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csoup88

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  1. Rachael- I also thought the idea behind the changing of G was very interesting and how by mastering the impact of the 5th dimension on them they could influence it, also how when they did it the earth itself probably would have fallen apart like the crust and inner core from the change in gravitation.   Nate- Wormholes really blow my mind just imagine what we could do with them if we had them mastered, obviously the hole negative energy thing is a problem though, I wonder if we will be able to learn enough about dark matter or energy to solve this conundrum 
  2. Yet another interesting point from Interstellar was the ending, which many of us have avoided because of the fact that a 5th dimension is very confusing indeed. Now obviously the movie took some creative freedom in this scene but the physics behind the 5th dimension was plausible even though it was a stretch. The idea was that Cooper was sent into the blackhole to be saved by the 5th dimensional beings using a tesseract of sorts. A tesseract is a 5th dimensional object, just as a cube is 3 dimensional or a square is 2 dimensional and so forth. The explanation for the object is that you "add" another dimension by adding on lines at 90 degrees. So from a point you add a line to get a line, then more to get a square, then again to get a tesseract. The only catch is that we cannot actually see a tesseract in its truest form in our 3, technically 4, dimensions, we can only see reflection of it. Just like if we draw a cube in 2 dimensions we can only see it's reflection, and you can't tell that the lines are added on perpendicularly. So in this 5th dimensional object they create a way to transport Cooper from his position inside Gargantua back to our galaxy while at the same time giving him the ability to view the 4th dimension (time) to save the earth. This point is also interesting since the idea used in the movie for the 5th dimension, is that the "bulk" as it is called is wrapped around our universe, this means that the 5th dimensional beings can then travel into ours using the tesseract, even a blackhole, and save Cooper, transporting him back to safety in our own solar system. There is ofcourse much more to this idea but this gives a good idea on the idea behind the 5th dimension in Interstellar. Included below is a picture of a tesseract (in our dimension).
  3. One thing that i found interesting in Interstellar was the point made by Anne Hathaway's character that Mann's planet had less a chance at harboring life because the black hole it closely orbited it prevented too many accidents to happen that would start life. In reading Kip Thorne's Physics of Interstellar he goes through the physics of why this statement is very wrong. The main point made by Thorne is that for something to be sucked into the black hole it has to be going right almost at it, otherwise the centrifugal force of say a passing comet would be strong enough to prevent it from being sucked in and instead would be placed in an orbit, just like Mann's planet, around the blackhole. The strong pull by the blackhole would pull many of such objects into the strange orbits like it did. These orbits are far from normal to our standards and are also more 3D in nature as they make almost spherical orbits such as shown below. This also leads to the point that when they are in orbit around Mann's planet, which they had to travel a long way to get to, an explosion sends them directly into the blackhole so much that they are in danger of being pulled all the way into it. This is because of the nature of black hole orbits, Dr. Thorne made an orbit for Mann's planet which at one point is far away from gargantua and then later travels very close to the blackhole so that an explosion could plausibly send them into the grasp of the black hole. A depiction is shown below.
