issues and events

Web Watch

When you boil a liquid on Earth, thousands of small bubbles stream upward from the heated surface of the pan. In zero gravity, where there's no "up," liquids boil differently. To see how differently, visit NASA's Bizarre Boiling Web page, which describes a series of boiling experiments carried out on space shuttle missions.

Antarctica

The Exploratorium, a science museum in San Francisco, has sent a team to visit various scientific field stations on Antarctica. From 1 December to 12 January, you can follow the field trips online, watching the team members' progress and talking to scientists they encounter.

shrimpoluminescence

When it snaps its claws, the snapping shrimp isn't trying to attract attention or mark time--it's attacking its prey. The sound wave produced by the snapping claws is so powerful that it knocks out or kills the tiny crabs on which the shrimp feeds. Detlef Lohse, Michael Versluis, and Anna von der Heydt of the University of Twente in the Netherlands and Barbara Schmitz of the Technical University of Munich in Germany have studied the snapping in detail. Last year, they reported that the blast is not produced by the snap itself, but by the violent collapse of the cavitation bubble formed by the snap. This year, the team (minus von der Heydt) discovered that the collapse generates a rapid flash of sonoluminescent light. The trio reports their finding, which they call shrimpoluminescence, in the 4 October issue of Nature. You can see a movie of the snapping claws on the University of Twente Web site.

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