I watched a cool lab video on a professor giving a visual representation of gravity. The idea of gravity has always been pretty easy for me to understand and easy to use in equations but where I begin to lose that understanding is when we leave earth and look at how it holds everything together. How space is constantly expanding but these planets, moons and stars are constantly effecting each other. In this video you get to see how gravity really makes these things work together to make space
When put into its simplest terms, guns are not very complex machines. The goal is to deliver the maximum destructive energy with the minimum amount of energy to go to the shooter. Better more expensive guns will do a better job at accomplishing this task. However, conservation of momentum is true in guns as well. That means that the momentum delivered to the target still has to be equal to the momentum felt by the shooter. This is felt through the recoil of the gun. That is why bigger mor
A golf balls dimples are often overlooked as just being a design that someone decided looked good when in fact they play a major role in the flight of the golf ball. Ultimately, the dimples increase the drag of the ball slightly. But another big effect is that they increase "Magnus Lift" which is a lifting force experienced by rotating objects travelling through a certain medium. This lift is present because the ball often has backspin when it is driven with a club. Golf balls flights are ve
The physics behind clouds can actually be a whole profession. It turns out clouds are much more complicated then most people may think. At the base of it, clouds are made up of microscopic water droplets and or tiny crystals of ice. These droplets are initially formed from condensation onto the nuclei then the air is supersaturated. This happens when the air exceeds a critical value of condensation known as the Kohler Theory. These condensation nuclei are a big part and are necessary for cl
Bulletproof vests are becoming much more common as they are becoming very easy to conceal. People are able to wear them under shirts and jackets and no one would ever know. They are very widely used in the military and police and law enforcement work. The vests are designed to disperse a bullets energy in order to minimize the blunt force trauma. Their are a couple different types of body armor. One of which is heavy body armor and is made of strengthened steel plates. The only down side t
Throughout my life I have heard many rumors of asteroids hitting earth or the moon but I've always wondered what kind of damage an asteroid could really cause. The size of the explosion would be most impacted by the kinetic energy of the object that caused it. This would mean that the mass and the velocity of the asteroid would be the main factors in the damage. The average speed for asteroids approach either the earth or the moon is around 17km/hr. Now that we have the speed, how can we fin
