Hurricane Sandy has projected wind speeds that heighten at about 90 mph.
So lets say some poor fool decides to go to the beach with this wind but not much rain, and stands observing 1 meter away from where the sand begins. It's pretty plausible that 90 mph winds could get a grain of sand moving, but how dangerous is that grain of sand?
Well, lets say it takes the whole meter for the sand to get up to speed, and its final velocity is 90 mph just before it hits you. This is a velocity of
Sadly I still can't figure out how to embed a video and more likely than not no one will watch it if its a URL so a picture will have to do!
This odd goop is called non-newtonian fluid. A newtonian fluid has a stress vs strain curve that is linear and passes through the origin, showing it has a constant viscocity. With a non-netonian fluid, it follows no such rules, and it's viscocity can change depending on stress, strain, time, or all of the above.
A simple example is this oobleck seen a
We've all seen a coffee mug that changes color when you put your warm coffee in it. Most certainly they're pretty cool looking, but I noticed they don't serve the primary job of a coffee mug--to hold your coffee and keep it warm as long as possible.
At first I thought my coffee might have been going cold so quickly simply because the mug had a larger diameter than my others, making there more exposed surface area for the hot coffee to conduct heat to the cooler surroundings. However, I have
I know, first I talk about teleportation, and now I'm talking about time travel. Alright, I'll admit it, I'm a Whovian. Huge Doctor Who dweeb, so yes, that's where a lot of my inspiration is coming from.
Regardless of my inspiration, it's not really so strange to think about time travel--what would you do if you could travel in time, when would you go? Ancient history? Your history? Eons in the future?
Furthermore, I'd think you a raging liar if you tried to tell me you've never wondered if
When a third grader was asked to cite Newton's first law, she said, "Bodies in motion remain in motion, and bodies at rest stay in bed unless their mothers call them to get up."
Q: What is the name of the first electricity detective?
A: Sherlock Ohms
A neutron walked into a bar and asked, "How much for a drink?" The bartender replied, "For you, no charge."
Have you heard that entropy isn't what it used to be?
Q: How many theoretical physicists specializing in general relativity does
It's rather crazy to be writing my last ever physics C blog post... I feel as though this day has always seemed so far away.
Now that I'm all reminiscent and whatnot, what better to blog about than a reflection on the course?
First and foremost, it was hard. At least for me. I felt as though all year I was struggling to grasp everything that everyone seemed to get so easily and had to fight ten times harder to get to the same point. The course frustrated me countless times, and I've never
So lets say you're feeling crazy and want to wear some heels.
Now you're about 135 pounds, the average weight of a female. That's approximately 61.2 kg. Multiply that by the constant of our friend gravity, and your body exerts a force of about 600N. Granted, this is split up between two feet unless you've had a tragic incident lately, so your foot feels about 300N of force just from standing.
So lets look at it in terms of pressure, psi, pounds per square inch...or rather kg per square i
Have you ever had someone point something out to you, and then you notice it EVERYWHERE?
In the middle of my second year of physics, I'm starting to feel the torture that is physics phever--it's everywhere!
When you decide which shoes to where, you can look at style, or you can look at comfort. If you look at style, you're looking at texture (which we can detect because of our sense of touch, which isn't REALLY touching but our sense of the repellent force of the electrons in our body with
Essentially wind turbines work to take the rotational energy of the turbine blades, and use a spinning shaft to convert that energy into electricity.
The blades are curved unevenly to make a change in air pressure, which causes them to spin when wind hits them, just like an airplane wing. These blades are connected to a spinning shaft, which is connected to a series of gears that amp up the rpm's. This is connected to a generator, which translates the rotation into electrical energy.
A ge
So lets face it, our catapult was awesome. Even if it didn't shoot 80 yards, the fact that we used garage door springs made up for it.
But to the physics!
Whilst reflecting on our design, I remembered that we had taken our current unit--impulse to be more specific--into account when making the catapult. We knew that the force from the springs would be pretty huge, make a pretty big velocity for the arm, so the stopper to make it launch at a 45 degree angle would feel some serious force, a
We've all seen transition lenses before, but how do they work?
This is purely theoretical on my part, I have no idea how they actually work. But my knowledge of physics leads me to some pretty plausible conclusions.
We all know how excited electrons work, and a lot of things can happen as a result of the expended energy when these electrons return back to their normal place. Light particles can exude quite a bit of energy. If that energy can be harnessed to produce electricity, its pretty
Well I've re-written a beautiful blog post about bullets and arrows 3 times now due to page expirations. The frustrating part is whenever I press back I see all the writing flash before my eyes and then dissapear before I can do anything about it. HELP!
On the subject of stress, let's talk about physics.
