Wednesday, June 07, 2006

A sixth sense...why not a magnetic one?

Wired (by way of Gizmodo) has an interesting article on some people (well grad students, anyway) installing magnets in their finger tips to extend the number of fundamental forces we can sense.

Hey, not to be too pedantic, but how many can we? We can sense acceleration, and hence gravity (according to Einstein, not Newton). Can we sense electromagnetism? If we rub something, we can feel the friction (both the heat and movement of our skin). But friction is, at the fundamental level, E&M.