philjkowalski
thomasodonnell
jdspiegel
jseesel
hanifhussaini
jennykowalski
RSS - PostsThumbs Up – Phantom Jam Solution
Phantom jams are the bane of a driver’s existence (or commute), but they may someday be a thing of the past. Thanks to experimental research by Japanese scientists, MIT scientists were able to derive an equation to describe the behavior of these phantom jams or “jamitrons”. Phantom jams are created by a driver causing a slight disturbance to the flow of high density traffic, such as tapping the brakes or slowing down due to lack of concentraion on the road.
The japanese research, shown in the video above, had cars drive in a circle at a given speed and observed the results, which included a number of jamitrons. One car slows slightly, backing up all the cars behind it and causing a traffic jam for no apparent reason. The MIT scientists hoped their equation would allow for roads to be built to avoid these phantom jams in the future, possibly saving us all a few minutes on our commute home. So next time you get out of a traffic jam and look around and see no reason for it, blame the guy 10 cars or so ahead of you for slowing down a little too much and causing a jamitron.
Ununbium – Thumbs Up
For the first time in 5 years, a new element has been officially recognized and added to the periodic table we all know and love. The element will occupy the 112th position on the periodic table, and will be renamed by the team that created it 13 years ago. It’s current name comes from the latin words for 1-1-2, and if history is any indicator, it will be named for a scientist as the team has done so with 3 other elements they created.
So called “superheavy” elements, which do not occur naturally (Science note: the heaviest naturally occuring element is, of course, Plutonium, whose atomic number is 94), are created in labs by fusing together the nuclei of other elements. In the case ununbium, it was created by fusing zinc and lead. According to Sigurd Hoffman, the leader of the team that created the element, it was 10 times harder to create 112 than it was for them to create 110, which means it might be a while before we see another element added to the periodic table.