Have you been feeling stressed lately? Or at all? Just in general in your wonderous physics class?
You're not alone.
http://education.yahoo.net/articles/most_demanding_majors.htm;j
To be completely honest, I've always been pretty curious as to what string theory is and how it is supposed to work (and not just because of Sheldon Cooper).
Origionally I was completely off as to what I thought it was all about. My previous notion was that string theory strung together the four fundamental forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetic, strong and weak), showing how they can interact. This actually has very little to do with string theory. String theory is more about the structu
Yes, this has indefinitely been proven impossible, but just how impossible?
Google appears to have failed me for actual statistics on the infamous gun used in Wanted for the curved bullet, so lets just say this pistol has a muzzle velocity of 250 m/s (810 ft/s). Lets also say the barrel length is 5". So the bullet sits at rest with a velocity of 0 to 250 m/s over 5". That means in .000508 seconds (v=(x/t)=> x/v=t) the bullet got to the end of the barrel. Which also means it had an accelera
Aside from the snazzy suit, you know who you're looking at is Spiderman as soon as stick webbing starts shooting from his hands.
So if Spiderman does manage to shoot web through his spandexy-body-suit, this webbing must be seriously strong. For one, it can be shot through the air quick enough to go in relatively straight lines, and then miraculously latch on to some sort of object, and THEN can hold all of Spiderman's bulk!
Spiderman is a hero, so he's probably around 5'10 and weighs 160 p
I can't believe I didn't think of this as a subject earlier, I did LOTS of physics in my astronomical imaging internship!
Okay, well, in reality I more looked at images and programs and readings, I didn't actually DO the physics, but there's a lot of physics behind what I did.
My internship was focused on assisting with research around the stellar phase called planetary nebula. This is a post-red-giant phase of smaller stars. The majority of the gases within the star have been burned up or
Yesterday I went skiing for the first time (and no, I did NOT look that cool). And somehow as I was going down the slopes (very VERY slowly with lots of falling involved), I realized there's a LOT more physics going on that one would think initially.
For one, there's a LOT of friction problems. Obviously the goal of most skiers is minimal friction, and therefore go faster! However that was NOT my goal, considering speed led to panic which lead to crazy turns which lead to the unavoidable fall.
1) As seen in the video, though normal tires won't be quite so flexible as the tires shown, tires flex QUITE a bit when you rev your car to a start. With a common knowledge of the fact that materials get harder in the cold, severe cold weather could pretty pheasably cause damage to the integrity of the material should you rev them too fast.
2) The cold air not only makes the rubber more dense, but it makes the air inside the tires more dense as well. That means your tire pressure--should you b
Ice skating has a lot of obvious physics involved.
For one, you could easily look at the centripital motion invovled when a figure skater spins. Conservation of angular momentum plays a huge roll in how they control the speed of their spins, but we've all heard that before.
There's physics involved in the very fundamental movement of iceskates. When you iceskate, you put a lot of pressure on a very small, thin surface area. This force, as well as the friction between the blade and the ice
With a little digging, I was able to figure out how transitions lenses really work on this website:
http://en-us.transitions.com/Why-Transitions/The-Technology/Photocromic-tech/
To sum it up, within the lenses are photochromic molecules. These molecules react to UV rays and actually change their structure when exposed, which is what causes the lens to darken.
And some fundamentals of weather still play into effect. When it's hot, the lenses react more quickly because the heat allows molec
1) The course is HARD-- and it doesn't get easier as you go along. The longer you wait, the harder it gets, and the more you'll have to do.
2) Deterrence-- as this challenging work gets harder and harder, you're going to be less and less inclined to do it. Think about it, I'd be far more proactive about climbing a 5 foot cliff than a 100 foot cliff, if you do it in chunks it won't seem so bad.
3) Imagination-block-- if you have ANYTHING creative to do (like blog posts for example), you're
Have you ever had someone point something out to you, and then you notice it EVERYWHERE?
In the middle of my second year of physics, I'm starting to feel the torture that is physics phever--it's everywhere!
When you decide which shoes to where, you can look at style, or you can look at comfort. If you look at style, you're looking at texture (which we can detect because of our sense of touch, which isn't REALLY touching but our sense of the repellent force of the electrons in our body wit
Lets think about common conceptions of dragons: They breathe fire, they can fly, they're massively gigantic, and they have impenitrable scales, fearsome claws and teeth, and are just pretty beastly.
So lets say a dragon is the size of about 3 elephants high, 4 elephants long, and 2 elephants wide. Considering the fables make them anywhere from lizards to the size of mountains, I think this is fair. So this is about 13 elephants worth, shaving off a couple for the long neck and tail that are n
