In anticipation for the announcements of the Nobel Prize 2017, we will finish up the stories behind the particles included in the Nobel Prize Collection reflective slap bracelet. If you missed the beginning, go here for part 1.
Reflective slap bracelet with the Particle Zoo Nobel Prize collection of elementary particles.
1988 – The Muon Neutrino
Colleagues Leon M. Lederman, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger shared the Nobel Prize “for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino“. Neutrinos have no charge, very little mass and limited willingness to interact with and leave tracks in particle detectors. The research trio used a multistep process to produce a neutrino beam by creating showers of pi mesons from a proton beam and then let the mesons decay in layers of thick battleship steel. …
For our fellow science nerds around the world, we teamed up with The Particle Zoo and designed an ultra-reflective slap bracelet with elementary particles related to the Nobel Prize in physics. Order it in here webshop, or in our German webshop. In our previous blog post, we discussed the significance of the Photon (1921), the Neutron (1935) and the Electron magnetic moment (1955). That means we are up to the antiproton!
Two difference views of the reflective slap bracelet with the Particle Zoo Nobel Prize collection of elementary particles.
1959 – The Antiproton
Emilio Gino Segrè and Owen Chamberlain “for their discovery of the antiproton”. An antiparticle is a “mirror image twin” of the particle and Paul Dirac’s theory predicted every particle has its antiparticle. The positron, the antiparticle of the electron, had been discovered in 1932 but the creation of the antiproton, required a more powerful machine followed by new techniques to detect and measure the result. They announced the discovery of the antiproton in 1955. Read more here> and here>.
Celebrate groundbreaking research in high-energy physics with this collection of happy elementary particles from discoveries that brought home the Nobel Prize. In cooperation with the ParticleZoo, we have created a highly reflective slap bracelet (order it here) that doubles as a cheat sheet for Nobel Prize trivia while waiting for the 2017 Nobel Prize announcements.
Reflective slap bracelet with the Particle Zoo Nobel Prize collection of elementary particles.
The Particle Zoo Nobel Prize Collection
For the curious, the Nobel Prize website lists all awarded prizes and below are the first three selected for our reflective slap bracelet:
1921 – The Photon
Albert Einstein was awarded “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”. Electromagnetic radiation, which is visible light, infrared, ultraviolet, radio waves, radar, x-rays, microwaves, etc. behaves both as a wave and a particle, the photon. When light (photons) hit a metal plate, they knock out electrons from their atoms. That is called the photoelectric effect and the emitted electrons are called photoelectrons.
Today is a special Canada Day, the 150th anniversary of the enactment of the Constitution Act. To celebrate, we have launched a Canada safety reflector in our webshop! It will be available online in Canada later this summer. We are excited that our funflector safety reflectors have been so well received in Canada and are looking forward to help more Canadians around the world stay visible in the dark.
Safety Reflectors with Canada maple leaf design
The Constitution Act laid the foundation for Canada in 1867, the first Dominion within the British Empire with four provinces; Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. …
Musicians and music lovers are at double risk ending up in nighttime pedestrian crashes. 1. They are mostly dressed in black. 2. They often head homewards in the dark after evening concerts and rehearsals. Obviously, these things won’t change, so the easiest solution is to add some reflective gear that fits right in. A black treble clef safety reflector is stylish and blends in with any black outfits. It can hang on instrument cases, jackets, purses, backpacks and bags.
Treble clef safety reflector looks good on a violin case.
Treble clef safety reflector on violin case increase visibility up to 500 feet (125m) at night.
Then in nighttime traffic, it puts its wearer in the spotlight with its reflective power. Thanks to a unique manufacturing technique, …
Eons ago, when we were still at the research stage for all that we do today, we needed to choose a brand name. All we had, was a handful of safety reflector samples from a manufacturer and some ideas and advice. Today, on the anniversary of finding our funflector brand name, we would like to share some ideas we had on how to choose a brand name that cut through the noise on search engines and help you build your own niche. These were our criteria:
The brand name needed to be different from our business name, the newly registered funflector.com LLC
The brand name needed to be available as a .com domain
The brand name should not be a normal word or series of words as it would be hard to find our products when using the brand name in search engines.
The brand name needed to be reasonably short so the URL was easy to read, remember and type.
The brand name needed to flow and be easy to pronounce and spell in American English. Having lived in Sweden, Germany and France in addition to the US, we had plenty of impossible names to draw from.
Of course, the brand name must not be offensive, obscene or disrespectful.
Lastly, it would be nice if the brand name described the product.
We came up with gazillions of ideas, and some we believed in enough to test in google. For most, however googling was the end until March 15th. That’s when when we typed in funflector.
A perfect brand name – no confusion with existing brands or words!
The result: “Your search – funflector – did not match any documents.” Yes! In that very moment we knew we had chosen a great brand name!Try that today and see how many hits you get!
So, that’s our story on how to choose a brand name!
A couple of weeks later, as we were about to submit trademark registration for funflector, we listened to a webinar about branding. They talked about how many of the best brand names were made up from two normal words smushed together into one name. And that was exactly how we had turned “fun reflector” into funflector!
We still love our brand name and it keeps serving us well.
What’s your favorite advice when it comes to brand creation? Please comment below! Elisabeth
Without getting a chance to breath after the holidays, endless store shelves are already filled with red and pink Valentine Day’s gifts. It can easily be overwhelming and just a bit too sugary. If you are looking for a useful and thoughtful Valentine’s gift idea, this piece of rainbow striped eye candy might be just that. It is absolutely sugar-free and instead it brings safety and a piece of mind. It is super easy to send as a gift with a greeting card. Who would you not want to surprise with a loving heart any day of the year?
