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Jason Padgett sees the world in Math equations!

Jason Padgett has Acquired Savant Syndrome. 10 years ago he was beaten and kicked in the head by some muggers after his jacket. While recovering in the hospital he became obsessed with mathematical equations. Apparently the damage to his head allows him to view everything he sees as a Math equation! Padgett turns these formulas into intricate diagrams called fractals. Prior to his accident Padgett was a college drop out and had never taken a college level math class before. An example of his wo

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

The physics of hypothetically cheating at swim practice

The physics of hypothetically cheating at swim practice. During Saturday practices, our coach has us do stations. One of these stations involves sprinting with a parachute. As you can see the parachute is quite small but despite this, it still creates a whole lot of drag. The parachute is very thin and creates a large pocket that water gets trapped into. As the parachute is pulled through the water, the water getting caught in the pocket creates drag. Now 100% hypothetically speaking if anyone

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

Electromagnetic Rail Gun

The navy is developing a prototype for an Electromagnetic Rail Gun. The Rail Gun would be use massive magnetic fields to accelerate a projectile at over 5000 miles per hour. The projectiles would have so much kinetic energy that warheads would become unnecessary components to the projectile. The projectile would be able to devastate a bunker just by making impact with it, making explosives unnecessary. Clearly such a weapon would be extremely useful in a wartime situation.

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

Rap about the large Hadron Collider

I find an amazingly informative video on the Cern's LHC. It covers basics particles physics with some other things. The best part, Its a rap!!! It was interesting to see the video theorizing the discovery of the Boson Higgs particle. The video - being made in 2008 - is abit behind with the times as the Higgs particle has recently been detected by experiments done with the LHC.

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

Pain Pong

So last night the swim team got together for some pizza and to hang out. Being highly intelligent teenagers, we decided to play some pain pong. For those of you who aren't familiar with pain pong, it is a variant of ping pong where everything you loose the point you turn around and your opponent smashes the ball with the paddle at your bare back. Naturally if your quite bad at ping pong(like me) the game can get very painful, but why? Well its because of physics, more specifically impulse! Δp=

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

bungee cord physics

Well, I thought of yet another aspect of swimming to analyze for my blogs posts!!! Sometimes at practice we use these bungee or stretch cords to work on resistance training. The premise is simple, strap one end around your self, and the around the block at the end of the lanes. The bungee cords act just like a spring in that F = -Kx, the further the displacement the larger the force. As you get closer and closer to the other end of the pool, the force pulling you back becomes larger and larger.

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

Last blog post

So I was reserving my last blog post for my momentum video I made last year. Unfortunately I couldn't find it last night. I went to Mr. Powlin today to get the video but it wouldn’t upload to the site, or to my email or Google drive for some reason. I’ll try to find the video again tonight, but if I can’t just picture me getting shot bare skin with an airsoft gun.

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

International Workshop on Future Linear Colliders

Two weeks ago on October 22, University of Texas at Arlington hosted a five day workshop devoted to the future of high energy linear electron-positron collider. At this workshop the future of two projects were discussed,the International Linear Collider(ILC) and the Compact Linear Collider(CLIC). The ILC is planned to have a collision energy of 500 GeV. The host country of the ILC has not yet been selected. The CLC is projected to have collision energy of 3TeV. The CLC (if built) will be located

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

Below Absolute Zero?

Recently physicists at the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany have registered a temperature a “few billionths of a Kelvin” below absolute-zero. Now you’re probably thinking what??? If the Kelvin measurement of temperature is a measure of the energy of particles then how can we achieve a negative temperature and thus a negative energy? Furthermore if at Zero Kelvin particles stop moving how can you take energy from them? Well some sci

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

University of Michigan has developed a coating that repeals virtually any liquid

Engineering researchers at the University of Michigan have crated a nanoscale coating that is super effective at repelling liquids. The major difference between this coating and other coating is that with other coatings, liquids with very low surface tensions such as oils, alcohols, and organic acids stick to the coating and eventually diffuse through the coating; however with this coating, even liquids with low surface tensions are repelled. After testing well over a 100 liquids, the team at Mi

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

Circuits

Don't understand the relationship between current, voltage and resistance? Maybe this picture will help! [ATTACH=CONFIG]630[/ATTACH]

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

This quater

Reiterating Dave's recent blog post, I thought I would review what this last quarter has been like. So this quarter covered the E&M portion of the Physics C course. My general opinion is that the jump from Physics B to Physics C was far easier for mechanics than the jump for E&M. From the first two exams I learned that I was horrendously bad at the E&M free responses. I also found while taking the test, I would realize that I didn't really understand the material as well as I though

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

The Physics of how i time traveled into the Future

The Physics of how i time traveled into the Future and therefore these blogs posts aren't really late technically kinda probably. Well um these blogs posts were due last night, which I didn't realize, also i thought they were just extra credit. So Ill discuss how I could have potentially traveled into the future which caused me to submit these late. As we learned last year E = mC^2. As the speed of a particle increases in speed, the mass increases. But while the mass increases, time will a

