According to one of my physics lecturers, citing wikipedia [confirmed], using a small fraction of niobium in a steel alloy makes it much stronger (I think he said 10x).
According to another guy in the same class, there are new stab/bullet/everything proof vests being developed using merino wool and other things. Apparently they can only sew this very slowly to avoid wrecking the needles. This has important connotations. Firstly, NZ, with it's high number of sheep has the potential to become an economic powerhouse because of this. The second, and potentially more deadly, is that how long will it be before we get stab proof sheep? You thought those sheep were so cute, well, I for one welcome our new woolly overlords.
Next, have you heard of the new search engine-style thing, Wolfram|Alpha? Well, at our youth group planning meeting tonight, it came up in conversation, and apparently it can tell you how many fish are in the ocean. I just tried this, and it states
\inline 2 \times 10^9 metric tons. It also lists all the approximations it made along the way. This wasn't quite what I was expecting, as it didn't tell you the actual number of fish, and more importantly, it misspelt tonne. I then asked for the average weight of a fish, which failed so I see why it can't answer.
The other thing I tried in it previously, was to ask how many basketballs would fit in the ocean, which failed. Trying to find the fault, I asked what the volume of a basketball was, which failed, though it did manage to answer the much more difficult, "What is the volume of the ocean?" Ah well, give it time and it's sure to be able to answer a whole lot more trivial questions.
Lastly, I got this somewhat cryptic text message today, "Oposite spin to strange?" Your job is to answer it (I texted back the answer as soon as I read the message, was part of a pub quiz apparently). Hint: Subatomic particles.
I hope you found those as amusing as I did.
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