Superhydrophobic - Water contact angle at more than 150 degrees
By: Hamid Lalani
Don't you just hate when your at a party or a major event and you spill something on your fancy white shirt or pants and your left to walk around with a big wet spot and/or stain. At this moment, the only thing you could do after that is use tide to go or wet it or even a change of clothes. My question is, is there anything we can do to prevent this?
There is one and only one thing that can prevent any liquid substance from touching you. It is called NeverWet, basically it is a superhydrophobic coating that you can apply to ANYTHING and substances like water and oil will just shoot off the item. It is similar to what Rain X does on your windshield except for the strength of the coating. When you use Rain X the water sits at a 110 degree angle which makes it hydrophobic but NeverWet is the only coating that makes the water sit at an almost perfect degree, 175! 180 degrees is a perfect sphere but that is near impossible to get. In the video below you will think that the chocolate syrup is animated but in fact it is true, it basically sits in a full sphere on your item. Imagine all the possibilities with this substance, anit-microbial because nothing can truly affect it. Anti-wetting, corrosion, self cleaning and even icing!!
Another company has something similar to this, it is not as strong but it is intuitive. Its called Liquipel. This company takes mobile devices and and using a special process they make your device 100% waterproof. They make the hydrophobic coating and get it to a vapor form so it sticks to all parts of the device, including the water damage sticker. The only problem is you have to let your phone dry because it will have water inside it. It is super cost effective at $60 for an iPhone 4s. This only works because the water doesn't touch the actual device, it touches the nano coating which in turn makes the water roll or shoot right off.
PC Gaming By: Jamie Armstrong
PC gaming is becoming more and more popular as the years go on, console gaming still thrives but many people are switching to PC and playing online on steam engines. The reason a lot of people are switching is because you can get PC games for free by torrenting them and then extracting them to a game disc, instead of buying console games for around $70 each. Also PC has better quality graphics and much smoother playing if you have a powerful enough computer, this can also be a downside though, powerful gaming computers can cost lots of money, ranging from $400 to over $10,000 which can be way too pricey for some people so they play on console. My personal opinion is that PC gaming is orders of magnitude better than console I run an Alienware M14x with tons of upgrades and it runs any game like a dream, but PC gaming can be brutal if you have a slow computer.
There are many arguments on PC vs. Xbox vs. PS3 and really PlayStation and Xbox are only popular because the console itself costs around $400 tops and the majority of gamers play on console. buying a game for Xbox or PlayStation can cost 10 times more than the exact same game, you can get a reasonably new PC game off Steam for around $7 or you can download them for free, also gaming online on a PC is free versus paying $70 every year for Xbox live. So, in the end it is going to end up being cheaper and much better quality gaming when you buy a gaming computer because all you have to buy is the computer and buy a few games and the rest you can get for free.
Quantum Computing and Mechanics
By: Mark Groan
Quantum Mechanics. What is it? Well, it is a new (it has been around for 100 years but physicists don't understand it still) branch of Physics. It has a completely different set of rules than Particle Theory or Newton's Laws of Gravity. The Quantum theory defines 5 main ideas:
Energy is not continuous, but comes in small but discrete units.
The elementary particles behave both like particles and like waves.
The movement of these particles is inherently random.
It is physically impossible to know both the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time. The more precisely one is known, the less precise the measurement of the other is.
The atomic world is nothing like the world we live in.
The ideas of the Quantum Theory seem bizarre but it gives insight into the fundamental nature of the universe. The atomic world is much different compared to the world we normally see. As Niels Bohr ('founder' of quantum mechanics) said: "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it."
Sometimes the particle can act like a wave and sometimes acts like a particle. The idea behind this is the particle is what you measured it to be. The idea is what you observe is what it is. Like if you see a particle, it is a particle. If you see a wave, it is a wave. The idea of this is crazy when it is an area of Physics, which is heavily math, is based on observed information. What does this weird theory mean for us? Well the last thing I am talking about with Quantum Mechanics before applications is the EPR experiment. This was looking at the relationship of particles to each other. They separated two quantum particles and got them to go off in different directions without interacting with anything else. They then measure the particle's momentum on one, and the position on the other. They then using Conversation of momentum, they determined the momentum of the particle not measured. So, when you measure it's position you know both its momentum and position. This makes a relationship where if one particle changes, the other will change to be the same.
What does this do for us? Well, I could go even farther into quantum mechanics, but I will talk about the good things they can create for us. The first is Quantum Computing. This computer uses quantum particles as binary bits. Except the particles can be multiple states at one time. An example is a computer today which computes with bits being 1 or 0. A quantum computer bit is 1 AND 0. It also is 0.5 and -1 and -0.25. This would allow you to compute something immensely faster than before. Another thing that quantum mechanics makes is teleportation. Well, kind of. Using Quantum Entanglement (the relationship in the EPR experiment) you can change particles. You entangle the particles and you can move a particle from one area to the other faster than the speed of light. However, the particles are destroyed after so it would be a one way trip unless you have more particles. You aren't transported, your destroyed then reconstructed exactly the same at the other particles. Quantum Mechanics will revolutionize our world once we can thoroughly understand it. It also makes lag-free communication. http://library.thinkquest.org/3487/qp.html