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Velociraptor42

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Everything posted by Velociraptor42

  1. Thank you for the congrats! Fortunately enough there are no paparazzi I've never been the best at teaching or helping - my attempts at helping Bobby last year and how quickly he found better sources should be proof of that heh - but luckily I know some good resources.
  2. School is difficult but good, as was expected going to a school like this. There are a lot of people who are having trouble in physics 1 here who I have directed to your video lectures and who find them very useful on difficult topics!
  3. First of all, I was extremely happy when I found this topic because otherwise I would've creeped on the current students forums. So anyway, here I am, a big shot college student (hah) doing my college thing that may or may not include floundering in calc III I mean what. And I'm done with physics courses. AP physics c is all that I needed. So I'm done, right? Nope Depending on your point of view, it's either unfortunate or fortunate that I still use physics. All. The. Time. BME lab? Physics. So much physics. I have been named the resident physics person of my group by this point. Turns out taking two years of it in high school makes it stick more than you think. Granted, I don't know what all of this AP physics 1 and 2 stuff is (there was nothing wrong with but chances are If it has little to do with your major, it doesn't matter. It'll still be there. You can't escape the physics.
  4. It may not be a milestone, but I got into stable orbit around Mun and I even flew it myself!
  5. Where can I buy this truck? It sounds like fun.
  6. I forgot to mention in the previous post that this is how poor Jebediah met his end, but he went out with a BANG just as he would have liked it. I mean look how excited he is in those screenshots. This was clearly the highlight of his life anyways. Okay, he looks pretty terrified when the plane is "on fire", but he looks overjoyed right as he's about to crash into the north pole, so that's something. Also the stock plane I used to fly around in was the Ravenspear Mk1, which, by the way, is a pain to fly. The SAS does nothing, and you have to constantly nudge the pitch or else it'll fall straight down. The accidental barrel rolls are fun though.
  7. Time for a fun mini-post! This past Friday my partner was out, and the student teacher guy who sometimes comes in to help (whose name I am currently forgetting because I am horrible with that) said I should have fun playing with planes around Kerbin for the period. While my goal was to try to get to the north pole and photograph it, that was cut short by the fact I accidentally flew my plane out of the middle atmosphere and completely lost control of it, causing it to fly too high over the north pole and immediately crash once it came into responding range. Whoops. Don't trust me as a pilot -- you can leave that to Bobby Nevertheless, I took some fun sunrise screenshots with a seemingly burning plane (that was not burning at all and just looked awesome like that once I entered the middle atmosphere) as well as one with Mun.
  8. Pre-Launch Design Release Team Name: Dyrleo Enterprises. Available Funds: $133,643.60 Vehicle Name: "satelite" yes spelled wrong Vehicle Parts List and Cost: Stayputnik Mk. 1, Rockomax "Mainsail" Liquid Engine, 8xRockomax BACC Solid Fuel Booster, 4xROUND-8 Toroidal Fuel Tank, Rockomax Jumbo-64 Fuel Tank, 2xStratus-V Roundified Monopropellant Tank, 4xRV-105 RCS Thruster Block, 8xHydraulic Detachment Manifold, Rockomax Brand Decoupler, Cubic Octagonal Strut, Rockomax Brand Adapter 02, 2xSP-W 2x3 Photovoltaic Panels, 3xZ-1k Rechargeable Battery Bank, 2xCommunotron 16, 2xCommunotron 88-88, LV-N Atomic Rocket Motor -- total cost of $32,750, or $36,025 after our taxes Design Goals: A satellite attached to a rocket that is designed to orbit Kerbin Launch Goal: Have a working satellite orbiting Kerbin Pilot Plan: Burn straight up until we're out of the lower atmosphere. Start tipping diagonally a bit until apoapsis is above 65-70km above surface. Drift up, doing thrust vectoring majyckks, and throttle parallel to the planet until we achieve stable orbit. whee. Illustrations: pictures attached