The Li-ion battery as we know it, is going to have a major overhaul, if reports are to be believed. In a research work done by Northwestern University, this most common place battery used in pretty much every laptop and smartphone could be made to charge much faster and last much longer.

There is a major change in the design of the Li-Ion battery, which currently uses carbon-based graphene sheets, which have a limited capacity to hold Li ions. During charging of the battery, these free ions need to oscillate to and fro between anodes, and due to the limitation in capacity of graphene to hold more than one Li ion, the charge process takes place at a much slower rate.

The solution – Silicon. Silicon has more capacity to hold four Li ions, which is four times the amount that graphene can hold. Here is an excerpt of the methodology of creating a “shortcut” to charge Li-ion batteries faster. (from Wired’s article).

Silicon is the answer after all — it can hold a whopping four lithium atoms for every silicon atom — but carefully sandwiching clusters of it between the graphene sheets avoids the disastrous fragmentation problem. And by poking tiny holes (10 to 20 nanometeres wide) in the graphene, the lithium ions have a “shortcut” to the anode.

For the research report, visit Professor Kung’s page on NorthWestern University’s website here.

(via WIRED )

Thanks to the awesomeness of the interwebs, that we have managed to get hold of this amazing piece of sheer genius in motion. First of all, have a look at the image itself.

I call it – Trigonometry in Motion. [ Courtesy: Reddit ]

The idea here is that in the circle, if you look at the special angles i.e. 0, 30, 45, 60, 90 degrees etc. for the first positive quadrant, all these angles are some combination of 1/2 , sqrt (3)/2 and sqrt(2)/2. And these keep oscillating amongst the special angles.

Or the easy way to remember this back in the days was SOH-CAH-TOA. As in, Sin = Opposite / Hypotenuse, Cos = Angle / Hypotenuse, Tan = Opposite / Anlge.

And now let’s go for a geek nitro booster after the jump.

I call it – Harmonic motion Hyper-drive. [ Courtesy: Reddit.com]

The circular 2d figure on the bottom is Uniform Circular Motion, and the top figure is its projection into 1d space (otherwise known as Simple Harmonic Motion aka SHM). This is a great application calculus and trigonometry – note that the derivative of a sine wave is another sine wave (with the same frequency but a different phase and amplitude).

Deep stuff! Go get some beer for me now!

So with the WWDC wrapping up and no signs of the new iPhone release from Palo Alto, the internet has been buzzing with images of possible hardware designs of the new iPhone 5. Could this be it?

[Click the image for a larger picture ]

The new features listed on the above pic speculates what the new iPhone would include:

• An OLED Screen
• 64 GB Capacity
• 1.2 Ghz processr
• 5.2 Megapixel camera
• 4G Data Speed (Quite unlikely)
• iOS 5

Place your bets.

This is a wicked video filmed by Tom Guilmette, with a Phantom Flex high speed digital cinema camera. The amazing slow-mo is captured at a jaw dropping 2,564 frames per second. Have a look at it for yourself. Just a spellbinding video.

ThePhantom Flex 1080p ProRes file is also available for download at: tomguilmette.com/​archives/​1986

An awesome piece of work done by onlineducation.et. This one is a compilation of how much transaction happens on the internet in a single day. Excellent paralles have been drawn to compare the sheer size of such transactions. My favourite one is of course this: -

For the full statistics image, click here:

Some of the other interesting statistics is that approximately 700,000 users join Facebook every day, which is equivalent to the population of Guyana.

Here’s an interesting infographic of the impact of the Swine Flu pandemic. This infographic tabulates the death toll in various regions and also compares it with other more common reasons of death. This data was collected over 300 days which recorded almost 50 million deaths, out of which only 5,850 were caused due to Swine Flu. It doesn’t take a Math expert to calculate that the proportion of Swine Flu deaths is just a bit greater than 0.01%. Click the pic below to view the larger version.

So, we all know how awesome ‘The Social Network’ was. The posters were amazing, the trailers kept the anticipation levels on a high, and the final product was inspiring, sad, jubilant, and awesome, awesome, awesome. Of course, a movie about social network giant – Facebook, is inevitable to spawn memes across the internet. And this one is a mashup of Tom, creator of Myspace, and the Social Network poster.

Please feel free to share this post using the sharing buttons below . Cheerio!

The following infographic is quite true in most respects. Given the fact that we spend most of our online time interacting with people who we never seem to interact physically, over social networks of different flavours and privacy labels. Do you agree?

via: Stormborn