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CERN explains what antimatter is really about.
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"As with many similarly well-worn discussions, Iâd just as soon review the available lines of argument about why secular or atheistic thinkers perhaps should have an interest in religion or spirituality which goes beyond being resolutely hostile, which takes religion to be an interesting subject to investigate with an open mind (rather than just finding new ways to arrive at familiar criticisms). Any of these lines of argument has its own shortcomings, and none of them seem to me to prevent strong criticisms of some or all religions, but all of them seem to me to provide some intellectual texture and complexity lacking from recent âmuscular atheismâ of the Dawkins-Hitchens type. Itâs not that they donât consider some of these lines of argument, but that they simply see them as speedbumps on the road to the crusade"
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Maybe you have seen this trick. Basically, you hold by supporting it with two fingers from the bottom. You then move your hand around to keep it balanced while the stick is vertical. It is really not as hard as it looks. Also, there are two things that can make your job easier. Use a longer stick, or add an extra mass at the end of the stick. Here is a video of me demonstrating this.
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Watching Tom Hanks talk about his visit to CERN in his Daily Show interview last week was pretty hilarious.
The thing I love about balancing a stick is that for some reason -- despite my physics training and several years of teaching lower-division college physics -- I still expect that the *longer* the stick is, or the *more* mass that is up high, the *harder* it will be to balance. Instead, the exact opposite is true!
I suspect that my intuition is based on the experience of statically balancing objects on the floor or some other support. In this case, the taller the object is and the higher its mass, the trickier it is to make sure that the center of mass is directly over the base. But when you are dynamically moving the support around to keep it balanced, this doesn't matter so much, and instead you just want it to fall slowly so you have time to react.