  4. The moon does some strange things if you haven't noticed! And something very strange is happening this Saturday, April 4th! A so called, "Blood Moon", is to occur that will be the shortest of the century, these are very rare occurrences that are very interesting to examine. The blood moon occurs only when the sun, moon and earth are lined up perfectly with the earth in the middle. The earth as it lines up with the sun casts a large shadow which then envelopes the moon as it passes into the earths shadow. As it does this the moon becomes darker and eventually a reddish hue. The moon is turning red for a certain reason because the atmosphere of the earth filters out the blue light of the sun leaving only the red light to shine on the moon giving it it's signature red moon color. This blood moon occurrence happens to be a special one though, that is because usually a blood moon occurs twice a year, but when it occurs four times, like it will this year, it is known as a tetrad. So if a blood moon is when the moon is blood red, a blue moon is when the moon is blue right? Surprisingly no! A blue moon has nothing to do with the color of the moon unlike the blood moon. So what is a blue moon? Well it is a confusing tail. Originally the idea was traced to the "Maine Farmers's Almanac", which stated a blue moon was the third full moon in a season that contains four full moons instead of three which is a rare occurrence. But the idea was misinterpreted by another author who stated a blue moon is the second full moon in a month with two full moons, this was published and adopted as common knowledge. Now when you're friends start talking about the lunar cycles at the lunch table you can contribute useful information into the conversation. Enjoy your Saturday night which I'm sure you'll spend doing something other than watching the moon! Blue moon information from space.com Picture from toonpool.com
  5. Every night at 11 o'clock that not-so-trusted weather man or lady steps onto your screen wearing some type of unappealing weather motif article of clothing trying to convince you about just what is going to happen tomorrow in our little portion of the atmosphere. Now they could be using a crystal ball as far as we know until they bring up that BIG screen full of moving green blobs that mesmerizes us into believing whatever they say. What exactly is this weather map showing us though? For all we know it is showing the movement of buffalo herds over the plains of America. And also if it does show us "rain" as they say, how exactly does it do so? Well the buffalo herd idea was completely false, the radar detection actually is showing the precipitation as most people already know, the radar picks up the dense cloud forms that make up storms, and it can also show how dense these clouds are which often shows up as different colors on the green screen. But again how does this magical radar system work??? Well the answer is actually a simple idea. Radar stands for Radio Detection and Ranging, it was developed starting back in the 1940's and was originally used to detect enemy planes as well as submarines. Back then they used sound waves which were bounced into the air or water and if there was an object present then the waves would bounce back and show the plane or submarine. Weather radar is a tad more advanced than that now though, they use microwaves sent down from satellites to detect the cloud formations and show where and when the precipitation will go next. What is also very special about modern radar can scan up and down, called elevation scanning, as well as in a circle in all directions, known as azimuthal scanning. Combining these two types of advanced scanning can give a 3D picture of the giant green blobs which threaten outdoor birthday parties and picnics alike. So the next time you watch the weather-person goes across your screen at 11 pm, know that they are using highly advanced million dollar technology, to give you a forecast that will be right about 60% of the time. Picture from csindy.com
  6. The epitome of the awkward teen years is of course braces. Almost everyone in the world could use braces, my orthodontist assures me of this, since basically no one in the world has perfectly aligned teeth. The science of orthodontics though requires lots of applications of physics to get the job done! I myself went through the torture of braces for the last four years, beginning with a devilish instrument called a pendulum. Now a pendulum is not anything like a pendulum in a clock that swings back and forth other than the fact that if a pendulum was in your mouth it would probably hurt just as much. Besides that point though a pendulum is very unique in its form of torture. The pendulum is secured to the back teeth which are stationary so that it can slowwwwly push the other teeth and make the correct space to perfectly align the teeth. This is directly using physics principals as a net force is applied to the teeth so they are pushed into the correct position. The power of the pendulum is found in the metal structure itself which being secured to the back teeth cannot move meaning that it is a sort of spring applying force to the teeth. As if this torture was not enough, the pendulum is only the first of many long steps in the process of braces. The next step is the actual braces themselves. The metal braces consist of long metal wires which are affixed to the teeth, these wires are tightened VERY much so that they too have energy to apply forces on the teeth. They are continually tightened throughout the process on every visit so that they continue to straighten and realign the teeth. Picture from pixshark.com The best and probably FUNNEST (sarcasm) part of braces is most definitely the rubber bands that you are forced to wear 24/7. The rubber bands basically do the same thing that the others do applying force to the teeth so that they can be made looking perfect. This time though the energy that fixes the teeth is stored a tad differently with rubber bands being stretched obviously holding the energy. The bands have to be continually changed so that the energy is kept as high as possible and the most force applied at all times. This means moving teeth and an unhappy brace wearer. So next time you see someone with braces, say a short prayer for them that physics doesn't hurt them too much.
