Weird Science Offered As University Class

ludwigvan968 writes "The ACTLab at the University of Texas at Austin is making waves with its Weird Science class. The link is to the TA's blog with documentation of some of the projects: a laser harp, a 3D environment constructed with fog and an LCD projector, and a 'water bridge' using a 50,000-volt transformer. Next semester, they're introducing a new class called 'Disruptive Technologies.'"

Comments

What about the girl

[CaptainPatent]

This is not a complete class... I read nothing about animating an uber-hot girlfriend!

I want a mythbusters class as well

[Joe The Dragon]

I want a mythbusters class as well

Re:I want a mythbusters class as well

[Lane.exe]

Not to cramp the style of your joke, but they do have that class. It's Physics 471 -- Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. One of my favorite classes at UT.

Disruptive?

[Colin Smith]

Next semester, they're introducing a new class called 'Disruptive Technologies.'" Would that be like a Tazer/Stun Gun?

Re:Disruptive?

[beavioso]

I think the class requires students to use cell phones with "catchy" ringtones.

Re:Disruptive?

[Cjstone]

Or a breadboard with flashing LEDs attached to a sweatshirt.

The next logical step...

[billius]

Mad Science. Seriously, I'm dying for some funding on my research dealing with the re-animation of human flesh.

Re:The next logical step...

[vegiVamp]

With Stewie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewie_Griffin ), of course.

Great

[LostInTransportation]

Now we're all stuck with thoughts of gym class taught by Kelly Brock.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

You were thinking of a sex ed taught by a 47 year old mother of 3?

Cool Stuff

[j_kenpo]

I remember when I was working for a production company, a buddy of mine would always do stuff like this. We made a smoke cannon similar to the one shown there using an old PA speaker, some plastic cones, and a fog machine. The PA speaker pushed the fog through the cones making the smoke rings. We were going to build a large one, but never did. We also talked about doing something similar to the LCD/smoke projector with a large DLP projector when they first came out to experiment on replacing the aging atmospheric effect laser projectors. Of course, it still wasn't as impressive as a 10 watt white light laser with a color changing crystal. But its cool to see people out there playing with some of this kind of stuff. The water bridge was friggin cool.

Heard in class

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

"We'll be having a lab session today, so get a bra from the cabinet by the door and make sure it is securely fastened over your head before going to your lab station"

Obligatory --and how!

[rts008]

I welcome our new Kelly LeBrock Overlords!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090305/

Truly one of Canada's great contributions to the rest of the world. Kelly ROCKS!!!

Re:Obligatory --and how!

[g1zmo]

Huh?

FTFIMDB:

Mini Biography: Kelly LeBrock was born in New York and reared in London. She is the daughter...

Re:Obligatory --and how!

[El Yanqui]

I only recently moved to London. Sadly, I missed the opportunity to rear Ms. LeBrock.

Fine

[second class skygod]

But for god's sake, I hope they don't forget the doll!

former actlabbie here

[CharlesV]

You end up making so much awesome stuff you never knew you had in you in these programs. definitely made my college experience worthwhile. some of mine:

http://home.actlab.utexas.edu/~charlesv/

Laser harp?

[davidsyes]

Talk about cutting edge music. Hopefully it's not "ear-splitting" music...

Truly disruptive technology might be an "intestinal auger" with rheostat. Somehow, I suppose the FDA won't allow that piece of equipment to be added to the body...

Re:Laser harp?

[Killjoy_NL]

WARNING: Do not play harp with remaining fingers.

Anthony Michael Hall

[techstar25]

Unless it's taught by Anthony Michael Hall, you can forget about it.

And I want a Real Genius class

[plover]

As long as we're going along with the '80s "edu-movie" theme, I always liked Real Genius. Iced stairwells, auditorium beach parties, disassembled-and-reassembled-in-the-dorm-room vehicles (oh, wait, I already did that one) and Big Fscking Lasers.

And popcorn. LOTS of popcorn!

3D Fog Environments

[Bones3D_mac]

This is something I've found kind of interesting ever since I first heard of it a couple years ago. However, we may not be limited to simply looking much longer. For example, a newer application of the Wii Remote that allows users to convert any display into a digital white board could allow fog display users to directly manipulate both the fog and the image being projected over the affected area simultaneously, making it possible to do things like carve directly into the display itself. (Though, much of it may initially come off as a gimmick similar to some of Apple's interactive quicktime movie demos, such as realtime water ripples created on mouseclicks.)

Eventually, I'd love to see a way to do this that doesn't require the fog, like maybe using lasers to intersect at a single point in 3D space in such a way that the polarization reflects the light back to the viewer at that point, while remaining invisible elsewhere.

Re:3D Fog Environments

[CryoPenguin]

Eventually, I'd love to see a way to do this that doesn't require the fog, like maybe using lasers to intersect at a single point in 3D space in such a way that the polarization reflects the light back to the viewer at that point, while remaining invisible elsewhere.

Photons don't interact with photons. It doesn't matter whether it's lased, polarized, or whatever; two or more beams of light will just pass through each other.
(This is also, btw, why photons aren't regularly used as qubits in a quantum computer. It's easy to make them coherent, but you can't compute anything if your qubits don't interact.)

Re:3D Fog Environments

[JohnFluxx]

Actually that's not quite true - photons can bounce off each other. It's just rare.

On a different note, what you can do is have the beams have enough energy density to be close to breaking down the air. Then where they intersect there will be enough energy to break down the air and create a plasma. This will be a reflective point. It's kinda loud though.

Re:Women are a Dark Art?

[bladesjester]

That only happens if you forget to hook the doll up.

Disruptive techonogies is a real area of study

[Raul654]

Disruptive technologies is a very real area of study. Supercomputing 2006 and 2007 even had a panel on it. (My phd adviser is one of the people listed there) Although somewhat buzz-wordy, the idea is to signify technologies that have the potential to bring about great change within an industry.

Just to name one kind of such technology for computing, if someone could get automatic parallelization to work reliably, that would be a very disruptive technology. (20 years of research has yet to achieve this, but people keep trying)

Re:Baseless assertion?

[gomiam]

Missing Objects office here. A humour sense unit has been found. Please come and check whether it is yours.

Re:Baseless assertion?

[McGiraf]

You've been well trained! :)

Re:education revolution

[doodlyoodly]

That would complete the circle ... since most of these projects were 'lifted' from youtube in the first place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMLop6MIwUU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhBn1ozht-E

I have some teachers that would love this - "OK kids, go to youtube, steal an idea and make it. I'll be in the chemistry cupboard.

This is science, not fiction, DOH!

[Spy der Mann]

I read nothing about animating an uber-hot girlfriend!

You dumb - any decent slashdotter would know that there are NO SUCH THINGS as girlfriends. Face it, IT'S A MYTH!

Re:Baseless assertion?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Care to respond or are we all going to just let these anachronistic and misogynistic myths perpetuate ad infinitum?

Can we all join the fun?

My wife is smarter than me, more fit, better educated and a better programmer. I'm just barely more qualified with networks and architecture, and I'm definitely less of a cook. I have an extraordinary amount of respect for her.

But if I ever accused her of being a rational being, she'd break my cranium, and then subtly change something to keep me off balance.

See? Geeks do know about women. Just not very much.

Laser Harp

[evilviper]

Do not look into laser harp with remaining eye.