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Musing

I can already tell this post will have a lot less structure than usual. I've been thinking about special relativity quite a bit more than usual these past few days, in particular, the twins paradox. We didn't discuss it, but it seems to me that the actual aging is not the paradox involved, but the question of which twin aged how much is the paradox, since the earth twin would believe the other twin to be 40 years older and the space twin would think himself only 4 years older. Secondly, we d

willorn

willorn

Australian Intern makes major discovery in the Field of Astrophysics!

http://www.brimbankweekly.com.au/news/national/national/general/student-helps-solve-cosmic-mystery/2176857.aspx?storypage=2a http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110527/sc_afp/australiaastrophysicsscience This audacious undergrad made a major discovery while on break! Just goes to show the success teams of scientists can have with a fresh perspective. For a background of the "Missing Matter" Problem, try wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter#Observational_evidence

willorn

willorn

Super Duper Conductivity

Superconductivity was first discovered by Dutchman and physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, when Liquid Mercury was cooled to just 4.2 Kelvins!! (Using some very expensive Liquid Helium) While measuring the resistance of the substance, Onnes found that at this specific temperature, the resistivity of the substance quite literally dropped down to nothing. Zero Ohms. But whats the significance? Firstly, Onnes had discovered a material that would produce no heat when an electrical current flo

willorn

willorn

MacGyver knows his E and M

The following is a piece of an episode of MacGyver, complete with a FizziksGuy voiceover explaining a fascinating effect of physical stress of ferro materials, called the "Inverse Magnetostrictive Effect" or "Villari Effect." Although understanding this process requires very abstract thought, I highly recommend it for those of you planning to pursue E + M further into the future. It is a fascinating subject! Its important to understand that the process you saw MacGyver use does not neces

willorn

willorn

Helping with physics problems!

I have always argued with my brothers as to who is the smartest kid in the family. Now, being a senior in high school and taking hard classes such as AP-C Physics and BC Calculus, I can see where they were coming from. However, just 2 days ago, my older brother called me asking for help on a physics problem!!! It was relatively easy for me, but it was one of the first homework assignments he had for the physics course he was taking in college. It dealt with projectile motion and velocity at cert

Guest Keri

Guest Keri

DannyBoy132's Blog Posts

There seems to be some problem with a certain user's blog posts and being able to view them via aplusphysics so here is a direct link to DannyBoy132's first Blog! http://www.aplusphysics.com/forums/blog.php?16-Santa-Claus-is-REAL!!! It's really good stuff.

willorn

willorn

Superbowl

Everyone will be watching the super bowl, and naturally, I thought of physics in football. I was trying to come up with as many examples of real life physics in football as possible, and I came up with some. Projectile motion when passing the football. Collisions when they tackle each other. Conservation of momentum again in tackling. Relative motion with the different angles of the cameras viewing the game (relative to the ground, ball, point in the air). Work needed to tackle a player. PE and

Guest Keri

Guest Keri

James Webb Space Telescope

NASA is currently developing a telescope to further probe the final frontier, and this new telescope, called the Webb telescope (after NASA's second administrator James Webb) or JWST, is being launched in many ways to replace the Hubble. It is designed to capture and analyze infrared light and has a primary mirror at least two and a half times larger than the original Hubble, and it is hoped that the Webb will be able to see deep into dust clouds and observe the formation of stars, planets and r

willorn

willorn

Midterm

For me, the midterm went better than I thought it would. We received our grades back on the multiple choice section and I was relatively happy with my score. I was even happier with our class average! The part 2 went pretty well, I at least wrote something down for each question. Compared to the part 2 responses we worked on in class, I felt these were easier, and that gave me a boost of confidence because our midterm was the 2004 AP exam. Like Will said, this is great to know where we stand as

Guest Keri

Guest Keri

Midterm AP C

After doing very well on the multiple choice portion of the physics exam, I walked into the Part II questions a lot less prepared than I thought I would be. What was encouraging, though, was that even with these difficult free responses (difficult for me, personally) I feel that I could answer all of those problems perfectly if they appeared on the AP exam. Although I forgot much of what I would have needed to know on the part II (the problems were familiar but I couldn't quite get them), I'm

willorn

willorn

Physics Troll

Just about halfway down the page that moe.ron shared on his blog is a cartoon that got me thinking. If a person had a stick one light year long (or more), and this person pushed the stick, would the kinetic energy reach the end of the stick faster than light if photons were released at the exact same moment? I'm thinking that the kinetic energy in the push would be just another energy wave moving through the particles of the stick, so I believe that the light would reach the end of the stick fir

willorn

willorn

Holy Projectile Motion Bat-Man

This may be the simplest device ever created with the weirdest laws of kinematics surrounding it. What is it? Well, its a funny looking loop that flies up to 655 feet. This thing has broken world records. Thats over 6 football fields by the way. But what are the laws of physics surrounding this thing?? http://www.x-zylo.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=5&Itemid=38 I wish I had definitive answers. Just be observing the way that it flies, I

willorn

willorn

Feynman vs Lewin.

