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Momentumous

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  1. Momentumous
    1) The course is HARD-- and it doesn't get easier as you go along. The longer you wait, the harder it gets, and the more you'll have to do.

    2) Deterrence-- as this challenging work gets harder and harder, you're going to be less and less inclined to do it. Think about it, I'd be far more proactive about climbing a 5 foot cliff than a 100 foot cliff, if you do it in chunks it won't seem so bad.

    3) Imagination-block-- if you have ANYTHING creative to do (like blog posts for example), you're going to have to be full of ideas. If you have to sit there and think of 10 different things to talk about in one day rather than over 10 weeks, it's going to be a LOT harder to think of something.

    4) Cognitive function-- when a body is tired or stressed out, decreased cognitive function (you're ability to think at optimum levels) is a common side effect. Like I said, this course is HARD, you're going to want all the cognitive function you can get!

    5) The test date isn't changing-- due dates are the procrastinators worst enemy; and trust me, they don't move because you have a tradgic illness called procrastination. The AP exam is set and in May, regardless of whether you try to cram the stuff in the day before or months before.

    6) Memory retention-- repetition is your friend when you're trying to memorize something. If you don't leave yourself enough time to practice and repeat everything you need to memorize (and there's a LOT of that in any physics class), you're just not going to remember it. And it's pretty common knowledge you're not really going to remember what you crammed an hour ago--you're going to remember what you've practiced so many times it seems stupid to not remember.

    7) You work better in pieces-- alright maybe not literally in pieces, but work in small chunks is a good thing! By taking things in small portions, deterence lowers and cognitive function is at a higher level (wooo big words!) making it optimum to work as the work comes rather than saving it until right before it's due.

    8) The teacher knows what they're doing-- meaning if they give you lots of time to do something, it's PROBABLY because you actually need it. You can never really tell how long something is actually going to take you until you start it--which means you could pretty much s.o.l. if you save something till last minute

    9) Spontaneous fun--let's be real, NO ONE ever makes plans to do fun things anymore. Don't you want to be able to be spontaneous?! No one wants to say "No, I can't go {insert beloved task} because I have physics to do." Get it over with and open up time to enjoy a little spontenaity

    10) Because I said so; no better reason than that
  2. Momentumous
    1) As seen in the video, though normal tires won't be quite so flexible as the tires shown, tires flex QUITE a bit when you rev your car to a start. With a common knowledge of the fact that materials get harder in the cold, severe cold weather could pretty pheasably cause damage to the integrity of the material should you rev them too fast.

    2) The cold air not only makes the rubber more dense, but it makes the air inside the tires more dense as well. That means your tire pressure--should you be the more common not-so-diligent-pressure-inspector--is lower than it should be. This in and of itself causes the amount of surface area of the tire touching the ground to decrease, which will give you less traction to begin with. Traction is good during the winter

    3) By scrambling your tires as fast as they can go, you're causing QUITE a lot of friction, and even cave-men figured out the unavoidable side effect of such is heat. This heat often leads to the snow under the tire getting melted, meaning now you're trying to skid on a water-slush-ice-snow combo. Trust me, snow tires are made for SNOW, you're better off dealing with just that.

    4) It wastes gas! Seems a little obvious that gas is wasted when you're sitting there pedal to the floor but not moving, but whats more you're making your car work pretty hard to go nowhere. It's a bigger waste than you'd probably think, and not so nice for the environment either!
  5. Momentumous

    Bending a bullet?

    By Momentumous,

    Yes, this has indefinitely been proven impossible, but just how impossible?

    Google appears to have failed me for actual statistics on the infamous gun used in Wanted for the curved bullet, so lets just say this pistol has a muzzle velocity of 250 m/s (810 ft/s). Lets also say the barrel length is 5". So the bullet sits at rest with a velocity of 0 to 250 m/s over 5". That means in .000508 seconds (v=(x/t)=> x/v=t) the bullet got to the end of the barrel. Which also means it had an acceleration of about 500000 m/s^2 (a=(v/t)).

    With this in mind, note that you'd also have to have IMPECCABLE timing so that you change the motion of the muzzle JUST as the bullet is about to leave, nicking the bullet and therefore affecting its direction. So if you're so lucky as to have the timing down, you'd have .000508 seconds to move the muzzle.

    I don't know about you, but when I jerk my hand as fast as possible, I can still SEE the movement, it'd take some sort of crazy robot that can accelerate faster than 500000 m/s^2 to even hope to curve a bullet.
    Plausible? With modern technology, maybe, but certainly not by hand.

    (please note I know very little about guns from prior knowledge, these are theoretical values deduced from numbers I found online with some sort of frequency).
  6. Momentumous
    Does anyone else feel it too? End of the year syndrome... it's kinda like senioritis, except anyone can get it. Essentially what it means is a complete and total lack of motivation to do anything whatsoever. I don't know about you, but it's hitting me hard right now, with 5 days left of school and numerous projects not yet completed.
    So lets remind ourselves why we like physics, shall we?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3Zf1f3-JYs

    Because physics is everywhere, and it can be funny!
    But most importantly, because it tells us how much peter griffin weighs.
  7. Momentumous
    I've been pondering this for a while and be it because I haven't really looked at equations nor truly tried applying equations in creative ways, I've stumbled across a relationship I can't seem to figure out (maybe someone could answer it with a blog? {I'm such a nice person}).

