Experimenting with meals
Mayonnaise’s texture is ideal for mimicking what a gas capsule goes via when it’s blasted with lasers to ignite nuclear fusion, Emily Conover reported in “Mayonnaise might make clear nuclear fusion experiments” (SN: 10/5/24, p. 5).
Reader Linda Ferrazzara questioned if mayo qualifies as a non-Newtonian fluid, one whose viscosity modifications relying on the stress utilized to it. If that’s the case, might researchers as an alternative use oobleck — a non-Newtonian fluid created from cornstarch and water — as a stand-in for nuclear gas capsules in experiments? Ferrazzara requested. Oobleck is perhaps simpler to maintain constant between experiments than mayo, which has completely different formulations relying on the model.
Mayonnaise is a non-Newtonian fluid, says mechanical engineer Arindam Banerjee of Lehigh College in Bethlehem, Pa. However oobleck wouldn’t work for fusion experiments. The substance will get thicker, or extra viscous, when hit by an out of doors pressure — a phenomenon known as shear thickening. So it “would freeze up once we spin our experiment,” Banerjee says. Mayo is the other: It will get much less viscous.
Repeatability is essential to the staff’s scientific course of, so the supplies utilized in every experiment have to be well-characterized and constant, Banerjee says. “We have now used Hellmann’s Actual Mayonnaise for the final 12 years. We measure properties of every batch and have discovered them to be remarkably constant. We don’t make our personal mayonnaise,” he says. “Previous to choosing mayonnaise, we tried yogurt. However my college students at the moment weren’t capable of replicate the yogurt consistency and thus the properties had been completely different, resulting in giant variations in noticed conduct.”
Transfer over, Simone Biles!
A globular springtail can backflip (proven under) at a price of 368 spins per second, Jonathan Lambert reported in “How an arthropod does the world’s quickest backflip” (SN: 10/5/24, p. 4). X person @FluronaVirus wrote: “That’s unimaginable! The agility of globular springtails is really outstanding. Excessive-speed digital camera footage capturing their spin price is an enchanting perception into their aerial skills. Nature by no means ceases to amaze with its wonders.”
Machines make errors
A quantum laptop improved its outcomes by repeatedly correcting its errors midcalculation, Emily Conover reported in “A quantum laptop fixes its errors” (SN: 10/5/24, p. 6).
X person @Lightning456243 requested how a quantum laptop can establish its personal errors.
“Quantum computer systems appropriate their very own errors by inserting some redundancy of their information and periodically checking whether or not the knowledge continues to be self-consistent,” Conover says.
Classical computer systems do that too by copying bits, which have a worth of both 0 or 1. For example, 1 may be copied 3 times to turn out to be 111. If a type of bits will get unintentionally flipped (say, 111 turns into 110), the mismatch between the three bits would point out an error. By taking a look at which worth is almost all, the pc can establish which bit wants fixing.
The complexities of quantum physics complicate this course of, however quantum computer systems likewise encode info redundantly, Conover says. Slightly than instantly copying particular person quantum bits, nonetheless, the computer systems unfold the knowledge between a number of quantum bits which might be entangled, or linked (SN: 6/20/20, p. 18).
