Nuclear energy has been used since the 1950s. However all nuclear power plants have been fission reactors. Fission results from bombarding uranium or other large atoms with neutrons. The atom then breaks apart releasing energy and more neutrons leading to a chain reaction. Nuclear fusion however has never been used for energy. Fusion is when two light atomic nuclei fuse to form a heavier nucleus, vast amounts of energy is produced comes from binding energy due to the strong nuclear force. Fusion
Has your hand ever been so cold that it went numb? Well how about when it was 90o and you were outside in the sun, no, well this has happened to me before. Over the summer I worked part time at clover home leisure. Part of my job was to fill up propane tanks. Normally not a big deal, but sometimes we get massive propane tanks with purge valves. While filling, the purge valve forces the air out. When tank is done filling, the purge value starts spitting out massive amounts of propane. Propane sto
The Mag lab near Tallahassee has created a 45 Tesla Magnet. This Magnet is 800,000 more powerful than the earth magnetic field. The Magnet was build by placing a coil of wire inside a coil of wire inside a coil of wire ... creating a massive magnetic field. The Magnet proved so strong that a camera crew lost half its recordings just by being in the same building as the magnet.
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
So I figured I’d, write about why our water bottle rocket failed so miserably on arts fest. Our goal was to use parachutes that would cause our rocket to slowly descend to the ground. Instead of using just one, we figured using two would slow our rockets fall even more. In theory this would have worked fine, however when our rocket reached its maximum height and the nose cone fell off exposing the parachutes, instead of fully opening, the two chutes tangled together and didn’t fully open. The un
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
I found the most amazing video of superconductor levitating from a magnetic field. You absolutely have to watch this video!!! So basically a sapphire is coated with yttrium barium copper oxide. When cooled to -301oF, the saphire becomes a superconductor. The superconductor experiences no electrical resistance. For some reason the magnetic fields aren't able to penetrate because the superconductor expels fields from the inside. This leads to something called quantum locking which holds the superc
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
The physics of Swim Paddles. Some times at swim practice our coach makes us use these paddles.
These paddles typicality increase how far we go with each stroke while slowing down our stroke as it takes more force to pull. This because with the paddles, our hands have a greater surface area. When we pull our arms through the water, we pull more water behind us. Based on the law of conservation of momentum, if I catch and push more water at the same velocity backwards I will have a greater veloc
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
Let’s say we have a person with a mass of 100 kg who can run at 5 m/s.
Now we can make use of Einstein famous equation of E = MC2 :einstein)
When the person is at rest, the total energy of the person is 100 * (3x108)2 or 9x1018 J
When the person is running, their Kinetic energy can be defined as ½mv2
Ke = (½)*(100)* 52
Ke = 1250 J
Therefore the person total energy is (9x1018 + 1250)J
With a little reworking of the equation, we can get Δ m = (Ef – Eo) / (C2)
Δ m = (1250 J / 9x1018 m2/s2)
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
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
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
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
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
