pavelow
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"I'll take mirrors for $200, Alex." "This type of mirror is a mirror on one side and a window on the other." "What is a one way mirror?" "You got it."
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Light as a Particle and a Wave
pavelow posted a blog entry in Blog Having Nothing to do with Physics
Light is subject to a quantum theory called wave-particle duality. This theory proposes that matter exhibits both properties of a particle and properties of a wave. The experiment that shows light's wave-like properties is the double slit experiment. when light was shone through two slits close together, and a screen was placed behind the slits, the impact pattern didn't look the way one would expect a particle impact pattern to look like. After going though the slits, the light diffracted, creating a wave diffraction pattern on the screen, showing light's wave-like properties. Light's p -
A military application of electromagnetic force is the rail gun. A rail gun is like a regular gun in the sense that it fires a projectile out of a barrel, but it has some major differences. A regular gunpowder gun uses a projectile with a firing pin, which is hit by the gun, pressurizing gunpowder, resulting in an explosion which propels the projectile forward. This is a bit inefficient however, because a lot of recoil occurs in the gun because of conservation of momentum, and a lot of excess heat is produced. The rail gun propels the projectile differently. Instead of using gunpowder
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Magnetic Levitation (Maglev) trains are one of the ways electromagnets are used every day. Maglev trains carry passengers at speeds of 310 mph. The trains are able to reach such high speeds without falling apart partially because of their sturdy design but also because of their propulsion system. The trains are held up by magnetic forces when they approach higher speeds.the lack of physical contact with rails reduces friction to only that of air resistance, allowing the train to be more stable at high speeds. The main issue keeping maglev trains from becoming more common is economic
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The Electrical Grid in Your Home
pavelow posted a blog entry in Blog Having Nothing to do with Physics
The electrical grid is wired in parallel. Why? The benefit of having your home wired in parallel rather than in series is having a uniform voltage rather than a uniform current. Because your home is wired in parallel, manufacturers of electrical products can set a specific resistance and know the expected current because of ohm's law V=IR, rearranged to I=V/R. The danger of having everything wired in parallel is that increasing the amount of resistors in the circuit decreases the equivalent resistance of the entire circuit. This can lead to a dangerous amount of current travelling tho -
Why is Exploring the Ocean so Hard?
pavelow posted a blog entry in Blog Having Nothing to do with Physics
"The ocean covers 71 percent of the Earth's surface and contains 97 percent of the planet's water, yet more than 95 percent of the underwater world remains unexplored." Source: http://www.noaa.gov/ocean.html Many obstacles exist keeping widespread ocean exploration from becoming something not extremely difficult. One obstacle is the pressure under water. "The deeper you go under the sea, the greater the pressure of the water pushing down on you. For every 33 feet (10.06 meters) you go down, the pressure increases by 14.5 psi (1 bar)." Source: http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/p -
An electromagnet is created when an electric current produces a magnetic field. Electromagnets have multiple applications and are a popular application of magnets. Electromagnets are often used in large metal scrapyards where large amounts of metals need to be distributed quickly and efficiently. A crane with an electromagnet on its arm is perfect for this task because the crane operator can induce a current to magnetize the electromagnet and pick up metal, and then cut the current when he wants to release the metal from the arm. Scientists often use electromagnets for experiments be
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Substances are magnetized when their electrons spin in the same direction. What this does is it creates charge differences in a substance. Magnets have north and south poles. These poles dictate the direction in which the magnetic field flows both inside and outside of a magnet. On the outside, field lines flow north to south; inside they flow south to north. Interestingly enough, magnets will always have both a north and a south pole. This can be observed if a magnet is cut in half. Since the poles are the result of the flow of field lines, and the field lines always form loops, there c
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There are two often used ways of avoiding RADAR (RAdio Detection And Ranging): Stealth and Jamming. My previous blog post covered stealth. This one will cover jamming. World War Two era planes weren't equipped with stealth technology to avoid radar, because it didn't exist yet. The air forces of the world had to figure out ways to avoid radar, and thus they figured out how to jam radar. World War Two era bombers were easily picked up by radar, so to confuse the towers, the planes released aluminum chaff. From the tower's point of view, all the signals from the chaff looked the same as
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There are two often used ways of avoiding RADAR (RAdio Detection And Ranging): Stealth and Jamming. This blog post will cover stealth. Radar can be rendered useless or less useful if the radio waves sent out by radio towers never return to the towers themselves. Airplanes today are equipped with more than one way to hide from radar. One way planes can avoid sending radio waves back to towers is by only allowing radio waves to reflect at one angle. The B2 bomber, as shown in the picture, was engineered to be as flat as possible, this causes radar waves to bounce off the plane as
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RAdio Detection And Ranging (RADAR)
pavelow posted a blog entry in Blog Having Nothing to do with Physics
Radar is used by militaries and civilians of the world for object detection. Radar works when a tower shoots a "beam" of radio waves in a direction. If an object is in this "beam" of radio waves, the waves will bounce back to the tower. The owner of the radar tower receives two very important types of data from the use of radar: Distance and velocity. Distance between the radar tower and object is determined by the time it takes the radio waves to return to the tower after they are initially shot. The radio waves travel at light speed. Therefore, it's pretty easy to determine the dist -
Every teenager has stayed up late, woken up early, regretted their decision, end then slept extra long the next night. Can a person really catch up on sleep? Numerous studies have been conducted on the subject, and what is the prevailing hypothesis is that there are two systems dealing with sleep, a circadian process and a sleep homeostatic process. The circadian process is a rhythm of sleepiness and alertness over a twenty four hour period. This clock is related to the amount of light received by the eyes and can change when stimulus to the eyes is removed. This cycle is controlled b
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When cars get into a collision, why does it seem like half the car gets turned into debris? The answer is simple, conservation of momentum. In elastic collisions, like car crashes, the projectiles have a lot of momentum. If a head on collision occurred where the cars stayed perfectly rigid, the occupants would have a huge change in momentum. This used to happen before modern safety regulations. Modern cars are designed to "give", absorbing a large amount of momentum and keeping the occupants from experiencing the same change in momentum, saving lives and livelihoods in the process. It
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Pressure's Effect on State Changes
pavelow posted a blog entry in Blog Having Nothing to do with Physics
Melting/Freezing points and Boiling/Condensing points aren't just based on temperature; pressure is also involved. This fact can be observed by having a weighted wire go through a block of ice, as witnessed in this video. As shown in the video, pressure is also a major factor in determining the melting point of ice. On a molecular level, the molecules under the wire get increased kinetic energy, causing them to become liquid. once the wire passes through that part of the block of ice, the molecules lose the excess energy and refreeze. The melting/refreezing phenomenon also happens w -
There are two types of nuclear reactions that are very prevalent in today's society: fission and fusion. What are these reactions and how are they used? Nuclear fission is a reaction where a molecule splits into smaller molecules and excess subatomic particles, and releases energy. This type of reaction happens in nuclear bombs and in nuclear power plants. In nuclear bombs, this reaction is set off by a neutron hitting a nucleus, making it unstable and causing fission. In a bomb, this happens in the vicinity of an amount of a particle, called critical mass, where the reaction becomes a c