Credit Consumer Reports
It is common knowledge not to put metal in the microwave, but that s exactly what researchers at the University of Wyoming are doing.
TeYu Chien, a UW associate professor in physics and astronomy, said the goal of their experiment is to turn coal into graphite. He said graphite is the dark part of a pencil. It s also good at conducting electricity and it doesn t melt easily. That makes it a very useful material for things like batteries.
Chien said his team surrounded the coal with argon and hydrogen gas instead of normal air so it wouldn t burn. They also needed something else: a fork-shaped piece of copper.
Credit NASA Orion Spacecraft, CC-BY-NC 2.0, Creative Commons
Dr. Kent Montgomery, head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M-Commerce, considers the major space projects planned for 2021. One is the DART project, in which NASA and the Japanese space agency are sending a spacecraft to collide with an asteroid, as a way of developing a method of protecting Earth against a disastrous collision. Also, NASA will attempt to land an Orion space capsule on the moon, with plans to send astronauts back to the moon by 2024.
Listen