This isn't going to be a full out physics post, but this is just astounding.
Look at this. This used to be a living bird. It accidentally flew into this mirror-like lake with a pH of 9.5-10 and a high soda and salt content that caused it to calcify.
Just look.
Nature is scary, guys.
Image credit goes to Nick Brandt, article here
First thing you should do is watch this incredible video. I couldn't get it to embed, but it's a man using a hamster chasing a carrot to steer a 15 ton Volvo FMX to demonstrate the new Volvo Dynamic Steering systems.
Let's assume a hamster weighs about 4 ounces or about .113kg and that the angle of inclination of the plane of the steering wheel is around 15 degrees. Using fancy shmancy trig, we find the horizontal component of the force of the hamster by multiplying (.113)(9.8)(sin15*) or .28
Totally undisclosed and unknown Physics C student here ready to inform you all about the most important parts of the year: my opinions. Well, there's no need to worry because you will be getting it whether you like it or not. No, really, it's required that I write this so that I can boost my grade and all.
So. Why am I in Physics C? Good question. It all started back when I was five years old......
No, but really, it's because I'm going into biomedical engineering and physics is kind of a goo
That title should say it all.
Okay, as per usual, beginning link to article (I get all of my blog post ideas from links my dad sends me)
We all know laser cutting is a thing. Or, if you didn't, you know now. Of course, there are many different ways of using laser cutting. You can vaporize things, crack them with thermal stress, "stealth dice" (one of my personal favorites), um..."melt and blow" (that's what it's actually called), and more. Using high energy photons and laserizing many dif
Optical illusions are awesome. That cannot be debated. Ever. Some of them are used to be thought provoking, street art that looks one way from one viewpoint and completely different if you move. Some are just to screw with your brain, like many of Escher's famous pieces.
This one is used to make you want to buy Ray Bans. No, seriously. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhuUhaNIWLQ.
So why do these things look 3D to us? Courtesy of our lovely brains, which like to detect patterns where there a
"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music." —Betrand Russell
Physics is, in essence, applied mathematics. It's how math applies to life, and the results thereof. And math is... beauty? That's not how one would usually think. However, there is a certain beauty to math and how everything resolves itself when it is applied. The way tree growth and snowflakes resemble fractals, light
Recently I've come across a physics paper describing a certain way of time travel using the awesome theme of Doctor Who (as well as a Portal reference) to explain things. Explaining the name is something I'd rather leave to the creators of this theory though, so here's that:
The name refers to a bubble (a Domain) which moves through the spacetime at speeds greater than the speed of light (it is Achronal); it moves backwards in time (Retrograde to the arrow of time outside the bubble); and fin
If you guys happen to look at nearly anything nerdy, you have likely seen the original video for this or a reaction to it.
In essence, a
came out trying to prove to the general public how 1+2+3+4+... all the way to infinity equals -1/12. You know the drill. Go on, watch it. I'll still be here when you get back. Or at least my post will
"So what?" you're probably asking. Or maybe you do know the so what, who am I to judge? Anyway. If you don't believe the video and think it's all stupid,
Dear Mr. Fullerton: I am not crazy for laughing so hard during class about this. It's real.
Sincerely, velociraptor
Source: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3186#comic
Source
I'm just going to leave this here without much of an explanation, other than the Hubble is incredible and... SPACE
This is the deepest view we've gotten so far, a group of hundreds of galaxies named Abell 2744 that is 3.5 billion light years away.
First and foremost, a video! Huzzah!
So, why do these bubbles evaporate into mist instead of freezing and shattering? Well, that is due to the properties of fluids and fluid dynamics.
Have I mentioned before that I'm really bad at fluids? The oil of the soap, the cold air, and the surface tension of the water/soap mixture all mis together with SCIENCE and create wispy frozen bubble clouds. Technical terms of course.
I really don't get fluids. They're just pretty.
Oh jeez, more fluids? Thank god this post is more about the images than the workings behind it.
Back on point though - vortices are ubiquitous, seen wherever there are fluids. Which is everywhere in the universe. And since vortices act similarly no matter what the size, even the smallest of swirls can help us understands occurances such as cyclones and superstorms.
From smallest to largest, here are some examples:
In the wake of a water skeeter
Incense smoke
Colored smoke in t
So at first glance this sounds dumb. What is this post about? Well, since I can't get embed to work still, go watch this video.
If you're really too lazy to watch a youtube video, here's what it is: 32 metronomes all set to the same tempo (beat) but started at different times. Sounds simple. If they were on a static surface like a table, they would remain discordant forever. But that's boring. So they put the metronomes on a movable surface, and voila, they synchronized with each other.
