There are two types of spin that a player can apply to a tennis ball, those being topspin and backspin. What prompted my thoughts on this idea would be my attendance of the University of Rochester tennis match today against Nazareth. As these advanced players made the ball skip and flip and kick every which way, my mind went crazy! :labmate)
A topspin shot is hit by sliding the racquet up and over the ball as it is struck. By dragging the racquet over the ball, the friction between the racque
Many common materials like wood, water, plants, animals, diamonds, fingers etc. are considered not to be magnetic but are in fact very slightly diamagnetic. Diamagnets repel, and are repelled by a strong magnetic field, and two of the strongest known diamagnetic materials are bismuth and graphite. Compared to the forces created by traditional magnets, diamagnetic forces are exponentially weak, however when arranged and prepared properly, can produce startling effects, levitation in this case. UC
Alright, this blog is for all you pyros out there. I couldn't help but want to delve a little deeper into the nature of fire, and what I found is pretty interesting. In actuality, fire is simply a gas thats hot enough to incandesce, which means give off blackbody radiation whos color is determined by the temperature. Very hot fires can on occasion even reach the plasma phase, where they become partially ionized. However, the average fire burns at about 1000F, which produces the characteristic re
While we use percent error to dictate how far we off in class, there are far more efficient ways of defining the error of the set. Standard deviation, for example, given a value, will give rise to numbers that fall within one S.D., two S.D. and so on.
"One can find the standard deviation of an entire population in cases (such as standardized testing) where every member of a population is sampled. In cases where that cannot be done, the standard deviation σ is estimated by examining a random
Population concerns on Earth are leading scientists to inquire whether colonizing Mars is possible. As of now, over 78,000 people have applied to leave Earth forever and live on Mars. Mars One, a nonprofit organization, is sponsoring the colonization with a take-off date sometime in 2023. Out of the applicant pool, four will be chosen to send first to Mars. The first four will lay the groundwork for a permanent colony. Two years after the first four land, Mars One would send up more people to th