I've been having serious difficulty completing all sorts of physics problems lately, and I felt that maybe I wasn't understanding the basic principles of SHM and gravitational forces etc. So naturally I turned to good 'ol Walter. But I found that instead of listening to his lectures, I was often just waiting to watch him draw a dotted line on the blackboard. So I had to re-watch a number of lectures and I was wasting a bit of time. So I turned to the other great lecture-er who some of you may no

willorn

willorn

Physics in general

As of now, we are about half way done with the AP-C Physics course, and I feel like my brain is filled to the max. Formulas are starting to run together and units are mixing with each other...not good. We have been doing AP leveled free response questions and multiple choice questions weekly, and I feel like things are starting to get rough. Looking at a question and not even knowing where to start, getting the answer and feeling good, then correcting it and realizing its the wrong answer, or ev

Guest Keri

Guest Keri

Physics of a basketball bouncing

I was looking at the pictures of my basketball game, and one stood out to me for a specific reason. It was a picture of a girl bouncing the ball, and the picture was taken right as the ball collided with the ground, and is on its way up. Of course, physics is the first thing that came to mind, due to the collision and transfer of energy. When the ball is in her hand, it has all PE. When she lets go of it in the downward direction, that PE turns into KE right before the collision with the ground.

Guest Keri

Guest Keri

Papercut Physics

Pre-Disclaimer: Please do not watch the attached video if you can't stand to watch blood being drawn. But by all means if you can stomach it, take this disclaimer as encouragement to continue reading. Don't hold your breath on this one. It's very literally a video of someone giving himself a papercut in slow motion. (helpful hint: skip to 1:25) so how does the paper "molecular knife" muster the force to cut the skin? Like the video mentioned, it has to do with pressure exerted. Its

willorn

willorn

Physics is everywhere in life!

The reason I was interested in physics in the first place was because it involved a lot of math. I didn't really look into the course much, since I loved math and knew I would like it. After taking AP-B Physics, the math wasn't the only part about physics that I loved; I also loved how applicable it was to real life. Furthermore, I enrolled in AP-C Physics and the same connections, and more, are currently being made. Everyday life, I come across physics more than once, and the feeling of knowing

Guest Keri

Guest Keri

The physics of baseball

I was looking up how rotational motion connects to sports, and figure skating was obviously the first thing that came up. This is because skating involves a lot of twists and turns and in order to maximize their performance, they need to know how to use their arms to increase and decrease angular velocity. We did a demonstration of this in class where students stood on a platform that rotated, and carried bricks in their hands, and brought their hands closer to their body to increase angular vel

Guest Keri

Guest Keri

Cats and Dogs Physics

Haven't you ever wondered why when a dog drinks water from a low bowl, its much messier than when a cat drinks from that same bowl? Of course you haven't. But you're wondering now! So here's the physics explanation and a few accompanying videos. The Answer: There's really not too much difference. Both the cat and the dog utilize the principal of water/liquid displacement in order to get the water to their mouths. The displaced water is then trapped in the "backwards spoon" tha

willorn

willorn

Physics from Past Week

These past few days of physics have been some of the most interesting of my fledgling career. Between greek letters that make my math look difficult and a crash course in Integrals, things are looking collegiate. Of course, its also been some of the most challenging physics I have done. What really excites me about the class recently is that rote memorization alone won't give me the ability to solve rotational problems. Finding a good substitute for dm often takes a certain kind of thinking th

willorn

willorn

Physics recently

Throughout the past week or so, we have been working with rotational motion in class, dealing with rotational energy, center of mass, moment of inertia, and just beginning to get into torque. I find a lot of this information overwhelming at first, but then when I re-read my notes, things begin to become a little clearer. Still not to 100% at all, but clearer. Center of mass was one of the more simpler mini topics within this unit to me, but when it comes to deriving the moment of inertia equatio

Guest Keri

Guest Keri

Physics in Billiards

Since there's nothing better than rolling spheres and sliding blocks in physics, I figured my first blog post ought to be about one or both of the two. Unfortunately, I can't think of anything with sliding blocks that hasn't already been done, so this post will be about spheres. The Question I'm trying to answer will be: "If we are supplied with given information about a billiards player's first shot in the game (the "Break") can we determine the resulting force on the two corner billiards ba

willorn

willorn

Impulse and Momentum

This video demonstrates perfectly what we have learned about all week in AP-C Physics. It first starts off by saying impulse equals force times time. Then it goes on to say that that all is equal to the change in momentum. Those are the formulas we have been working with the past week, which we all call "Jimpulse." The example in the video is great in that it talks about the force applied by a bat to a baseball, and why bunts work the way they do. I always knew that bunts obviously make the ball

Guest Keri

Guest Keri

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