Scholar

malformalady:

A fairy ring, also known as fairy circle, elf circle, elf ring or pixie ring, is a naturally occurring ring or arc of mushrooms, in his case Marasmius oreades. The body of this fungus, its mycelium, is underground. It grows outward in a circle. As it grows, the mycelium uses up all of the nutrients in the soil, starving the grass. This is the reason a fairy ring has dead grass over the growing edge of the mycelium. Umbrella-shaped fruiting bodies, called mushrooms, spring up from just behind the outer edge of the mycelium.

(via forthesemar)

firesalamander12:

I love this duck

^^ This

(via paxxox)

rayrayslife:

thenimbus:

stringmouse:

I feel like I’m getting mixed signals from you, physics.

Absolutely Incredible

#WHAT IS HAPPENING

The little machine is vibrating the molecules of the water at a certain frequency and the stream lets us see the wave of that frequency.

I fucking love physics

(via rajwa92)

blaze-ferrari:

Evolution Simplified

(via wegoteverybodyscreamingwhoa)

1000scientists:

“Dermatographic urticaria (also known as dermographism, dermatographism or “skin writing”) is a skin disorder seen in 4–5% of the population in which the skin becomes raised and inflamed when stroked, scratched, rubbed, and sometimes even slapped.”

via Flickr

(Source: 1000scientists)

(Source: fuckyeahitchywitch, via cosmic-rebirth)

nybg:

Inky cap mushrooms are popular items in the Tumblr rounds lately, and not without reason. They look like something out of a stop-motion Tim Burton fairytale. But what first strikes as fancy is a very real phenomenon; the “ink” produced by coprinoid mushrooms is in fact the liquefaction of the gills. They begin white, then turn black, sometimes oozing down as a means of distributing spores more effectively.

Rumor has it that this ominous goo also makes a neat writing ink, but I’d stick to your ballpoint.

Better yet, some inky caps are edible. Though, again, never pick and eat wild plants or fungi—like so many others, coprinoid mushrooms are notoriously hard to differentiate, and unless you’re a renowned mycologist, you could end up noshing on a fatal dose. Even those species that are edible have the potential to land you in the emergency room, owing to a funny (not so funny) phenomenon responsible for the mushroom’s alter ego: tippler’s bane.

Scarf an inky cap on a belly full of booze and you’ll run into a full stop of miserable reactions, up to and including a heart attack in rare cases. The more you’ve imbibed or plan to drink, the worse off you’ll be. Isn’t mycology fun? —MN

(Source: owlyne, via forthesemar)

thesciencellama:

Acoustic Levitation

Using sound waves to levitate individual droplets of solutions containing pharmaceutical drugs and drying them in mid-air. Why do this? This is useful because most of the drugs on the market are either amorphous or crystalline and the crystalline form doesn’t get absorbed by the body. So levitating the solution allows the drug to be made into an amorphous state (by evaporation) because if it were to touch any surface it would simply crystallize. They call this “containerless processing”.

The frequencies used are just above the audible range at about 22 kilohertz and when the two speakers are aligned they create two sets of sound waves, perfectly interfering with each other creating a phenomenon known as a standing wave. This allows the objects to levitate in areas within the waves known as nodes as the acoustic pressure is enough to cancel the force of gravity.

Video Source - Argonne National Laboratory

This is pretty cool. As a side note, OMG IT’S LEVITATING

(via forthesemar)

leslieseuffert:

We’ve all seen rainbows before, but have you ever heard of a phenomena called a fire rainbow? The proper term for it is circumhorizontal arc and it’s actually an optical phenomena - a ice-halo formed by plate-shaped ice crystals in high level cirrus clouds.

‘What is happening here is that on sunny afternoons, cumulus clouds boil upwards, pushing layers of moist air above them even higher where they cool and condense to form cloud caps or ‘pileus’ (Latin for cap),” explains Atmospheric Optics Expert Dr Les Cowley. “When pileus clouds form very quickly, their water droplets tend to be all the same size, the perfect condition for iridescent colors.’

deviantART photographer daslasher1 was in the perfect spot at the perfect time to capture fire rainbows high up in the sky. How often this beautiful “smeared rainbow” is seen depends both on the location and the latitude of the observer. In the United States, it is a relatively common occurrence seen several times each summer. In contrast, it is rare sight in northern Europe.

My Modern Metropolis

(via leslieseuffert)