  7. When lighting strikes where do you run??? To the building with the giant metal pole shooting into the sky right? The answer is yes as counter-intuitive as it sounds, lightning rods have been around for hundreds of years to protect buildings that could otherwise be quickly destroyed by a severe strike. But just how does a all object we'd think to run away from protect us? The answer lies with one of the founding fathers. Ben Franklin, the genius inventor, ambassador and lover of so-called, "air baths" (sitting around naked), also developed the modern lightning rod. He developed the rods knowing two things: one, that his rod would prevent the buildup of energy in a structure preventing a lighting bolt from damaging it and two, that if lightning did somehow strike that the energy would be grounded before it could destroy whatever structure it was attached to. The first claim of Franklin's is proven today by real fact. That is that lightning bolts are prevented from damaging the structure because of the geometry of the rod. This happens because a pointed object cannot store much energy since it is long and pointed. This then "bleeds off" the energy stored in your house that is naturally present. it equalizes the energy present and prevents any energy buildup at all so that none of the ill-effects of lightning can take affect. But the other part of Franklins plan made sure that even if this first theory failed that crisis could still be avoided! His second idea was that in the case of a lightning strike the lightning would hit the tallest structure, which would be the large rod, the rods are connected to ground so that any buildup of charge can be immediately diverted into the ground instead of the structure. So the magic of lighting rods continues and protects the likes of churches, schools and homes alike! Thanks again Benny! Picture from uncyclopedia.wikia.com
  8. Stiletto's may seem like a strange shoe to examine after running athletic style shoes like running shoes or spikes, but the physics behind stiletto's is also very interesting. Stiletto's are so interesting because they put all the force of a standing person into a tiny area meaning an enormous amount of pressure! For example the average area of two stiletto's heel is about .01 meter squared, if you say the girl wearing the shoe is 120 pounds, (54.4 kg), she has a force of 533 Newton's on the ground. But since pressure is force divided by area she would have an average pressure of 53,000 Pascal's. This might seem like a lot but in comparison the same person wearing shoes with an area of .05 meters squared has an average pressure of 10,660 Pascal's. That is almost five times less than the stiletto heels! This shows that these shoes have immense pressure all going through just a tiny heel. Any shoe engineer would have to keep in mind the immense pressure that stiletto's are put through while designing their shoes. If they make the shoe out a material not strong enough they will have a lot of broken heels on their hands along with a lot of unhappy customers! So next time you put on your stiletto's remember the massive amount of pressure you have under the soles of your feet! Picture from shoe-tease.com
  9. Slip on a pair of running spikes and just like that you're running sub-four-minute-miles! Or so you wish. In reality though spikes can help a lot with runners who want to cut down on their time, spikes you physics to give an advantage to runners! That is why in this blog we will be examining the physics of running spikes. Everyone knows the simple idea of friction, and that the more of it the less you slip! So having rubber socks you would slide much less than if you were in just some cotton ones because the cotton ones will slip! The same thing goes for running shoes! When you apply force to the ground with your foot you propel yourself forward, but what can happen is that instead of propelling yourself forward if the friction isn't good enough your shoe can actually slip backwards! This means that some of your energy you were using to propel yourself forward is lost as you slip backwards! That is were spikes come in. Spikes, instead of relying on friction to propel you forward, use bearing to do so! This means that that they are instead pushing off of a very narrow point instead of large area such as the bottom of a shoe would provide. This in turn is much more effective since less surface area means less slipping is apt to occur. When less slipping occurs all the energy can be focused into simply propelling you forward, making you a much more efficient and quicker runner!!! So before attempting the one mile Olympic record, (3:46.91), make sure you get a great pair of spikes to propel you to the finish line! Image from dailymail.com.uk
  10. Nowadays people throw out HUGE amounts of money for running shoes, spikes and many other types of shoes, and they all have unique purposes for whatever it is you are doing! I decided to take a look at a number of shoes in a series of blog posts and examine just how these sports companies use physics to make their shoes the best technical shoes in the market! In this blog we will examine just the generic running shoe and what must be considered in making it. Any sort of running shoe you have to expect will be going through miles and miles wear and tear as the shoe wearer goes down roads, trails, treadmills and much much more. The biggest thing the shoe designers are thinking about is actually the impulse (PHYSICS TERM) that the shoe goes through when it strikes the ground each stride. So lets examine this more closely. Impulse by definition is the change in momentum of an object such as the impulse delivered by a bat to a baseball. The impulse delivered in each stride is very great for a shoe because every time a shoe strikes the ground it becomes motionless for a very small amount of time meaning the entire body wearing the shoes also does. Therefore when designing the shoes engineers have to create a shoe that will absorb this massive impulse over and over again. The padding that is added into the shoe provides just this so that not only the shoe survives constant use but also the foot that is wearing the shoe. Another thing to consider though with such a shoe is the weight. If you add too much padding then you risk creating a heavy shoe that might feel like landing on a pillow but also feels like lifting an anchor off the ground. This relates to the Newton's simple second law which says net force equals mass times acceleration, meaning a larger mass implies a larger required net force. Of course a larger net force makes for a slower runner which presents the problem to designers of padding versus weight. Hope you enjoyed this post next up spikes, speedy footwear or pointy sneaker of death?!
