How to Build a Supersonic Ping-Pong Gun
If your ping-pong gun fails to impress, a simple mod will give it supersonic powers, say engineers
Materials
Physicists Prove "Dowsing" Bomb Detectors Useless in Double Blind Trial
A widely used detector that relies on dowsing to find explosives and drugs has finally been proven ineffectual by physicists in Mexico
Chinese Physicists Build "Ghost" Cloaking Device
A working invisibility cloak that makes one object look like ghostly versions of another has been built in China
A Handheld X-Ray Scanner?
Towards a real-life tricorder, with varied applications.
Physicists Demonstrate First Laser Made From a Cloud of Gas
Clouds that lase are the first Earth-based versions of lasers that occur naturally in space, say researchers
Best of 2012: Mathematicians Solve Minimum Sudoku Problem
In January, a year-long calculation proved there are no 16-clue puzzles in Sodoku, confirming the long held belief that the smallest number of starting clues a puzzle can contain is 17
How Technology Can Reduce Firefighter Injuries
Advances from an unlikely place--Cornell’s clothing researchers.
How to Measure Quantum Foam With a Tabletop Experiment
Physicists thought they could never measure the foam-like structure of spacetime. Now one theoretical physicist says it can be done using a laser and a block of glass
Physicists Laser Print Conducting Polymer Circuits
Solvents can cause problems in the manufacture of conducting polymer circuits. The answer is laser printing, say researchers
Physicists Build Laser Tweezers Controlled with Kinect
Now you can pick up and move micrometre-scale particles using your hands and arms thanks to a Kinect-controlled device called HoloHands