Launch Report and Debrief Launch Time: Not too long Team Members Present: Josh Dyrland Play-by-Play: I wasn't there at the time, but this is how I imagine it going. Josh is ready to launch our epic rocket. Throttle up, realize the first stage is just boosters, ignore that. BOOST AWAY; WE HAVE LIFTOFF. A crowd gathers to watch this magnificent feat. Big & Low Shmig & low, we have a satellite on the way. There are no deaths to worry about as this is an unmanned flight. A hush falls over the growing crowd as Josh does a magnificently unprecidented thing - going up then turning to make an orbit! Boosters long gone and the mainsail running out of fuel, he jettisons it, leaving the atomic engine. ATOMS POWER THIS. ATOMS. Communatrons extended, photo panels extended... ta-dah, a satellite! Photographs: attached Time-of-Flight: Fairly short since we're still close to KErbin Summary: WE REACHED STABLE ORBIT FOR THE FIRST TIME. Well, to be fair, Josh reached it, not me. He's the better pilot. Space that is outside of Kerbin, here we come! Opportunities / Learnings: Orbit is much harder than originally realized. Don't underestimate gravity. Strategies / Project Timeline: Time to try to go to the moon! Milestone Awards Presented: Aiming for First working satellite placed in stable orbit - $80,000 Available Funds: Currently at $97,618.60. If we receive the award our funds will nearly double to $177,618.60
  9. A quick note for Dyrleo's funds that our current amount is $133,643.60, not what was previously stated -- the second $5k award was not taken into account and we did not receive the 7.5k because we are not allowed two awards for one mission, so 2.5k was subtracted off the previous amount thought.
  10. Team Name: Dyrleo Enterprises Available Funds: $87,894.20 Vehicle Name: manned10k Vehicle Parts List and Cost: Mk1 Cockpit, Rockomax "Mainsail" Liquid Engine, Rockomax X200-16 Fuel Tank, Rockomax X200-8 Fuel Tank, Rockomax Brand Adapter, 2xTT18-A Launch Stability Enhancer, 2xStandard Canard, TR-18A Stack Decoupler, 2xMk2-R Radial-Mount Parachute -- cost of $13,420 including tax Design Goals: The vehicle is designed to reach 10 kilometers up and re-enter safely -- this time including a cockpit. It was fairly simple and time saving to use our rocket for the unmanned flight and attach a cockpit to it. Launch Goal: The goal is to reach 10k and come back down safely without any crispy kerbal bits left floating around. Pilot Plan: The plan is not much more complicated than the previous one. Go straight up, this time decoupling the engine and fuel tanks once they empty so as to not have to drag extra weight. At this point, still a fairly simple plan. Illustrations: None Launch Report Launch Time: About two minutes Team Members Present: Josh Dyrland & Olivia Puleo Play-by-Play: Throttle, engine started, stability enhancers released... we have liftoff! Jebediah looks rather excited to be off the ground. I hope he stays this excited and we don't blow him to bits with some parachute failure or something. Going straight up, SAS doing a good job, Josh doesn't need to do much piloting. Fuel running out, so decoupling the tanks and engine, leaving the pod and radial parachutes. Reached nearly 20k in height, started falling back down. Parachutes deployed successfully, cockpit landed safely. Jebediah lives! Photographs: Attached Time-of-Flight: Short Summary: We easily reached a 10k manned flight. Since we had a relatively safe design, only changing the previous unmanned one by replacing the remote control unit with a cockpit and switching the type of parachute, it was fairly straightforward. Opportunities / Learnings: Manned and unmanned at this stage doesn't seem to be much different. Low altitude achievements don't seem to be too hard. Strategies / Project Timeline: We are going to try a manned flight to 50k (and at the time I am writing this we attempted twice and failed both times despite the exact same design working in a free period??) We may skip the 50k at this point and go straight for orbit. Milestone Awards Presented: As the third team to reach to manned 10k milestone, we are going for the $5,000 reward Available Funds: Assuming we get the reward from the last post, we should have $86,184.20 remaining. If for some reason we do not receive that, we will have $81,184.20.
