The maple seed device seen next to actual samara seeds.
(Credit: Eric Schurr/A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland)Remember as a kid being entertained by how maple tree seeds (or samara fruit) would spin like helicopters as they fell around you in the fall? I do, and that's why I love this prototype rotorcraft by graduate students at the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering.
It's a remote-controlled monocopter with a design based heavily on the aerodynamic and geometric properties of maple seeds. Researchers have tried for years to create an unmanned aerial vehicle that could mimic maple seeds' spiraling fall. The results out of Maryland are awesome.
As you can see in the video after the jump, the patent-pending device uses just one blade to take off, as well as a stabilizer to keep it steady. It looks weird, but it works. This is a great example of nature influencing science.
The students say they've created he world's smallest controllable single-winged rotorcraft, with the most minuscule having a maximum dimension of about 3.7 inches and a wing equal in size to a natural samara. Graduate student Evan Ulrich says he thinks the 'copter could be mass produced as a toy for less than $100, which even sounds high to us given that one of the parts experimented with is a vibrating motor from a pager.
There could also be military or rescue applications: a flyer fitted with a small camera could easily be sent across an area looking for survivors--or targets.
But no matter what the flyer ends up being used for, one thing is sure: I want one badly.
... Read more
We've still got a long way to go before human beings can be beamed from one place to another Star Trek-style, but on Friday a team of scientists at the University of Maryland achieved, nonetheless, a milestone in teleportation.
According to LiveScience, the university's Joint Quantum Institute for the first time was able to teleport information between two separate atoms across a distance of a meter--about one step for an adult.
The overview of the experiment's setup.
(Credit: LiveScience)Generally, teleportation works thanks to a remarkable quantum phenomenon called entanglement that only occurs on the atomic and subatomic scale. Once two objects are put in an entangled state, their properties are inextricably entwined. In layman's terms, if they are in entangled mode, what you "see" on one is what you get on the other.
The JQI team set out to entangle the quantum states of two individual ytterbium ions so information embodied in one could be teleported to the other. Each ion was isolated in a separate high-vacuum trap, suspended in an invisible cage of electromagnetic fields and surrounded by metal electrodes.
After that, the experiment worked like this: Single photons from each of two ions in separate traps interacted at a beamsplitter. When both detectors recorded a photon simultaneously, the ions were entangled. At that point, ion A was measured, revealing exactly what operation had to be performed on ion B to teleport ion A's information (see illustration at right).
It's important to note that the achievement is not any form of conventional communication. This is because in teleportation no information pertaining to the original object actually travels to the other. Instead, the information measured from the first object appears on the second object.
The research was supported in part by the Intelligence Advanced Research Project Activity program under U.S. Army Research Office contract.
It looks like the military's interest in teleportation remains strong. Who knows? This might mean we'll catch Osama bin Laden soon.
- prev
- 1
- next
