Physicists Design Wormlike, Limbless Robots to Navigate Obstacle Courses, Aid in Search and Rescue Efforts

Ph.D. Robotics Student in Robotics Tianyu Wang and Postdoctoral Physics Scholar Christopher Pierce are developing snakelike, limbless robots. The robots could come in handy in search-and-rescue situations, where they could navigate collapsed buildings to find and assist survivors — and could readily move through confined and cluttered spaces such as debris fields, where walking or wheeled robots and human rescuers tend to fail.

Georgia Tech students to travel to Missouri to see solar eclipse

Georgia Tech students associated with the Astronomy Club are traveling to Missouri in order to be in the path of totality for the April 8 solar eclipse. The path of totality is the prime spot for viewing the moon travel between the Earth and the Sun.

Floating Robot Self-Propels via Oscillations near a Boundary

A recent publication from the group of Prof. Dan Goldman made it to the Cover of Physical Review Letters vol. 132, issue 8 (https://journals.aps.org/prl/covers/132/8). The research article “Probing Hydrodynamic Fluctuation-Induced Forces with an Oscillating Robot”, by Steven W. Tarr, Joseph S. Brunner, Daniel Soto, and Daniel I. Goldman, Phys. Rev. Lett.

Of a Frog’s Slap Shot and Saliva

You never know when a frog playing an electronic game will lead to an experiment on the physics of saliva....Alexis C. Noel, a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech, and her supervisor, David L. Hu, were watching a viral YouTube video in which a frog is attacking the screen of a smartphone running an ant-smashing game. It appears to be winning.

Physics of poo: Why it takes you and an elephant the same amount of time

Somebody give David Hu's graduate and undergraduate students medals for bravery -- and maybe some hazmat suits. Hu, an associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and an adjunct associate professor in the School of Physics, is a 2015 Ig Nobel Prize winner for his "urination duration" research, and he and his intrepid fluid dynamics team have also gotten hands-on (yuck) with frog saliva.

All hail the bee

This story does indeed sing the praises of the humble honeybee, focusing on special Atlanta projects designed to study and provide homes for our four-winged pollen pals. One of those is the Georgia Tech Urban Honeybee Project, located on the roof of Clough Undergraduate Learning Center. That's where Jennifer Leavey, program director and senior academic professional in the School of Biological Sciences, rules the hives.

How fire ants use their bodies to build wriggling Eiffel Tower-like columns

New research focusing on the remarkable tower-building abilities of fire ants continues to attract attention from top media outlets, such as this story from the Washington Post. Also, study co-author Craig Tovey, a professor in the H.

Ants Exhibit Towering Engineering Skills

It's a story right up Science Friday's alley: the remarkable ability of fire ants to build soaring towers out of their own bodies. The new research from School of Biological Sciences Associate Professor David Hu gives public radio host Ira Flatow a chance to ask Hu not only about ant engineering, but also about what a fellow Tech professor thought when things got a little antsy in his office

Ants, Dutiful Escape Artists, Build Towers in Constant Flux

When fire ants studied by David Hu escaped his Georgia Tech lab and invaded a nearby professor's office, their method of breaking out – building an Eiffel Tower-shaped structure out of their own bodies – became part of Hu's research.

8 places to view the solar eclipse in metro Atlanta

The word is getting out; Georgia Tech has a full afternoon of activities planned for the solar eclipse on Monday, Aug. 21, which also happens to be the first day of classes for the fall semester.

Pages

Subscribe to School of Physics RSS