  11. Recently I was down at my grandfathers house and while I was there I helped my grandfather change out some lights, but these were halogen lights! After hearing my grandfather complain for some time about how there are too many different light bulbs now a days I got to thinking what makes halogen lights so darn special? I got to looking in on it to see how exactly halogen lights worked and found some interesting things. I found that both a regular light bulb and halogen light bulbs have a tungsten filament that burns at an extremely high temperature. The difference in the halogen lights though is that the tungsten burns at a much higher temperature that would melt the glass of a regular bulb. So the filament in a halogen light is encased in a quartz envelope, therefore it can continue to burn at extremely high temperatures. The other big difference in the halogen lights though is the gas inside the bulb, while a regular bulb usually has some kind of gas like argon or nitrogen, halogens have a gas from the halogen group, hence the name. The halogen gasses contain a special property that makes it so at very high temperatures they combine with the vaporized tungsten atoms and redeposit on the tungsten filament. This means they create an almost regenerating process that makes it so bulbs can last much longer and be much brighter. This comes at a cost since the bulb must be much hotter but overall the longevity of the bulb makes up for the heat loss. The simple light bulb has gotten more and more efficient over the years and even if my grandfather's not happy about it, engineers sure are. Picture from thehigheredcio.com
  12. I know that was a horrible pun, but in truth besides all those 3rd grade science experiments you did in elementary school static electricity can be extremely useful. I think the most interesting application of static electricity was its use in reducing carbon emission. You see large factories would use the basic idea of static electricity in their smokestacks to reduce pollution into the atmosphere. They do this in a pretty ingenious way, first they have an electrically charged metal grid that all the smoke and pollutants pass through. As they pass through the grid many of the small particles become electronically charged. When these particles go higher up the smokestack they then pass by charged collecting plates. The charged particles stick to the oppositely charged collecting plates and are then able to be gathered together and disposed of separately instead of having them be shot into the sky where they will wreak havoc on the environment. Another interesting application of static electricity is found in painting cars! What many painters will do is after preparing there car for painting they will charge their paint up with an electrical charge. Then when they spray the paint on the car it sticks better and also is more evenly distributed as the charges want to separate themselves in an even manner. In doing so the painter gives a finer, smoother finish on the car they are painting. So it seems that 3rd grade lesson is actually pretty important especially if you want to reduce carbon emission or paint a car! With that I will leave you off with a picture of a peer of mine who's cat went through static electricity.
