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
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
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
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
There was a lot of picture taking going on today, and considering it being a noteable passion of mine, I figured it's a good thing to ponder the physics of.
Photography is derived from the greek words "photos" meaning light, and "graphos" meaning writing. Writing with light. Aptly named, as light is the largest component of any good photograph. Every camera has exposures and f-stops that corollate with apperatures and shutterspeeds. Each of these are tools to control how much light is allowed
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
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
Upon thinking about dinner, I was pondering what I could possibly blog about, when I saw some pasta...
Truly there's a lot of physics involved in cooking. Pasta is a pristine example! Spaghetti initially comes in a solid, brittle form. However, when it's heated up in boiling water, it becomes flexible. This flexibility is due to the increased speed of the molecules in the solid. Clearly its not made into a liquid, but it is similar in that the molecules are slightly more free too move. It als
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
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
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
Over the past few weeks, I've gotten to know Kerbal Space Program quite well. I can honestly say it's quite the addicting game, but if you don't do any research, it can get very frustrating. Personally, I'm a trial and error kind of gal. When being completely honest, I almost never actually calculate the physics behind everything going on in KSP, I just make behemoth rockets and see if they do what I want them too. As a result, I've probably had more crash landings and test flights than there ar
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
Please note, these are simply my top ten from a limited-extensive research, so don't judge. Also they're not necessarily in order.
1) A particle "here" can effect one on the other side of the universe
2) All the matter that makes up the human race could fit in a sugar cube (think about how much empty space is in an atom and you'll be marginally less shocked)
3) If the sun were made out of bananas, it would be just as hot (High pressure what-nots)
4)The effect of relativity made an as
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
I don't know about you, but I'm always interested in quirky little facts that can be used to go up to someone smarter than you and say "hey, I know something you don't know!" So to aid you all in this admirable endeavor, watch this video!
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
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
In summary, essentially the sky appears dark to us because the universe is expanding. When the stars we look at are farther away, they're moving away from us faster. The faster the star moves away, the more red they appear. After they reach a certain distance away from us, the stars become infrared. Essentially the sun is the only star close enough to us to emit on the visible spectrum and diffuse through the atmosphere.
I thought this was very interesting. With a background in physics, a lot
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
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
Recently I've acquired skullcandy over-ear headphones that have many noise canceling qualities. Still, I find myself wishing I could afford the Bose. Without any doubt, the Bose Noise Cancelling headphones are the best of their kind.
With this in mind, I though it worth the research to figure out why.
As with nearly anything, there's actually quite a bit of physics involved in optimizing sound quality. For starters, to make headphones in general involves coils and magnets and a whole slew of p
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
