95 results found for light

In the 21st century, even the toughest of metals are now being replaced by synthetic carbon-based materials that are so strong, light, and resistant to high temperatures that they can be used in the construction of high-performance aircraft.  How....

A light-hearted look at the difference between real and ideal gases.

Kavli Medal Lecture by Professor Clare Grey FRS.  The development of light, long-lasting rechargeable batteries has been an integral part of the portable electronics revolution.  This revolution has transformed the way in which we communicate and t....

Professor Ada Yonath, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel.  To facilitate instant recovery of active life once bears wake up from their winter sleep, nature provides ingenious mechanism based on periodic packing of their ribosomes, the cellular ma....

The early years of the twentieth century saw one of the most ferocious controversies in the whole history of biology, over Gregor Mendel's experiments in pea hybridization and their significance for the scientific study of inheritance. On one side, t....

The visible universe has edges, known as event horizons, which surround a black hole or a region of space speeding away faster than light.  Event horizons are governed by a strikingly simple set of quantum laws which imply that black holes are at on....

This talk discusses Cayley's pioneering aviation work, and his roles as an inventor and as founder of the Royal Polytechnic Institution in Regent Street. Cayley's work will be related to the scientific and intellectual milieu of the day, and to debat....

Looking at stress patterns in components using polarised light, part of the 'Engineered by US' exhibition

A presentation about fluorescing cells by a Senior Lecturer in Bionanotechnology in the Department of Biomedical Science at the University of Sheffield

Florence Nightingale disliked having her portrait taken as much as she hated being a celebrity, yet it was largely through the visual representations of her face and person in the press that she gained iconic status in Victorian England. Used as a mo....

From the moment of their discovery, each of the chemical elements has embarked on a journey into our culture. Over millennia and decades, they have gained meaning through encounter and manipulation. Those long known, such as gold, silver, iron and su....

There are two rules for making an optical microscope; the lenses must be small, since defects of colour and focus increase with lens size, and the lenses must capture light from the object over as wide an angle as possible to record fine detail. This....