  13. You wake up in a haze in the morning and drowsily walk down the stairs take out some whole wheat bread and pop it into the toaster to be pleased by the sight of evenly browned toast in 45 to 90 seconds. What you didn't realize was physics was the reason your toast was made so well! It may sound silly but any normal toaster uses physics to make your morning snack. A toaster usually is made up of a simple circuit constituting of a power source, the plug in the wall, a giant resistor and a simple timer to make sure your bread isn't burnt! The resistor in your toaster is made up of an alloy because it provides a high resistance, the most commonly used is Nichrome, or Nickel combined with chromium. The Nichrome is wound in tight coils to increase its length and therefore resistance so that when a current is run through it the coils give off extreme heat which warms up your toast for you to consume with your favorite jam, jelly or simple butter. The idea is quite simple as we know the resistance of a length of wire is equal to the resistivity for metal (very high for chromium) times the length of the wire, which is made longer by coiling, divided by the cross sectional area, which is usually very thick for the chromium coils to create maximum heat. So next time you make your toast remember to thank your local physicist, you'd just be eating cold bread without them! Picture from picture.webspier.com
  14. Day dreaming in class lead me to thinking about one day how I wanted to visit Australia, this logically led me to thinking of Crocodile Dundee, which then ofcourse led to crocodiles. And then with my physics mind I asked myself... just how bad is a gator bite??? Then I got to researching. I found some very impressive statistics on the subject, the first being that the force of a crocodile bite is as much as 22,000 Newtons!!! This compared to other biting animals such as a shark (3,600 N) gives you a picture of just how impressive this bite is. If you have absolutely no knowledge of sharks though maybe I can paint a better picture for you. A standard piano weighs about 800 lbs or 363 kg, so they would have a force of about 3,557 Newtons. SO the picture looks like this you can either have about 6 full size piano's fall on your leg or one gigantic crocodile just bite down once, the choice is yours my friends. This explains why those gator wrastlers have to use rubber bands from cars inner tubes to keep these gators under control. So basically folks avoid both piano's falling from the sky but even more so avoid alligators, unless of course there is seven piano's, then you're really in trouble. Picture from thecelebritypix.com
  15. I talked about in a previous blog post about the physics that goes into getting an effective and violent take down, but I realized I could apply even more of my physics knowledge to this specific case. Because I know I can find the momentum of a system of two wrestlers during a takedown!!!!!! How awesome. Lets start. The equation for momentum is of course p = mv, p being momentum, m being mass and v being velocity. I know mass pretty easily since we wrestle in weight classes, I am 170 pounds (77 kg) and so is my opponent! Now velocity is a little bit tricky, we can assume that my opponent is at 0 m/s since I have caught him completely off guard. For me I know that my shot takes about 6 feet (1.829 meters) and it takes about .79 seconds based on my official testing. Plugging in to some kinematic equations se know x = (1/2) (v final + v initial) t so solving for v final (v initial is 0) we get my final velocity as 4.63 m/s. So lets CALCULATE!!!! We start with our equation, m1v1 + m2v2 = v (m1+m2) We find my initial momentum to be 356.5 kg/(m/s), then solving for v final using conservation of momentum we find our final velocity with both bodies moving as 2.31 m/s. That is pretty fast for two big guys on a mat I think! I thought it was atleast pretty cool to use my physics skillz to figure out just exactly how fast and how much momentum is in a system of wrestlers! Hope you did too!
  16. I recently realized how happy I am that I wrestle instead of swim, that is because not only would I have to wear a more embarrassing outfit than I do now, but I also would have to shave my legs! AHHHHHHHH! Why do swimmers go to such outrageous measures to make themselves look like fools you ask! The answer is they have to battle the incredible effects of friction in the water! You might think this sounds crazy, how could water have such a large force of friction, but it does and it makes all the difference to people that are winning and losing literally by tenths of a second. Drag force works its magic in very strange ways and in the pool, just as we learned earlier this year with air resistance, as velocity increases the drag force increases as well, which means the faster you go the harder you have to work to keep that speed! All of this depends on some fancy calculations and also Reynolds number which takes into account the shape of the object as well as the viscosity of the liquid, whether it be air or water. I find out interestingly enough that at low Reynolds numbers the speed is proportional to the inverse of the Reynolds number and at higher numbers it is proportional to the square of the speed. This Reynolds number interested me as I researched this topic since we did not look at in our small stint on drag forces. So those poor swimmers are stuck buying lots of very expensive swimsuits they can only use a few times so that they cut tiny tiny amounts of time of their strokes. I feel for them, and I'm going to stick to just beating people up.