  11. Team Name: Dyrleo Enterprises Available Funds: $100,000 Vehicle Name: 10k Vehicle Parts List and Cost: Probodobodyne OKTO2, Rockomax "Mainsail" Liquid Engine, Rockomax X200-16 Fuel Tank, Rockomax X200-8 Fuel Tank, Rockomax Brand Adapter, 2xTT18-A Launch Stability Enhancer, 2xStandard Canard, Mk16 Parachute, NCS Adapter -- total cost of $10,067.20 with our 10% added taxes due to my shady deals (whoops) Design Goals: Go up to 10 kilometers and return safely Launch Goal: Still get up to 10k and return Pilot Plan: Straight up Illustrations: None Note: Before the successful launch, we had two failed but recovered launches without the second fuel tank that cost $9,407.20 each but due to our recoveries we only had to pay $9,407.20 for those failures Launch Time: Very short Team Members Present: Olivia Puleo & Josh Dyrland Play-by-Play: Engines throttled, activated, and supports removed -- BLASTOFF! SAS is activated, and we sit back and wait while the rocket goes straight up. Fuel doesn't run out until we are nearly at 20 kilometers off the surface; we could have cut the engines sooner but we decided to see just how high it would go. Rocket allowed to drop back into the atmosphere, parachute deployed high up but doesn't burn since we didn't exit the atmosphere to begin with. Ship lands, success! Photographs: Design photo and accomplishment attached Time-of-Flight: Short Summary: The hardest part of this was that neither my partner nor I had any experience whatsoever playing KSP. In fact, our first failure had to do with us not knowing how to correctly stage and launch a rocket, and it crashed without ever leaving the ground. However, once we figured this out, this flight was extremely simple and straightforward. Go up, reach our goal, go back down, land, recover. Opportunities / Learnings: The team learned how to successfully build and launch a rocket! Woo. Strategies / Project Timeline: Next step: stick a Kerbal on this and get him back safely. Shouldn't be too much of an issue. Milestone Awards Presented: Second team to reach unmanned launch to 10k - expecting the $5,000 reward Available Funds: Taking into account the recoveries of each flight and the award granted for our PSA, we have $87,894.20 remaining
  12. Fun fact: the Kerbals believe that they can pass as humans because in Invader Zim the titular character's "human" disguise looks an awful lot like a Kerbal and no one seems to question it. They aim to eventually reach Earth and try to hide themselves in the general population. Intelligent creatures they are not.
  13. Currently, we use a method called astronomical parallax to measure the distance from the Earth to various stars among our home galaxy and others. Well, we'll still be using it. Unfortunately, this post isn't about a literal tape measure from Earth to the stars. The usual way of measuring distance has to do with observing angles as the Earth goes around the sun, as is illustrated below But now, we have found a way to utilize the Hubble Space Telescope for yet another purpose: spacial scanning. With this new technique, we won't have to wait the half a year it takes for the Earth to move far enough around the sun to make these measurements. Instead, we can use the famous space telescope to make measurements that are correct within 5 billionths of a degree. The hope is that the more precise measurements will allow us to delve deeper into the mystery of dark energy. Read the article here
  14. I'll admit that this has more to do with chemistry than physics, but really when it boils down to it, everything is physics. EVERYTHING To celebrate that the snow is over (hopefully), let's watch how it grows in the first place http://vimeo.com/87342468 Quite beautiful, isn't it? Especially with the music and all. So why do they grow that way? Well, it all has to do with the formation of hydrogen bonds. Usually, when water goes below the freezing temperature, the bonds form a nice crystal-lattice structure that leads to regular ice. However, due to the changing temperatures within clouds and the fact that hydrogen bonds form hexagonal structures, snowflakes happen. They start as hexagonal prisms that slowly form arms and branches while transitioning from temperature to temperature, resulting in the special snowflakes we all know and love - as long as they stay in the winter where they should be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYrF3sFBY20's a video that shows it nicely
  15. 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 the wake of a landing plane (this one's for you, Bobby) The aurora Clouds Phytoplankton in the ocean The center of the HEXAGONAL storm on the polar cap of Saturn Aand to top it off, Spiral Galaxy NGC 4921 For the rest of this series including 24 more stunning photographs as well as the sources, visit here
