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Tag: STEM Cafes
Campus snowball fun – Winter 2013
Last year’s polar vortex caused some of the most severe winter weather Illinois has seen in the past 50 years, and the recent cold snap has everyone wondering what this winter will bring. Is the polar vortex part of global warming or proof that it doesn’t exist? STEM Café invites you to find out at...
What does physics have to do with football? Find out Tuesday, Oct. 28, when STEM Café presents “Even More Physics of Football.” This encore presentation of the crowd-pleasing “Physics of Football” presentation will provide a thought-provoking look into the science behind one of our country’s most popular and physical sports. Armchair quarterbacks and science geeks...
Juwan Brescacin
Everyone knows that football is a physical game, but few people stop to think about the actual physics behind it. Newton’s laws describe football players on the field just as well as carts on a track or balls rolling down ramps. And what better way to gain an understanding of bodies in motion than to...
This NASA Hubble Telescope image captured the birth of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud Galaxy, a near neighbor of the Milky Way.
Looking for a spectacular summer show? Look no further than the night sky. In mid-August, the annual Perseid meteor shower will radiate from the Perseus constellation and appear throughout the sky and NIU’s STEM Café will once again be there to watch it. From 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 12, STEM Café will present...
Mmmmmm ... Two Brothers beer ...
How do breweries produce the same beer, batch after batch, pint after pint, without variations in flavor and color? Flavor is both an art and a science, and it turns out that there’s a highly trained biologist behind every bottle of your favorite beer. From 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 15, NIU’s STEM Café...
STEM Cafe logo: Feed your mind!
Northern Illinois University physics professor Dhiman Chakraborty is preparing to reprise his popular talk on the mysterious Higgs boson for the DeKalb community. For decades, the Higgs boson was the holy grail of particle physics. Its detection confirms the existence of the Higgs field, which permeates the universe and gives particles mass. Without the Higgs...
An image of the brain
Imagine that while walking through your neighborhood you could remember everything about your house – the address, the color, the reflecting ball in your garden – but you couldn’t remember how to get home. This neurological impairment is called spatial disorientation, and it’s the reason that people with Alzheimer’s disease frequently get lost in their...
Famously dubbed the “God particle,” the Higgs boson took thousands of scientists nearly five decades to discover, at a cost that one journalist estimated at $13.25 billion. Over the past 18 months, there has been plenty of hype about “the Higgs,” beginning with the boson’s discovery in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN...
Image of a drone
When most people hear the word “drone,” they think of covert military airstrikes, but proponents of autonomous systems see them becoming a part of everyday life. Experts have proposed their use in everything from aerial art to pizza delivery. At 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 12, NIU STEM Outreach invites community members to learn more about...
Photo of a credit card with a golden gift bow
An Irish pub might be the last place you’d expect to learn about your finances, but Northern Illinois University is ready to change that perception with a fun and innovative program called “Money Math: Using Credit Wisely.” This free community event will be held at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 23, at Claddagh Irish Pub, 1702...
Genetically modified crops have been grown in the United States for decades, but they remain controversial. Are these crops the answer to world hunger? Good for the environment? Safe to eat? NIU’s STEM Café will address the topic, “Miracle Crops or Frankenfoods,” at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 19, at Taxco Restaurant, 223 W. State St....
STEM Cafe logo: Feed your mind!
You might have heard that spider’s silk is one of the strongest materials in the natural world, but did you know that scientists are working to develop genetically-engineered goats that can produce a spider-like silk in their milk? That’s just one of the weird and fascinating things happening in the world of materials science, a...
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