of the blue from Roger Sawyer, who is deputy editor on BBC Radio 4’s afternoon news and current affairs programme PM. He had the brilliant idea that the meme of “having your Brexit cake and eating it too” had some sort of connection to quantum superposition – and wanted some advice from Physics World.
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Name the element, continued
(Courtesy: Shutterstock/Nerthuz)
By Michael Banks
It will soon be time to get the Tipp-Ex out on your copy of the periodic table.
That is because the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) have announced the discovery of four new elements: 113, 115, 117 and 118 – completing the table’s seventh row.
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