Experimenting with meals
Mayonnaise’s texture is ideal for mimicking what a gasoline capsule goes by way of when it’s blasted with lasers to ignite nuclear fusion, Emily Conover reported in “Mayonnaise could 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 adjustments relying on the stress utilized to it. If that’s the case, may researchers as a substitute use oobleck — a non-Newtonian fluid produced from cornstarch and water — as a stand-in for nuclear gasoline capsules in experiments? Ferrazzara requested. Oobleck may be simpler to maintain constant between experiments than mayo, which has totally 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 outdoor pressure — a phenomenon referred to as shear thickening. So it “would freeze up after we spin our experiment,” Banerjee says. Mayo is the other: It will get much less viscous.
Repeatability is essential to the group’s scientific course of, so the supplies utilized in every experiment have to be well-characterized and constant, Banerjee says. “Now we have 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 selecting mayonnaise, we tried yogurt. However my college students at the moment weren’t in a position to replicate the yogurt consistency and thus the properties had been totally different, resulting in giant variations in noticed habits.”
Transfer over, Simone Biles!
A globular springtail can backflip (proven beneath) 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 consumer @FluronaVirus wrote: “That’s unimaginable! The agility of globular springtails is actually exceptional. 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 pc improved its outcomes by repeatedly correcting its errors midcalculation, Emily Conover reported in “A quantum pc fixes its errors” (SN: 10/5/24, p. 6).
X consumer @Lightning456243 requested how a quantum pc can determine its personal errors.
“Quantum computer systems appropriate their very own errors by inserting some redundancy of their knowledge 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 price of both 0 or 1. For example, 1 will be copied thrice to grow 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 determine which bit wants fixing.
The complexities of quantum physics complicate this course of, however quantum computer systems likewise encode data redundantly, Conover says. Slightly than instantly copying particular person quantum bits, nevertheless, the computer systems unfold the knowledge between a number of quantum bits which might be entangled, or linked (SN: 6/20/20, p. 18).
