Sea Level! What is it and how do scientists calculate it? As it turns out, there are actually many complexities in determining this measurement. For example, Earth isn’t actually a sphere, gravity is stronger and weaker at different points around the globe, and of course, there are a lot of mountains that are no where near water — so how do we know what sea level would be? In this video, Minute Physics explains the details.
After you’ve watched, check out these related links: ellipsoid, geoid, geodesists, Mount Everest, Chimborazo Volcano, Space.com’s Best Gravity Map Yet Shows a Lumpy, Bumpy Earth, and this clarifying and not-to-be-missed animated gif of Earth’s gravity field.
In the archives: videos about or involving measuring things, including Measuring the Universe.
In a time of flat touch screens, Daniel Leithinger and Sean Follmer, with Professor Hiroshi Ishii of MIT’s Tangible Media Group, have re-focused on tactile digital interfaces by pairing a motion sensing input device with a table made of 900 physical “pixels” to create inFORM, a shape-shifting 3-D display. From FastCoDesign:
It’s basically a fancy Pinscreen, one of those executive desk toys that allows you to create a rough 3-D model of an object by pressing it into a bed of flattened pins. With inFORM, each of those “pins” is connected to a motor controlled by a nearby laptop, which can not only move the pins to render digital content physically, but can also register real-life objects interacting with its surface thanks to the sensors of a hacked Microsoft Kinect.
With this budding technology, remote users could interact with physical objects from a distance, or digital content and data (maps, geographical models, architectural plans, etc) could be displayed and interacted with dynamically. Just imagine how this could work with a “higher resolution” — even just 2x or 10x the amount of “pixels” responding. How will you use it?
via FastCoDesign.
