Blog hoopsgirl

Most of the forces currently known to man have their opposites. Magnetism for example will have a North Pole acting opposite to that of a South Pole. For this reason I began to think of a possible opposite to the force of gravity. Although gravity is not very well understood today, it is widely accepted that mass causes gravity and creates the force that pulls two objects together. This type of force is often modeled as a large mass creating a dip in the fabric of space-time causing other objects to slide in towards it. This can be seen as such:

http://www.ws5.com/spacetime/162571main_GPB_circling_earth3_516.jpg

Keeping these principles in mind I began to think about what sorts of affects antimatter might cause. For example, could antimatter, containing the property opposite to that of mass, have opposite affects on the fabric of space-time, acting as a suction from above creating a hill, pushing other clumps of antimatter away from it. Upon research on the subject I found that antimatter is, contrary to my predictions, often believed to have an attracting force similar to gravity acting between itself and both matter and other antimatter.

Instead, an alternative proposal for an antimatter is known as dark energy. This mysterious force described in the links below has a repelling affect opposite to the attraction created by gravity. This force, strange as it may seem, is actually believed to strengthen as distance between objects increases due to the fact that the farther apart galaxies become, the faster they accelerate away from each other. Although not yet confirmed, this new force seems like it would have little application to the types of anti-gravity we would like to see here on earth for it seems to only have a noticeable affect at great distances. Sorry, no flying hover boards yet...

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/cosmic_darknrg_020115-1.html

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/12/text/

Currently in AP Physics C, our class is partaking in a unit of independent study for impulse and momentum. Along with the practice multiple choice and short response questions we had been assigned,i decided to used youtube videos to provide a better understanding of the law of conservation of momentum and how this affects real world collisions.

Among many videos of car crashes, billiard shots, and even slaps in the face, this video seemed to be the most unique due to its incorporation of a zero gravity atmosphere. As explained by Richard Garriott in the video, no matter what the collision is between the balls, whether they stick together or not, the net momentum (or mass times velocity) of the system is always conserved.

While searching for this video, i also came upon another one with not as much relevance to momentum and impulse, but providing an interesting topic to think about. If you skip to about halfway through the video, a large sphere of water with an air bubble in it is then injected with droplets of water. Due to surface tension, these droplets then bounce off the walls of water rather than joining to form one mass. Seemed pretty cool to me.