To suggest topics or sites for Web Watch, please visit http://www.physicstoday.org/suggestwebwatch.html. Compiled and edited by Charles Day
By 1791, Farkas Kempelen had perfected one of the most remarkable instruments of the 18th century: a mechanical device for reproducing the sounds of human speech. More than two centuries later, Gábor Olaszy and Péter Nikléczy followed Kempelen’s design and replicated his device. To learn more about the project, watch In memoriam Kempelen Farkas, a flash animation created by Olaszy’s graduate student Tamás Bohm.
Before it returned to Earth in January, NASA’s Stardust spacecraft trawled interplanetary space for tiny dust grains. The modest catch is stuck invisibly to the wispy filaments of the detector medium, an aerogel. For the first step in gathering the grains, scientists at Berkeley’s Space Sciences Lab have filmed the aerogel with micron resolution. The second step involves the computer-owning public. Visit Stardust@home to download a screensaver...