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

10th post

Well I'm really starting to run out idea for creative content so ill be writing about the eraser i just dropped out boredom. The eraser weighs about 1 gram and is dropped from the height of 1 m. The potential energy eraser is given by mgh and = .01 J. Neglecting air resistance, the eraser has a final velocity of about 4.47 m/s. This gives it a momentum of .00447 kg m/s downward since momentum = v * m. Neglecting the fact that the eraser bounces a little, what happens to the momentum in the downw

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

Frozen Door

So this morning I went out to warm up my car for practice, only to discover that my car door was frozen shut. Now I know what your thinking, why don’t you just pull harder, well I did but unfortunately the door handle was poorly designed. As shown in the picture below, one corner of the metal holding the handle on is detached. [ATTACH=CONFIG]568[/ATTACH] In order to open the door, the handle is pulled up and out at an angle. Under normal conditions, i.e., the door not being frozen shut

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

My take on our independent unit

This is our second independent unit in a row, meaning we haven't had traditional class in a very long time. This one seems a bit more difficult then previous ones though. Unlike previous independent units, I don't remember much about magnetism from last year making it more difficult. Magnetism also employs more complicated math like cross products and calculus based equations then the other independent units. I found it hard to understand the textbook and the only thing that stands out from the

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

Dark Matter

It seems the search to prove the existence of the elusive Dark Matter might soon come to a close. A Minnesota mine, half a mile under ground, seems to have detected the existence of Dark Matter. For those of you who don't what Dark Matter is, I'll give a brief explanation. The ordinary matter that we can visibly see makes up an estimated 15.5% of the universe. Planets, Stars and pretty much everything else in space is made up of ordinary matter. However 84.5% of the universe's matter is estimate

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

Benefits of Nuclear Fallout

I found an interesting article about how nuclear fallout has aided in studies on brain development. Nuclear fallout introduced small amounts of carbon 14 into our atmosphere. When our cells divide, they incorporate carbon from the environment. So the carbon 14 released from nuclear bombs eventually makes it way into the human body. This means that carbon 14 can be used to measure the age of cells. A team at the Karolinska Institute used this to show that new neurons were produced in a small part

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

1st blog post

Well this is a little bit late, but I had some problems getting this posted. Also physics teaches us that time is relative so its all good. I guess I should start with why I'm taking this class. I have always enjoyed puzzles and problem solving and I have no doubt that there won't be a shortage of those in this class! Last year it felt like we only touch the surface of many topic in Physics B, so I'm excited to dive deeper into the more complicated stuff. I know for certain that I want

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

Physics of Swimming

In Swimming, reducing drag is a huge factor in decreasing your time and increasing performace. Water is more than 700 times denser and 55 times more viscous than air. There are three main types of drag that act on a swimmer: friction, wave, and pressure drag. Frictional drag is the result of the interaction between the swimmer’s body and the water molecules and serves to slow down the swimmer. However, this drag also propels the swimmer through the water (Newton’s 3rd law). As the s

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

Reducing Drag in Swimming

As I talked about in my last post, drag force is a huge factor in limiting performace in the pool. So how can we combat this problem? Well for dedicated swimmers, shaving can make the difference. Since many races come down to fractions of seconds, any hair you can cut off can mean the difference bewteen first and second! Optimizing the distance you travel in the air when you dive of the block can make or break a race. As stated in my blog post, water is over 700 times denser and will offer far

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

Breathing off those walls is bad

Keeping with the subject of physics of swimming, I'll be discusing why breathing right after the walls is a very bad idea. When you enter the water after your dive or when you push off the wall after your turn, you should be in the streamline postion as shown in the picture. This position minimize the surface area exposed in the direction you are moving reducing the drag force. When you breathe while swimming, you pick your head up which causes the rest of your body to sink. This increases the

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

Breathing off those walls is bad

Keeping with the subject of physics of swimming, I'll be discusing why breathing right after the walls is a very bad idea. When you enter the water after your dive or when you push off the wall after your turn, you should be in the streamline postion as shown in the picture. This position minimize the surface area exposed in the direction you are moving reducing the drag force. When you breathe while swimming, you pick your head up which causes the rest of your body to sink. This increases the

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

Superconducting Super Collider

Ever heard of the Superconducting Super Collider before? I certainly hadn't. In 1983, plans for the Superconducting Super Collider were being developed by the U.S. Department of Energy. Its planned ring circumference was 87.1 kilometers with an energy of 20 TeV per beam of protons – numbers that surpasses those of the now operational Large Hadron Collider by a factor of three (27 kilometer with an energy of 7TeV per beam). The project initial goal was to detect the Higgs Boson. The project be

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

LHC may have discovered a new type of matter

Well I am sure that you are all familiar with the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) discovery of the Higgs boson, but it looks as if the LHC as made another discovery, this one accidental!!! After 2 million lead-proton collisions, the CMS team at the LHC discovered that several pairs of particles - that were created from the collision- flew away from each other with their respective directions being correlated. I am not a particles physicist so I have really no idea what this means or the significa

CharlieEckert

CharlieEckert

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