Looking for a thoughtful Valentine’s gift?
A heart shaped safety reflector is a perfect Valentine’s gift idea.
Funflector safety reflectors are thin, soft and lightweight and make great gifts and a-little-somehting to gift all seasons of the year. With the signature color matching ball chains, the funflector safety reflector can be hung in many places, zipper pulls on bags and jackets, on strollers and wheelchairs. Love your dog? Giv it a dangling safety reflector on its collar to help drivers see it. Love your kids? Give them a safety reflector (or two) for their backpacks and jackets so the early morning school bus driver can see them clearly. College students need reflectors too! Love your mom? Give her a safety reflector for her purse or jacket. Love your grandpa? Give him a safety reflector for his walker or jacket. Love coffee? Give yourself a coffee themed safety reflector! Because it is better to be seen than sorry… Happy Valentine’s Day! ❤️
Halloween is just a week away and it’s time not just to plan costumes and decoration but also to prep your teens and kids for a safe and fun night. Drivers not seeing trick-or-treaters is the number one halloween safety concern that should be on every adult’s mind this week. It is not too late to order funflector reflectors, ultra-bright Halloween reflectors that are fun and stylish. The Ninja and Ninja star safety reflectors are sailing up as our best sellers this year! From now to Halloween, we’ll promise to get any orders out our door within 24 hours.
Meet and greet the Gravitational Wave safety reflector. Design by the Particle Zoo.
On February 11, 2016, scientists of the LIGO collaboration sent ripples through the scientific community with the announcement of the detection of a gravitational wave. Gravitational waves are released from collisions of black holes, supernovae and even the remnants of radiation created by the birth of the Universe. It’s a story of bright brains, the unimaginably huge, the extremely tiny, and human persistence. Einstein predicted them 100 years ago but never expected anyone to be able to measure the tiny effect.
Gravitational Wave Safety Reflector
The remarkable discovery inspired the Particle Zoo to design a Gravitational Wave for the Particle Zoo collection. We are very excited to introduce it and you can find it in the funflector webshop. It is actually the first in the collection to be released as a safety reflector before existing as a plushie 🙂
So, what’s the big deal with gravitational waves?
Imagine 1.3 billion years ago, two black holes, about 29 and 36 times the mass of the sun, dancing around each other several times per second before merging into one black hole. Within a couple seconds, they release the energy equivlant of 3 suns worth of mass. That energy is spread around the universe in a gravitational wave and ripped through the LIGO detectors in September 14, 2015 during an engineering run. With two 4 km (2.5 miles) arms with state of the art vacuum chambers and laser beams, a distortion the size of 1/1000 of the diameter of a proton was detected. The 1000 scientists and engineers could hardly believe how lucky they were and for several months turned every stone to make sure it was a real event and not just a fault in the equipment or software. In December last year, they detected a second event. Below is a nice 6-minute explanation by awesome Neil deGrasse Tyson of the physics behind and the magnitude of the discovery.
Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Einstein’s Gravitational Waves Theory
Like many new discoveries, the detectors are miracles of engineering and the team had to push technology to new hights to accomplish the new discoveries. If you want to dive deep into both physics and technology, this hour long lecture on Gravitational Waves from SLAC is a good start.
Dr. Brian Lantz taking about “Gravitational Waves – The Sound of Black Holes Colliding”, courtesy of SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
I remember learning about the LIGO experiment while taking a class in relativity in college. At that time, it seemed like they aimed for a very lofty goal, so I was thrilled to read about the discovery back in February. Although I’m not pursuing physics research anymore, it’s fun to circle back and provide friends, former colleges, physicists and other scientists with some unique and very niched physics related safety reflectors for jackets, bags and backpacks. I know firsthand how easy it is to lose track of the time and not get out of the lab until way later (after sunset) than planned…
Like most everything else, not all reflectors are created equal. You can buy “reflective gear” and “safety reflectors” and yes, or course, they all reflect – at least a little bit. But how do you know if they reflect enough? You want the Volvo, not the Trabant when it comes to the safety of yourself and your loved ones, but how do you know which is which? Let’s take a look at two reflective slap bracelets/slap wraps, both with a black and white pattern, but made with different manufacturing techniques and different reflective materials. The striped one, we found online, while the other one is “Baroque” from our own webshop.
Diagonal stripes printed ON the reflective surface while the baroque pattern of the funflector wrap is printed on the material UNDER the 3M Scotchlite material. Surprised about the result?
How is the safety reflector printed?
As you can see in the image, the two safety reflectors may look similar, but the way they are manufactured are vastly different. The striped one is made in bulk and then printed with logos and patterns as orders come in. But what happens if you print on top of the reflective material? Well, obviously, you loose reflective power where the ink is as you can see in the image. The funflector wrap, on the other hand, has been assembled with a printed material that goes UNDER the reflective layer. That way you can get as much colors/prints as you want, and the entire surface is still totally reflective. Obviously, this makes manufacturing more complicated as the sealing machine needs to be fired up for each order. You can tell the difference by wiggling the reflector and see if the clarity of the print looks different depending on the angle. If the clarity changes, then you know that the microprism layer is on top of the print and will reflect the car headlights back to the drivers to its fullest capacity. Learn more in one of our previous posts.
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