This summer Google ran an online course called Power Searching with Google. The
course was so popular that Peter
Norvig and the Research at
Google people who created it decided to generalize the course code and framework,
and make it into Course
Builder, an open source project that’s now available. The Research team points out
that Course Builder is an experiment, and there’s a lot of work still to be done, but if
you’re interested in this approach, you can join a bunch of
schools that are considering using Course Builder.
Speaking of research, you might think that we have little new to learn about the very basic
task of boiling water, but of course that’s not true. Researchers at several schools around
the world recently collaborated to produce a way to boil water without
producing bubbles.
This discovery has many potential practical applications. It could be used to prevent vapor
buildup that can cause explosions, or could even lead to discoveries of ways to reduce surface
drag or prevent frost from forming. But most important, it’s really, really cool.
Finally, here’s a fun new Easter egg (or is it a valuable new search tool?). In a Google
search box, enter the name of your favorite actor, followed by Bacon
number. (If you’re unfamiliar with the Bacon number phenomenon, you can find out
more.) Maybe you’ll get some ideas about movies to see over the weekend!
Each week our Fridaygram
presents cool things from Google and elsewhere that you might not have heard about. Some
Fridaygram items aren't related to developer topics, but all of them are interesting to us
nerds. For extra credit this week, you can check into the small set of people who have a
defined Erdős–Bacon
number.
