ScotBlogs

A focussed light beam can trap a small particle, such as a micron-sized latex sphere (or biological cell). If the sphere is much larger than the light’s wavelength, ray optics suffices to explain the trapping. Light bends as it passes … Continue reading →

Edwin Aldrin obtained his PhD from MIT in 1963 with a thesis titled, “Line-of-sight guidance techniques for manned orbital rendezvous”. Just three years later in 1966, Aldrin was the pilot of Gemini XII, the last flight of the Gemini program, … Continue reading →

WOOSTER, Ohio, Oct. 7, 2018 – The College of Wooster is testing its communication protocols today, as part of a larger emergency response exercise being conducted on campus in partnership with City of Wooster first responders. The test involves multiple … Continue reading →

If you live in Ohio and have felt wet and miserable the past year, you now have vindication. Based on the long-term record from the OARDC weather station, Wooster has just completed it’s third wettest year on record (i.e., since … Continue reading →

Wooster, Ohio — The Invertebrate Paleontology class at Wooster set to work this afternoon on the excellent fossils they collected at the beginning of last week. They had already washed them carefully, using soft brushes and soap, and now were … Continue reading →

The Invertebrate Paleontology class at Wooster had its annual field trip today to the Upper Ordovician (Katian) Cincinnati Group (Upper Whitewater Formation) in eastern Indiana. The weather looked terrible as the remnant of Tropical Storm Gordon worked its way into … Continue reading →

Ancient cultures everywhere observed seven “wanderers” move against the apparently fixed stars of the night sky: our star the sun, our natural satellite the moon, and the planets Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. In many languages, these wanderers became … Continue reading →

One of my active areas of research is trying to find physical links in the Arctic climate system that may help us better predict when seasonal sea ice cover will disappear each summer. Good sea ice predictions are important because … Continue reading →

A falling cat’s twisting returns its shape to normal but rotates its body to land feet down. Earth’s spin returns a Foucault pendulum to its initial position in one day but rotates its oscillation plane. Parallel parking cyclically rotates a … Continue reading →

Bill Ausich (Academy Professor, Ohio State University) and I just finished an excellent research trip to Estonia. As is the custom on this blog, here are the relevant posts in chronological order: July 27: Wooster and Ohio State paleontologists return … Continue reading →