By measuring the unique properties of light on the scale of a single atom, researchers from Duke University and Imperial College London believe that they have characterized the limits of metal’s ability in devices that enhance light. This field is known as plasmonics because scientists are trying to take advantage of plasmons, electrons that have…
Kids love smartphones and tablets, and that makes the devices great tools for learning math and science. Apps for mobile devices can help make even the most abstract concepts—like algebra or physics—engaging. And smartphones and tablets can be carried out into nature to help students understand what they’re seeing. Star Walk, for example, identifies more…
“Moral Math” refers to the study of ideas drawn from mathematics which can positively impact moral decision-making and social behavior. This essay describes a workshop designed to introduce these ideas to interested individuals of varying degrees of mathematical and theological sophistication. Created by a retired minister and former math professor, the workshop details five sets…
Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have built a quantum processor that can factor a composite number – in this case the number 15 – into its constituent prime factors, 3 and 5. While the math may not be much of an achievement, performing it successfully is an important step towards factoring much larger numbers, with…
Scientists measuring the sun were shocked to find it’s the most perfectly round natural object in the universe. Until now experts have always assumed that the sun bulged a bit around the middle – making it very slightly flying-saucer shaped. But the bulge is so small that if the sun was the size of a…
Billions of times the mass of our own sun, so-called massive black holes present a baffling mystery with clues hidden at the very dawn of existence.
The Higgs boson-like particle whose discovery was announced on 4 July looks significantly more certain to exist. The particle has been the subject of a decades-long hunt as the last missing piece of physics’ Standard Model, explaining why matter has mass. Now one Higgs-hunting team at the Large Hadron Collider report a “5.9 sigma” levels…
A typical American school day finds some six million high school students and two million college freshmen struggling with algebra. In both high school and college, all too many students are expected to fail. Why do we subject American students to this ordeal?
From the editors at SciAm: Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, died on July 23 of pancreatic cancer. She was 61. Outside her trail-blazing career as an astronaut, Ride was also a major champion of STEM education. In 2010, she helped found an initiative called Change the Equation [a CEO-driven initiative to increase…
It’s assumed that modern humans, Homo sapiens, originated in Africa sometime between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago. But paleoanthropologist Tim Weaver argues there might be another way to interpret our species’ beginnings. Instead of a discrete origin event, he suggests in the Journal of Human Evolution that our ancestors’ arrival into the world might have…