How
As per usual, this will make more sense if you start out by watching a lovely
It's fairly simplistic, but introduces the topic.
So. Our universe is one with three dimensions of space and one of time. But why? Why doesn't it only have one dimension, or twenty? This is, of course, ignoring string theory/m theory (though I will likely make a post about that later). For a young 3D universe, our temperature is much more uniform than would be expected. There's also that whole pesky question of in
With the Nobel Peace Prize in Physics for 2013 being given to those who worked on the discovery of the Higgs Boson, it only follows that the physics blog should have something on that.
This slideshow does a wonderful wonderful job of making the Higgs field relatable for the layman and explaining why it took so long to say why there is a "possible" discovery. Namely, it's impossible to find a Higgs boson straight out, but rather they have to search for its predicted decay pattern among billion
Everyone loves Ted Ed. And everyone loves time travel. So what happens when you put them together?
Now, aside from the wonderful wonderful fact that the TARDIS makes a few appearances (making a certain Whovian very happy) as well as the DeLorean, what's actually going on? How does it relate to "time travel"?
Well, the velociraptor is here to explain this to you. The only constant in the entire universe that is consistently constant (yes that's a sentence) is the speed of light in a vacuu
We all know the standard shape of a mushroom cloud
It looks something like this:
The question is why do they look like this?
Well, as can be seen in this post, the less in-depth answer is a simple difference in density between the rapidly expanding gases and the rest of the air.
However, this is a physics blog after all, and so I'm going to get into the Rayleigh-Taylor instability. In the most understandable terms (though to be quite honest after reading up on it I still don't really
Despite my last entry clearly dictating that I have no idea what's going on when it comes to fluid dynamics, here I go again.
This time, it's droplets of water and propylene glycol and how they interact when on a glass surface.
First, watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8Wx2PHIYGI. Now. Okay, watched it? No? Then the rest of this won't make much sense and will be pretty boring. I promise it's cool, and the music's pretty sweet too.
Now that you've all either watched it or closed out
Hooray for a cool
many physics applications!
Alright, so if you can't quite tell, these crazy NASA engineers built a complex rig in order to record cool things at 7,200 FPS for the hell of it. Though we're not doing optics this year, they had to do a lot of considering with that, buying special mirrors that lose less light with each reflection than your standard hardware store mirror. Sure, warping occurred, and the lens they used made the objects look farther away, but just look at how awe
I think that the way this was originally sent to me conveys the meaning better than any rewording I could do:
Equation of orbit of a small mass around a much greater mass
Equation of human awe of earth orbit
So now that you've watched it, you should have a greater appreciation of gravitational forces and centripetal ones, the whole Fc=mv2/r and Fg=GM1M2/r2 and such.
Or maybe you just affirmed that space is really freaking awesome, and a lot prettier than anyone gives it credit
Not quite a physics post, but something really cool that came out recently
Now you know what it's like to see through the eyes of five different animals!
I'm still waiting to see a mantis shrimp though... 8 color receptors compared to our three? How does that even work? Where do they fit in the electromagnetic spectrum? Extra colors that is. Maybe within our lifetimes we'll be able to find out.
Yup, that's a pretty terrifying title. And yes, that's exactly what this is.
Tell me that I could name this anything different. Biomedical Engineering at it's most amusingly accessible right here!
So, what's physics-y about this? Apart from, you know, everything in existence being physics. First of all: magnets. These things are "remote controlled" by magnets and magnetic fields. You know, those things that you can't see but you have to contort your hands to figure out which direction
Yes, this is totally a physics post, and not just an excuse to post this gif
This is Waffles the cat. And his job is to remind us all about winter driving. As any of us who have been behind the wheel on a snowy day know, the coefficient of friction between regular tires and the snowy road is veeeery low. Dangerously so. Just around .15, compared to around .7 on a dry road. Even with snow tires, it can still be hard to stop due to low coefficients of both rolling and sliding friction.
Moral
First, as usual, watch this video:
(easter egg: look for the Doctor Who reference at 5:30)
Yes, that is the entire history and future of everything in seven minutes. Yes, that is kind of scary. But the inevitable heat death of the universe is, well, exactly that. Inevitable. Luckily, we will all be loooooooong dead before then, if that makes you feel any better. Actually I think I just made that worse. Oops.
Anyways, this brings up the interesting nature of time, and our lack of abil
Source
For those of you not constantly checking up on astrophysics and stuff like that (not a common habit of most people), the cosmic web is a construct that binds together the majority of the universe that has been long theorized, but never imaged. Until now, that is.
The cosmic web is made up of around 84% dark matter, which is why it is so difficult to find and photograph. As you could imagine, dark matter is invisible to us and any instruments we have except for its interactions via g
