
Electric honeycomb: Pakistani teen in scientific first - meigwilym
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-41548203
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twic
There are all sorts of striking phenomena out there that haven't been looked
at. I will never forget the first time i looked down a microscope and saw a
polygonal actin network in a cell. Like this stuff on the left, with the cells
on the right being more normal:

[http://iovs.arvojournals.org/data/Journals/IOVS/933248/m_z7g...](http://iovs.arvojournals.org/data/Journals/IOVS/933248/m_z7g9991119760007.jpeg)

They aren't in any textbook. My supervisor, a cytoskeleton biologist of many
years' experience, had never seen them before. Nobody seemed to know what they
were, or why they had decided to form in my cells that day. I tracked down a
few mentions of them in the literature, stretching back decades, but this is
the only paper i've found that really looks at them with modern tools:

[http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleHtml/2009/IB/b818874b](http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleHtml/2009/IB/b818874b)

Perhaps the most interesting thing was that nobody seemed very interested in
investigating them. They weren't related to anyone's existing research
programmes, so they weren't worth it!

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Mizza
I really hope ArsTechnica covers this, because I didn't get anything of value
from this BBC article, but I'd like to know more about the phenomenon and
whatever "shadowgraphy" is!

~~~
junkcollector
Shadowgraphy is a method of measuring distortion or flow in a fluid by shining
a light through it and photographing the shadow. Very useful in studying heat,
shockwaves, and turbulence.

See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowgraph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowgraph)

Penn State did a lot of pioneering work in and with this technique.

~~~
roymurdock
In this case it looks like he puts objects in the way of the electric field,
creating and measuring the resulting "ion shadows" through thermal and
Schlieren photography:

 _To further strengthen the role of surface charges as the key ingredient
responsible for the RWI, we shield part of the oil surface from charge
accumulation by creating an ion shadow. An ion shadow forms when an object
blocks the path of the charged ions towards the surface of the oil. Even thin
objects, like paper, are sufficient to produce a sharp shadow that inhibits
charge accumulation on the oil surface. In the absence of surface charges the
instability is locally inhibited, as evident from figure 11. Even metal
objects produce the same effect when placed in the path of the charged ions.
Using Schlieren photography (figure 12), we imaged the corona streamer which
shows that the streamer and gas flow stay roughly the same size as the needle
diameter, while the instability continues to occur at a larger radius._

As you note, Schlieren photography "uses light from a single collimated source
shining on, or from behind, a target object. Variations in refractive index
caused by density gradients in the fluid distort the collimated light beam.
This distortion creates a spatial variation in the intensity of the light,
which can be visualised directly with a shadowgraph system."

Basically the point charge is like the sun emitting light (ions) and if you
put something in the way of the grounding plate, you get a shadow (local
inhibition of the instability pattern).

Check out the pics on the Schlieren photography page, they're cool:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieren_photography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieren_photography)

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donquichotte
Does anybody know more about this "electric honeycomb" phenomenon? All google
search results on the first two pages lead to articles about Niazi and I find
it difficult to understand the underlying physics from the article. Especially
this quote, out of context, is difficult to parse for me:

> "The amount of energy that goes in equals the energy that comes out and thus
> the flow of electricity is efficient. This way equilibrium is restored,"

EDIT: his paper:
[http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/4/10/170503](http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/4/10/170503)

~~~
giancarlostoro
Sounds like he's the guy starting the research / work on it if you cannot find
anything else on the matter. Not sure if anyone else is, though others might
further inspect his claims by independent tests.

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hd4
Being of Pakistani origin, I'm actually glad that the fact that this is a
Pakistani kid has been mostly not remarked on and the focus has been on the
science. It goes some way to normalising the existence of Pakistan as a place
where people can make scientific achievements and where it's not always bad
news. Well done kid.

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ggggtez
The article yesterday claimed scientists have known about this since the 70s.

~~~
vidarh
Both articles says they've know about it for decades, but both articles also
explain what is new: That's he appears to have obtained photographic evidence
of the ion movements that forms the honeycomb and recorded the heat generated.

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BeetleB
From the pictures in the journal article, looks like he used an Arduino. Would
be awesome if he posted the sketch somewhere...

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elymar
Snoop's long lost son?