  17. You heard me right!!! Back in the 1940's the British made a GENUISE plan to counter the massive damage caused by German U Boats in the Atlantic, and with steel shorthand at the time what was the best resource to use??? You guessed it! Water! But not just regular water, FROZEN water! I know exciting. But it was not just frozen water, but actually a combination of water and wood pulp known as pykrete, the Operation name was Project Habakkuk and the idea was that the ship would be able to be cheap and last for long lengths of time in the Northern Sea's where it is already so cold. If they could get these aircraft carriers made then they would be able to fight the U boats more effectively in the Atlantic. Where did they get such an idea but from an easily seen physics principle of flotation, the designer of the boat saw the icebergs that were in the Atlantic and figured something like them could be created and flattened off so that aircraft could take off and land on them to deploy in the Atlantic. You might think this is crazy, which it truly is, but thinking about the idea, it is not too out there. We all know ice floats and since the Atlantic is already so cold the aircraft carrier could be deployed and would not use much precious steel that a normal aircraft carrier would demand. The problems though seemed to pile up, for one they would still need a large amount of steel to retain the ships structure, they would need a large amount of insulator to stop melting, and they would also need a large cooling device to keep the vessel cold enough. Besides that they found that the ice would slowly deform over time due to stress or "platic flow". In the end the project would be cancelled due to lack of support and the large estimated costs, but the physics principals behind the floating block of ice that aircraft would fly off of, sounded really cool.
  18. In desperation for blog posts I realized that I had a gold mine before me! That gold mine is the sport of wrestling! This favorite past time of mine incudes many physics principals as while brute strength may help, using leverage is the best way to win. So for this post let's examine one of the most basic wrestling moves out there... the double leg! The double leg a simple move where the attacker will shoot into his opponents legs, his head will be on the left side and with his arms he swings up the opponent and finishes on top in a dominant manner. How does this use physics you ask??? Well in many manners, for one the right arm of the attacker must be low as atleast his opponents knee for the move to be successful, combining this with head position, the attacker will put his head into the side of the other wrestler as he pulls the opponents right leg in. This creates a fulcrum, the poor sucker is swung on his hips and his legs go straight to the ceiling and his face smashes straight into the mat. By attacking at the knee the wrestler has more torque, he can apply more force with less power than if he tried to attack their thigh for example, which is both stronger and closer to his hips making it a far less easier to swing the opponent into the air. Using this method is much easier than trying to physically just lift the man into the air with all the muscles in your body, you have no mechanical advantage which leads to most JV kids getting slammed on their face in attempting to shoot on their opponent. Jordan Burroughs is pretty awesome at this move as seen in this picture from wrestlingisbest.com
  19. If you have 10,000 dollars lying around... And much more than that, I recently learned about this development of hover boards in a Time Magazine article talking about the 25 best inventions of 2014, and figured I should share it with the physics blogging world. So just who is developing such an amazing product! None other then Hendo Hover a company devoted to using electromagnetism to create hover technology. This certain kind of technology they have specifically trademarked, that is "Magnetic Field Architecture" (MFA), and while they want to use this technology for some really awesomely cool hover boards, they are also very interested in using the technology for all around our society. How can you use levitation all over society you ask? Well Hendo has the answer, they are planning on applying their MFA tech to buildings so when earthquakes strike the buildings are safe and also so valuable objects can be kept safe through hovering. But starting with hovering a building is like a pre-med student starting the first day doing a brain surgery, so they took a smaller, easier task first, that is a hover board. Their hope is if they can popularize and show the technology in this small manner that they will then be able to take on bigger and bigger challenges like buildings. The hover board is no small task though in itself, currently the board can only float over very conducting materials and only does so by an inch or so. The other problem is its battery life currently is only at about 15 minutes. So for now it seems I'm still stuck walking to school, but how cool is it that this technology is not so far off! If you are interested you can check out more at hendohover.com ! Picture from cartoonstock.com
  20. As a senior in high school I am expected to have a, "plan" for what it is next in my life, and while it is not concrete yet I know wherever I go it will be in the US Navy. When I started the process of applying to the US Naval Academy and the Naval ROTC scholarship I was surprised by the emphasis put on physics and engineering sciences. I asked one admissions member from the Naval Academy if I should put any type of engineering on my list of majors I am interested in. He then went on to tell me that doing so would make me a much more desirable candidate, interested I asked exactly why. What he told me was that the military is expanding its STEM abilities and wants its officers to have some sort of skill, such as engineering, that will benefit the military and make them of better use. This means they have increased heavily the amount of STEM majors they demand from academies and ROTC units. I then called up my Uncle who is currently a Colonel in the Marine Corps, he at one time led an engineering battalion and told me how much more desirable men and women were who had engineering skills of any kind as they were taken into the unit and used to build bridges, buildings and anything else needed at the time. He also told me about the accelerated and paid for course the military offers because of the large need for these skills. He himself got a degree in just two years from the War college because the courses there are run so much faster than a regular school, and are also of course free paid by the military. So after all this I was not surprised at all when I started my NROTC application to see that they required 75% of the scholarship earners to go into a tier 1 or 2 major of their choosing. And what does tier one and two include you might ask? Well just about any science, engineering or mathematical degree you can think of. It seems like all my time then was not wasted in my physics classes, at least not in the Navy's eyes!
