What do electrons and neutrons look like? How exactly are they arranged in various atoms? With the Atom Visualizer app from Signal Garden Research, you can learn more about atoms in Augmented Reality. This interesting app is just one of the many new updates that made news in the world of tech and science this week.
The OnePlus 10 is here
OnePlus officially launched its next big flagship, the OnePlus 10 Pro, in China earlier this week for an estimated CNY4,699 (approximately ₹54,500). The OnePlus 10 Pro ships with the latest Snapdragon chipset from Qualcomm. Apart from 80W fast charging and a massive 5,000 mAh battery, the OnePlus 10 Pro features a 6.7-inch curved AMOLED display with a dynamic refresh rate between 1Hz and 120Hz. OnePlus has also continued its association with the German camera brand Hasselblad and the new smartphone features a triple-camera setup. OnePlus founder Pete Lau tweeted about the phone as well, describing it as a “well-rounded flagship” and detailing more device specifications.
A game-changing organ transplant?
A 57-year-old US man, David Bennett, became the first person in the world to get a heart transplant from a genetically-modified pig this week when doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center carried out the life-saving surgery to fix a terminal heart issue. According to an AFP report, the pig used in the transplant was genetically modified to exclude several genes that would have led to the organ being rejected by the recipient’s body. Could this perhaps be the first step in addressing the global organ shortage crisis?
Also read: This week in tech: From Pokémon Go to the Parker Solar Probe
A mask's true colours
Razer, the Singaporean-American company known for its gaming hardware, debuted a base model and a pro version of its Zephyr mask at the recently concluded CES 2022 in Las Vegas, US. It’s not just a mask—it’s wearable air-purification technology, says the company. Its replaceable filters purify both inhaled and exhaled air, and it has inbuilt fans that direct fresh air to your nose and mouth, as well as a transparent front-end with anti-fog coating and interior lights that can be customised using a connected app. Plus, the Pro version comes with voice amplification to ensure that the mask doesn’t muffle your voice. For more, visit Razer.com
A Wordle a day
If you are not sharing your Wordle results every day, are you even online? The free word puzzle hosted on a nondescript website was built by American software engineer Josh Wardle to entertain his girlfriend during lockdowns, and has gone viral, hitting two million players worldwide sometime last week. There are many reasons Wordle is as popular as it is—it’s challenging but guessable, it’s free, it’s immensely shareable, and it’s just one puzzle a day, leading to a build-up of anticipation that feels novel in the age of on-demand everything and word puzzle apps that provide an unending supply of games. In a world of instant gratification, Wordle is quaint and old world, and that’s its allure.
See the world at the atomic level with this app
Particle and nuclear physics are notoriously difficult to grasp, partly because of the difficulties in visualising the physical structure of atomic and sub-atomic particles. What do electrons, protons and neutrons look like? How exactly are they arranged in various atoms? How is an hydrogen atom different from an atom of oxygen? This is where the Atom Visualizer app from Signal Garden Research comes in. The app enables you to see and explore atomic models in Augmented Reality (AR); if you have an Android device with Google ARCore, and most new Android phones do, you can use the app to “see” the atomic structures of elements that make up everyday objects using your phone camera. Atom Visualizer uses AR to create 3D animated visualisations of elements using two models: The Bohr model, which presents the atom as a nucleus with orbiting electrons, and the quantum mechanical model, which presents the atom with an electron cloud. You can switch between the two and even learn more about the elements through Wikipedia links.
Also read: In search of the ‘bitful’ life
