The physics of vert skating

This article originally appeared in @THEU “Would you consider Tony Hawk a physicist?” “I would consider Tony Hawk a physicist. If nothing else, he’s an intuitive scientist, right?” It looks like magic. When skateboarders launch off the lip of a vert ramp to fly into flips and spins, it appears they’re defying gravity. In fact, these […]

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Cutting through noise for better solar cells

As society moves towards a renewable energy future, it’s crucial that solar panels convert light into electricity as efficiently as possible. Some state-of-the-art solar cells are close to the theoretical maximum of efficiency—and physicists from the University of Utah and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin have figured out a way to make them even better.

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