Oswald J. Castro Rivera: Thanks, Isaac Newton & Albert Einstein!

The universe is a highly complex and fascinating place. Everything is so intriguing and beautiful, starting from the things that today we already known up to the phenomena in nature that we do not understand yet and are a mystery to the human being. It is exciting to know how everything in the universe works so perfectly and in total harmony. Thanks to the study of physics and great scientists who devoted their lives to study the mysteries of the phenomena of nature, today we understand more about how everything works in the universe. 

                

The study of physics is extremely important and fascinating because basically everything that happens around us in our daily lives can be explained by the laws of physics. Also physics has been one of the most useful tools for humans to evolve. Even the technologies we use every day for transportation and our daily basis are thanks to the discoveries made by the physicists who dedicated their whole lives to the study of the natural phenomena in our planet and the entire universe. Is so amazing to know how things work around us and even more exciting, knowing why everything is so perfectly arranged in this way. 

               

Is interesting to know how Isaac Newton discovered many important laws of physics during his lifetime. For many people, he is considered the greatest genius that has existed in history. In an article I read some time ago I found that Isaac Newton was intrigued about the phenomena of nature more than anything, needless to say, he devoted much of his life studying it. He exposed many significant laws about physics and contributed with Gottfried Leibniz to the creation of the branch of mathematics known as calculus. Those findings helps greatly to the development of new technologies in today modern world and remain being the main useful tool for scientists and engineers, even though they were invented a long time ago.

               

Another story that I found inspirational is that of Albert Einstein. He was just a curious man that had the desire to understand more about the unknown. Sometime after, he become one of the most renowned physicists of our planet and even came to be considered a genius. One of the things that inspire me the most about him is that despite all of his failures during his life to explain the theory of relativity, he never gave up until he found a valid explanation and at the end with his perseverance he found it. 

               

In the articles and biographies that I have read during my life of some of the most prodigious physicists in history, I've noticed that curiosity and the desire to find answers to the unknown is basically the foundation of physics. The vast majority of these physicists were curious persons that liked understanding more about the mysteries of nature; even they were willing to sacrifice their entire lives just to accomplish their objectives of understanding more about it. With their perseverance and a lot of patience, they accomplished things that others could not do. We always see the great achievements of these great physicists and scientists, but rarely we look at the suffering and hard work that each one performed in order to achieve their goals.

             

Sometimes I think how our world would be today if any of these laws of physics and advanced math had not been discovered. Our present world would look a lot different than how it really looks today. Maybe we wouldn't have the methods of transportation we have today, or the technology that we use every day; we wouldn't know how the universe looks like or how it works, furthermore, humans would not be able to go outer space. We have to thank all of these geniuses that dedicated their time to find all this amazing discoveries.

Carynette Vega Quiñones: Picky Mirror

The sun, is constantly radiating light towards the Earth. This is our principal source of light, and is responsible of the perception of our surroundings. In places we don’t have the sun, humanity has created other artificial light sources. Mirrors reflects that light in a manner that, for incident light in a range of wavelengths, the reflected light has many or most detailed physical characteristics of the original light. Our ancestors used still water, or very polished minerals to see themselves, through the reflection of the light in those materials. In our daily lives, we encounter many mirrors. There is usually one in our room, in the bathrooms, cosmetics, and in our cars.

Many of our traditional mirrors contains a silvery layer (a metal, most of the times) that is the one that reflect the light. There are flat mirrors (reflecting the object as it is) and concave mirrors (which produce magnified images or diminished focus or simply distort the reflected image of the original object). The mirrors are also used in scientific apparatus such as telescopes, lasers, cameras and industrial machinery. Most mirrors are designed for visible light; however, mirrors designed for other wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation are also used. 

A new type of mirror is emerging, and it can reflect a desired single wavelength of light only. All others wavelength of light pass right through, without being reflected in it. This technology could be useful, not for the decorative and architectural purposes, but yes for other scientific issues; for example it could be used to make better satellite antennas. This mirror, is constructed of metamaterials, which are man-made materials that are made to have properties that materials found normally in the natural world do not exhibit. It was introduced in the March 6, 2015 Physical Review Letters, and it was created by Viktar Asadchy. 

Asadchy was born in Gomel, Belarus, in 1990. He received the Diploma degrees in physics from Gomel State University, and actually he is a researcher of Aalto University in Finland, department of electrical engineering. He and his team made this novel mirror, and consists of millimeter-sized loops of copper wire embedded in plastic. They discovered that by making different shapes with the wire provoke that particular wavelengths will be reflected by the mirror. Researchers illuminated the mirror with microwaves of 60-millimeter-wavelength microwaves. This microwaves induced a current through the wires, making them emit radiation that interacted with the other microwaves. By adjusting the sizes and shapes of the wires, the researchers could get the 60-millimeter-wavelength microwaves to reflect off the mirror at any angle. Microwaves at other wavelengths did not get reflected. The team also built a mirror that, can emulate a satellite television dish by reflecting and focusing microwaves toward a single point without the necessity of being curve. Viktar Asadchy future projections for this project are to create mirror with nano-sized wires that could reflect individual colors of visible light.

The material covered by the the mirror technology could help to take advantage of space in satellites, recollecting microwaves used for communication with Earth, but letting the sun’s light shine through, and could eventually replace expensive radio dishes used for communication, and astronomy. 

Bibliography

• http://adirondackdailyenterprise.com/page/content.detail/id/551249/The-new-picky-mirror.html?nav=5257

• http://meta.aalto.fi/people.html

• https://student.societyforscience.org/article/new-mirror-picky-what-it-reflects?mode=topic&context=6

• https://www.sciencenews.org/article/copper-wire-%E2%80%98metamirror%E2%80%99-reflects-selectively