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gcaso

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About gcaso

  • Birthday 01/01/1996

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  1. Wow, my most recent blog post is about drag racing, some components are very similar between the two!
  2. It is really amazing how planes are designed to carry the weight of passengers and luggage. Also the weight of gas must be accounted for while landing so that pilots don't land too hard!
  3. gcaso

    Drag Racing

    Have you ever been in the car sitting at a red light and you know the person next to you wants to get in the same lane as you? If you are a nice person you may slowly accelerate and let them in ahead of you, but like a lot of drivers will accelerate just as fast (if not faster) and try to eiether keep them in their own lane, or get past them so that they enter the lane behind you. This situation I have just prefaced you with is, essentially drag racing. However, there are many other components to drag racing than just a quick acceleration, experienced drag racers will use a wide range of strategies to gain the edge over their opponents (on a closed track, of course!) The first thing that racers usually upgrade or modify, are the tires of their cars. Stock tires have a tread on them, the more tread there is, the less surface area there is. This results in less grip which can slow cars down by a couple of hundreths of a second, enough to lose a race and frustrate any racer. This is a drag racing tire known in the racing world as a "slick" Another major component also comes from the tires. You may think a burnout is just unnecessary wheelspin, but actually what the racer is doing is heating the tires up. This makes the tire softer by nature and it conforms to the track a lot better, again giving the racer more grip. Another common misconception of drag racing is the function of the spoiler. No, no it does not try to make the car fly, nor does it just look pretty. Well, some do just look pretty and aren't very efficent, but thats not important at this point. The fact is, is that spoilers are placed in the rear of the car. They are angled so that in some way, it pushes the air going through it, from the bottom to the top. The air pushes against the spoiler with a force, n. Some of this force is then directed directly down and more pressure is pushed onto the tires, forcing more grip action. Have you noticed a trend here? I have, Drag Racing is all about the grip of your tires! Here's a little something to satisfy the inner speed demon. (Mustangs are better!!)
  4. Nuclear reactors are just as dangerous as nuclear wepons... we're lucky all we get is the occasional 'melt down' of such a facility
  5. gcaso

    The Physics of a Fight

    hope I never have to use the information provided here...
  6. While watching another episode of Ghost Adventures today, I noticed that they had an interesting camera that they were using. It is called a full spectrum camera, meaning that it captures all of the light waves known to exist visible to humans, or not. Or so most people would think. In doing a little research, I found that theses models of camera only capture Ultraviolet Rays and Infrared Rays. By using this camera, they hope to be able to capture what they call an "unexplained apparation" of a ghost. They believe this to be similar to the shape and size of a normal human being. HOW THE CAMERA WORKS To understand how the camera works, we need to understand how a normal camera works. Inside of all of your digital camera's (or phones) there is a sensor that picks up the image from the lens of the camera. This is exactly what is happening inside of the Full Spectrum Camera, except it has been modified (tinkered with) slightly so that it becomes more sensitive to Ultraviolet and Infrared light waves. Regular cameras can already pick up infrared light, but Ultraviolet light still will not be seen on a camera screen unless you modify it to be picked up by the sensor. The guy on the right explains how the camera works. The evidence they capture is the purple mist figure on the couch. Hence the title. This is one of many models of a full spectrum camera, as you can see it looks no different from a video camera that we see today. CONCLUSION I can't explain why they think that a ghost will be better seen in other light waves, and I am a little dissapointed that they call the camera a full spectrum camera, because in reality it only sees 3 light waves. Visable, Infrared, and Ultraviolet
  7. I thought the sole purpose of video games was to do something you can't do in real life, but it seems to me with the addition of real world physics, gamers want the experience to be more realistic...
  8. Light sabers would solve so many everyday problems...
  9. Lately a lot of technology has been developed in order to help Ghost Hunters attain evidence of the Other Side. I regularly watch Ghost Adventures which is a team of 3 investigators who go on lock downs to "haunted" locations and investigate and ultimately make a decision based on the evidence they gather, whether a location is haunted or not. The more I watch it, the more I realize how much physics is actually involved in the hobby. A lot of their equipment has to do with electromagnetic energy which is believed to be the source of energy that spirits use to do something whether it be make a sound or move something. Ghost Adventures is a little different from your traditional Ghost Hunting show, for example, they do their investigations in complete darkness. They each carry a camera which has Infrared LEDs which most cameras will actually pick up, but is invisible to the human eye. Their most popularly used piece of equipment is called an Electromagnetic Field/Fluctuation Detector (EMF Detector for short), The EMF Detector does exactly what its name implies, it takes a reading of the Electromagnetic Field around it, and when there is a fluctuation, or disturbance, it notifies the investigators when the needle moves. This is perceived to be a spirit or a ghost that is somewhere around them. It is very simple to use and requires no source of energy because the energy comes from the EMFs around it. Thinking back to the Magnetism unit in Physics, I now understand what occurs when they react to an EMF fluctuation, basically, The electromagnetic field is present, and the EMF detector reads the normal EMF reading, when it detects a spike, the ghost hunters believe this to be a ghost that has drawn energy from sources around it, thus creating a disturbance in the Electromagnetic field around it. Once a flux or spike occurs, the investigators react to it being a spirit, or ghost if there is no reasonable explaination for the EMF detector to spike like that. This is what the EMF detector looks like In this short video, they show the EMF detector, and how it gives a specific reading. Towards the end it shows a spike in the reading, which indicates a ghost. (Bonus: Creepy voice that goes along with the EMF spike!)
  10. If you've ever been to an airshow with flight demonstration teams with either the Navy's Blue Angels or the Air force's Thunderbirds, you've probably seen them pull some stunts that seem almost impossible according to the laws of physics. The fact is these pilots are highly trained and have over 1,000 flight hours. Notice that they do not wear the flight suits or helmets that regular fighter pilots wear? This is because they have performed the maneuvers so many times that they know what their body will experience. When the Blue Angels take a passenger up in their #7 plane they must be able to manage the stress that the G-Force will put on their body. If they can't the result can be very dangerous, the passenger can black out, and their blood could rush to their head. In order to prevent the dangers from occurring pilots tell the passengers to tense every muscle in their body just before the maneuver that is being performed. This constricts the arteries and veins and doesn't allow the blood to flow as freely as it could with out the muscle contraction. Passengers are also told to use the "Hick Maneuver" It's hard to explain so a video showing it will follow. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1e93JU4Gn4 Notice how Adam had to keep using the "hick maneuver", The pilot was talking to him the whole time, not once did you hear a "hick" from the pilot.
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