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ncharles

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Blog Entries posted by ncharles

  1. ncharles

    Curling

    By ncharles,

    As you may have figured out already, I tend to enjoy writing these blogs about sports and fairly dangerous activities...so I will continue this trend with curling. Although not the most exciting sport to watch, playing it is a whole different story due to two main physics principals: friction and collisions. Curling is played on a ice surface to allow the stone to glide easily and smoothly to the target because the friction between the ice and the stone is very little. If you've ever seen even one throw of  a curling game then you have seen the people so stand there with brooms and brush the ice and you probably thought "well that just looks silly" (myself included). Well there actually is a purpose to this; the act of brushing the ice causes the top layer of the ice to met and turn in to water. The friction between the stone and water is much greater than the friction between the stone and ice. So, what these people are doing is slowing down the stone in order to make it stop right in the middle of the target circle.
    Similar to billiards, curling is filled with collisions; and that is the biggest part of the game. The ability for the thrower and the 'brushers" to judge the speed and direction necessary to accomplish a task is key to the sport. For example, is the thrower throws the stone way to fast, the brusher wont be able to stop it and then is will smack into every other stone and they will all be scattered in every which way. This obviously isn't what is wanted because the task of stopping in the middle was not achieved. Rather, the thrower wants to throw it at just the right speed in order for the stone to collide with one or more stones and stop right in the middle while sending the other stone out of the target area. So, next time you watch or play curling, you will actually know what the goofy people with the brushes are for!
  2. ncharles

    The Perfect Free-Throw

    By ncharles,

    Sports have been a large topic of focus in this here blog and i will continue that trend with a new application of physics...BASKETBALL.  Now many people may think that basketball is a simple game of putting a ball in a hoop but it is much more complicated. Im only going to focus on the free throw in this post. The first part of the free throw is lining up your shot. This takes practice in order to learn the typical trajectory of your shot so that you now what angle to shoot it with, the amount of force to apply to it and the night to shoot it from. Right after the shot comes the follow through. The main part of the follow through is to apply backspin to the ball. This makes the shot more likely to go in because rather than bouncing normally, the backspin decreases the angle of "reflection" (for lack of a better term) of the ball and keeps it closer to the hoop so it can roll in. 
  3. ncharles

    Bombs Away!!

    By ncharles,

    In the history of the world, there have been millions of bombs dropped by any nation during a war. However, what most people never think about is the physics behind dropping a bomb. The bombardier must take into consideration the speed at which they are flying, the horizontal distance away from their target and the height at which they are flying. Say, for example, the average B-42 bomber has a cruise altitude of 39,00 ft (12,000 m) and a cruise speed of 545 mph (926 kph). If a bomb were to be dropped with these conditions, the bomb would travel a horizontal distance of 12.72 km in its fretful in 49.5 seconds (ignoring air resistance). If the bomb team was given a target to hit with a radius of 1 km, then mistiming the drop my a mere 5 seconds could cause the bomb to miss by 300 m. This could mean the difference between winning or losing an entire war...some pretty big stakes. Luckily now there are bombing systems that are very accurate and a bomb team is no longer required; but back in the day, this was a stressful task that took much focus and careful calculations. 
  4. ncharles

    Relative Speed

    By ncharles,

    Another idea that came up while flying to Florida was the principle of relative motion. When ever people are traveling they are usually only focused on their speed and not that of others. However, as i looked out of the window, I saw another plane in the open sky and it seemed that it was going much faster than us. However, knowing the principle of relative motion, i realized that we were most likely flying at similar speeds and it only seemed that the other place was flying fast because we were flying in different directions. Due to this, the relative speed of the other plane from my perspective would be our speed plus the speed of the other plane. However, if we happened to be flying in the same direction. the relative speed of the other plane would be the absolute value of my speed subtracted from their speed. So next time you travel know that things in your surroundings are not moving as fast as they seem to be.
  5. ncharles

    Winter Driving

    By ncharles,

    As all Rochesterians know, winter driving is not easy and can get out of hand very easily. But why? Well it is rather simple. The added snow and ice on the road causes the coefficient of friction between the tires and the road to be much much smaller. Using the equation Ff=uFn with Ff being the force of friction, u being the coefficient of friction and Fn being the normal force we can see that when the coefficient of friction decrease (while the normal force is kept constant) the force due to firkin decreases. This causes the tires to slip a lot easier on the snow and ice than it would in just dry pavement. Similar to driving on snow/ice is driving on water. Although not a sever, when the road is wet the coefficient of friction between the tires and the parent is less than dry parent but not as less as snowy or icy pavement. So when you go driving this week be extra careful and be ready for a spin out.

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