  21. In a previous blog post I may have said nothing ever ever ever can leave a black hole. I actually said exactly this, but this guy named Stephen Hawking has been telling me different. Particle production is to blame for this dilemma. You see quantum physics describes in very fancy terms how particles are created for micro-seconds all over the universe all the time. So say one of these particles and its anti-particle is created just on the event horizon of a black hole and one of the pieces falls into the black hole, well we have a problem now. Conservation of energy says we must keep everything in balance the taking of one of those particles creates an inbalance in the universe, to account for this the black hole must pop something else out! Usually it is just energy or radiation which gives this phenomena its name, "Hawking Radiation". This principal idea has been used to explain the destruction of black holes as over time more and more mass is stolen from them until not enough is left and the black hole disappears. The black hole would be vaporized and in theory the black hole would heat up as it expels all this radiation and this is currently what scientists are looking for to prove the idea true. Of course though it can be difficult endeavor to try to find a black hole slightly hotter than other black holes since we have never even seen a black hole before. So it seems if you did happen to drop your dog into a black hole you may be able to get him back! Just in the form of energy or radiation which sounds better than nothing. I knew there was a bright side to black holes!
  22. Many people complain about their lives, but there is always a bright side, or maybe a not so bright side because you are not in a black hole! (did you catch that one). You see there are a lot of bad things about being in a black hole, the first being you have no chance of ever getting out. Since after the event horizon nothing can ever ever ever escape. (I may disprove this in a later blog post but for now believe me) At the event horizon you are being sucked in faster than the speed of light so any sound waves your making would never get past the event horizon and you could hear nothing. But singing Blank Space (another pun) may not be the thing you're most worried about inside the black hole in the first place. Because since you are being sucked in by such a strong gravitational force even a centimeter of difference means a massive change in force. Basically you will be ripped apart atom by atom as the force acts on each part of your body. Say though you did survive somehow! Yay good for you, now the only problem is that because of time dilation (a part of relativity) you will feel like you're falling forever, while on the outside it would appear you're falling at the same speed, so have fun experiencing all you can inside a part of space full of nothingness, I would just take being turned into spaghetti over that. Of course there is also the possibility that when you pass the event horizon you end up in a 4th dimension full of bookcases... you'll have to ask Christopher Nolan about this one though because I can't explain it. So if life's got you down, just remember to turn on a light and realize, "Hey I'm not in a black hole so things can't be too dark!"
  23. Having read the book, American Sniper, I was excited as anyone when the movie came out and many people have now become interested in the story of the most deadly American Sniper ever. I thought about some of what he does in the book and realized how much his shooting has to do with physics as he accounts for the different changes in elevation, wind and even temperature to where his bullet lands. In the book he goes to a special school where they teach him much of the science behind landing the shot perfectly. SO why not apply just some simple physics to one of the most ridiculous shots Chris Kyle ever took, that was one that was about 1.3 miles away from his target or around 1920 meters for us physics nerds. How far exactly then would the bullet just drop from such a distance? Well at the time he was firing a .338 Lapua Magnum slug which weighs about 200 grams and has a muzzle velocity of 1,005 meters per second. By some simple calculations we can see that over the distance of 1920 meters just from the force of gravity the bullet would have fallen 17.9 meters!!!! Lets take a look, The bullet would have taken 1.91 seconds to reach the distance of 1,920 meters, 1920/1005 = 1.91 Then plugging into y = vt + (1/2)at^2 we get y to be 17.9 meters. SO before compensating for any other factors, Chris Kyle would have had to shoot about 17.9 meters high just for the bullet to land somewhere around the target, which is quite crazy to me. Guess it's a good thing he knew his physics though! Picture from toprightnews.com
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