Oh, I had seen the Pitch Drop Experiment at the Ig Nobel Awards at some point. I think glass flows too, although even slower because the thickness variations aren't noticeable until windows get really old. The rest of the University of Queensland Physics Museum looks fun to browse too. It appears that the shouting at hard drives effect is real, huh? I agree with the posts pointing out that the behaviour of electrons in semiconductors is driven by quantum physics. But it's almost like how chemistry is really quantum too. When we say sodium has an extra electron in its outer shell and chlorine has a missing electron, the formation of salt is a quantum effect. I kind of took high school chemistry for what it was without questioning the reasons for why electrons behave the way they do. It's all about what level of abstraction is good enough for you. Computer scientists are fine working down to the logic gate or switch level of abstraction. As an electrical engineer, I got exposed to thinking about how those switches work down to the level of modelling the charge distribution and flow in a P-N junction. If I were more scientific, I'd want to know more about the quantum nature of electron availability. And we could drill further down to quarks, etc. But I think it remains true that you don't have to understand P-N junctions to understand how gates make up a computer and as Edwin pointed out you don't need to know quantum physics to accept the level of abstraction that semiconductor engineering involves until you get to the modern cutting edge. Alan, I'd love to write articles on Physics applied to daily life, breaking down concepts to be as simple as possible, but I get distracted by other projects like programming stuff. Thanks for the interest, though. It's motivation to bump it up on my list of tasks. I should start thinking about a list of important concepts and a map of in what order they should be presented. Maybe I should write case studies aimed at an audience who have had at least basic exposure to high school physics. It's hard to write good definitions of energy/work, power, heat. I remember having a hard time grasping Work = Force * distance and not Work = F * time. Pushing against an immovable object sure feels like work. But the value-add is in pointing out simple applications of basic physics, like answering the question, "What determines the minimum energy required to make a helicopter levitate?" Hint: think momentum/energy. There is no limit because the ideal chopper would m
