Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Getting Technical Regarding Pesach

Let's get one last Passover post in, for those still observing the festival, here's a Passover greeting from the Technion in Israel:





And according to the write-up over on YouTube:

Drunk with Freedom, Technion students show you how to cross the Red Sea, and pour the wine for the Passover Seder. Dr. Bob's TechnoBrain engineering challenge (supported by Dr. Robert Shillman): to devise a machine that could cross a pool of water -- symbolizing the Red Sea -- fill a glass of wine to capacity and place it on the "Passover Seder table," all without human intervention.. Happy Passover to all!


And while we'e on the subject of the Israel Institute of Technology, another YouTube video on the subject of President Obama's visit to the Holy Land just before the start of the Passover holiday has the following write-up:

At the request of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Technion scientists help create a special gift in honor of President Barack Obama's visit to Israel. Replicas of the Declarations of Independence of the United States of America and the State of Israel are inscribed side by side on a nano-chip by scientists from Technion's Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute. The replicas were chiseled on a gold-coated silicon chip on an area 0.04mm2 by 0.00002mm, using a focused beam of gallium ions. The chip is affixed to a Jerusalem stone dating to the Second Temple period (1st century BCE to 1st century CE), used to seal clay vessels. Prof. Wayne Kaplan, Dean of Technion's Department of Materials Science and Engineering, takes you into the Dual-Beam Focused Ion Beam Lab and explains how this was done. Dr. Tzipi Cohen-Hyams is seen working on the nano-chip.

And here is the video itself:





Speaking of Passover, technology, and Obama, you may have missed Jon Stewart's bit on The Daily Show back on the first night of Passover, so take a gander, and a listen (warning, it is a bit racy and controversial):





Ah well, our religious celebrations may come to an end, but political issues can go on indefinitely. If nothing else, we can all pray for peace in this season of freedom! 


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