  16. I nearly forgot the story of the month! Or, at this piont, last month. St. Patrick's day to be exact. Anyways, physicists have now detected direct proof of the big bang and, more specifically, inflation! I can't explain it very well, but my source is not cooperating, so I shall try. Because of the vast size of the universe, there hasn't been enough time for light and information to get from one end to the other. So how is it all the same temperature? That's where inflation comes into play. As the less than a trillionth of a second old universe inflated faster than the speed of light, making everything in that huge range the same temperature. Any small fluctuations in the field blew up into huge structures of the universe. Now, researchers have detected the swirly polarization that would have happened to light in one of those fluctuations. Meaning that we have now seen for the first time direct proof of inflation, and into the beginning of the universe itself. But really, if you're at all interested, check this out and scroll to where you see the pictures
  17. Cytherean mountains (AKA mountans on planet Venus) cannot be seen directly. The surface of our sister planet is completely obscured by the thick clouds that also heat the surface to a balmy 900 or so degrees Fahrenheit. So, how do we know that the mountains are there? Fluids, of course! (dear god why) To put it simply (seeing as I can't make it more complicated if I wanted) the atmosphere of Venus is more like an ocean than a conventional Earth-like atmosphere, with a hotter under layer and cooler top layer. When the lower atmosphere passes over an obstacle such as a mountain, it causes ripples up top, much like an ocean wave after passing over an underwater mountain. Actually, studying that is what lead to the realization of yes, this indeed means Cytherean mountains so, have some pictures of indirect proof of mountains
  18. the fact the last video embedded and this one didn't really irks me I did the exact same thing for both.
  19. 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.
  20. The Standard Model theorizes that the Higgs Field switched on about 100 picoseconds after the big bang. Recently, though, physicists have theorized that it happened a little more gradually than "switching on" in a process more like water boiling. When these bubbles of Higgs Field met, they created massive shockwaves that would have come with sonic booms. In one of the most cool theories in the early universe, the noise would have sounded a lot like thunder. or this (let's see if this cooperates and embeds this time) Regardless, researchers are now trying to hear the leftovers of this sonic boom. SPACE THUNDER.
  21. Though we may not think of plants as moving things, we are sorely mistaken. The force of an opening flower may be very low - in the micro if not nano newtons - but as they exist and move, they are physics. Enjoy some beauty of nature, all dictated by the ever-present laws of physics. photo credit to Yutaka Kitamura Source
  22. Ok, so. If you were to somehow make the grave mistake of falling into a black hole, what would happen? Obviously the answer is die. That bit isn't debatable. Sorry to burst your bubble. However, there are three main ideas of what would happen. Either you would be spaghettified, toasted, or scrambled. Unfortunately, none of these options are as appetizing as they sound. For a long time, physicists believed matter would be spaghettified upon entering a black hole. That's the legitimate term for it. Spaghettification. Anyways. Because of the intense gravitational pull of the singularities postulated to be at the center of black holes, the matter at your feet would be pulled much faster than that at your head, leading to an object being stretched and sucked in to the middle. The problem with this theory of black holes - namely, one with a singularity at the center - is it violates the conservation of information. Ever since Hawking Radiation was introduced and it was realized that black holes will slowly leak quantum information over time until they evaporate, spaghettification has been thrown out the window. Sorry Italy. Idea number two is that there is nothing inside a black hole. The event horizon is in fact a ring of fire, you would be burnt upon entry and scattered back into the rest of the universe, and there is nothing inside the horizon. Nothing. Meaning that black holes would be a rip in the universe itself. This has obvious issues as it violates the Theory of General Relativity. No big deal of couse. Theory number three: scrambled eggs. Rather than an event horizon, this black hole would have an "apparent horizon" that would scramble any matter and information that passed it, and still no singularity. Which means that this one also violates General Relativity. Whoops. This explains it better than me, with fun animation too! This is making me hungry.
  23. What? What could meteorites have to do with skydiving? If you watched that video, congratulations, you saw nothing! Well, unless you are extremely observant that is. Here's a slowed down gif so you can see what's going on a bit better. That would be a meteor during it's "dark flight" phase. This happens when the meteorite reaches terminal velocity and starts falling straight down due to drag forces and blah blah blah and we have never gotten footage of this before. Which means that the fact this skydiver caught it on his helmet cam is pretty incredible. In fact, the chances have been calculated to be that of winning the lottery....three times in a row. It produces a pretty awesome collage picture as well Source
  24. 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.
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