    So I have a volvo s60, and for its size, its a pretty hefty car. Being so massive, my dad has often preached what a splendid winter car it is, as its weight increases friction and thus provides better traction in bad weather.
    However a car of a greater mass has greater momentum, which should make it harder to stop the car once it's in motion.
    So I suppose my question is, is there a way to relate momentum's impact on velocity to frictional impact on velocity when referring to an object of constant mass? Theoretically if the two are somehow related, wouldn't there be an optimum mass for maximizing traction while minimizing momentum?
  8. Momentumous
    With a little digging, I was able to figure out how transitions lenses really work on this website:
    http://en-us.transitions.com/Why-Transitions/The-Technology/Photocromic-tech/

    To sum it up, within the lenses are photochromic molecules. These molecules react to UV rays and actually change their structure when exposed, which is what causes the lens to darken.

    And some fundamentals of weather still play into effect. When it's hot, the lenses react more quickly because the heat allows molecules to move faster, which in turn means the photochromic molecules can change their shape more quickly. The reverse is also true for the cold, since molecules move more slowly in cold tempurtures, the lenses will react more slowly in cold temperatures as well.
  9. Momentumous

    Ice skating!

    By Momentumous,

    Ice skating has a lot of obvious physics involved.

    For one, you could easily look at the centripital motion invovled when a figure skater spins. Conservation of angular momentum plays a huge roll in how they control the speed of their spins, but we've all heard that before.

    There's physics involved in the very fundamental movement of iceskates. When you iceskate, you put a lot of pressure on a very small, thin surface area. This force, as well as the friction between the blade and the ice, actually causes the ice just beneath the skate to melt. So in actuality, you're not ice skating--you're water skating. This is why ice skating leaves tracks behind you; because you melted the ice in divets where you're skates were. The friction is also why you can glide to a stop pretty easily-- since there's enough friction to melt the ice, there's plenty of friction to slow the skates to a stop. If you didn't keep propeling yourself and adding force into the equation, you'd never go anywhere.
    Friction plays a HUGE roll in control during the winter!
  10. Momentumous

    Le Catapult

    By Momentumous,

    So lets face it, our catapult was awesome. Even if it didn't shoot 80 yards, the fact that we used garage door springs made up for it.

    But to the physics!

    Whilst reflecting on our design, I remembered that we had taken our current unit--impulse to be more specific--into account when making the catapult. We knew that the force from the springs would be pretty huge, make a pretty big velocity for the arm, so the stopper to make it launch at a 45 degree angle would feel some serious force, and so would the arm. With this in mind, we put a LOT of padding in the way (probably 20 ft worth of crib lining and a good, thick memory foam pillow). By adding the pillow, we decreased the force taken on the stopper as well as the arm.

    Just for kicks, we took off all the padding on our last launch. The result proves that the cushioning lead to an extra impact time, decreasing the impulse and therefore assisting the integrity of the arm and stopper; on the last launch, the arm shattered. Our slugger shall launch no more.
  11. Momentumous
    Physics plays a huge roll in skiing--and yes, I've posted about such before, but a 3 day ski trip really struck some new physics relations home.

    Revelation one:
    When turning, bending the knees into the turn, and standing up out of the turn actually makes the turn far more efficent and more fun. Part of the efficiency is simply Newton's law--every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction. By bending, you're thus using your body weight to turn more forcefully with the aid of the shape and design of the ski. Depending on the circumstances of your turn, bending your knees can also flex the skis themselves partially, making them pop back to their normal shape and thus aiding the turn.

    Revelation two:
    Too much wax is a bad thing. After every ski trip good ski care mandates that you wax your skis. This is to help mildly smooth out any small scrapes and to thus make the flat surface smoother, thus creating less friction. However, too much wax can have the opposite effect seeing as wax is...well, sticky, and has a far higher coefficient of friction than the actual material skis are made out of. So if you don't want your skis to catch in snow so much, make sure you wiped off the wax well.

    Revelation three:
    Using the edges is a good idea. Beginners often learn to ski in wedge form, which means they use the outside edge of both skis and basically just plow through the snow. Though this works, its working completely against the design of the ski and isn't exactly efficient. If you ski in parallel thus using an outside and inside edge of the ski, the sharp part cuts into the snow in the curved shape of the ski. This in fact means that (thanks to physics!) using edges allows the skis to do half the work for you! And lets be frank, less work in one slope means more slopes to come! Efficiency is our friend
  12. Momentumous

    My internship!

    By Momentumous,

    I can't believe I didn't think of this as a subject earlier, I did LOTS of physics in my astronomical imaging internship!

    Okay, well, in reality I more looked at images and programs and readings, I didn't actually DO the physics, but there's a lot of physics behind what I did.

    My internship was focused on assisting with research around the stellar phase called planetary nebula. This is a post-red-giant phase of smaller stars. The majority of the gases within the star have been burned up or converted through fusion to different elements. In the planetary nebula phase, the outer layers of the star are now composed of ionized gasses, and the core becomes visible. Planetary nebula come in many different shapes, and the theories behind why they form some of the more obscure shapes is still hotly debated, though it is widely agree that interstellar winds create the basic shapes.

    I asked one day what an interstellar wind actually was, and received a lecture that resulted in this whiteboard:


    [ATTACH=CONFIG]529[/ATTACH]

    Mind you, many things have been erased and written over on this board to explain, and the lecture took at LEAST an hour as well as numerous pages of notes. So I will not be explaining interstellar winds, mostly because its a lengthy explanation and marginally because I don't remember most of it.

    The most relevant physics to what I was doing had to do with the ionized gases that surround the planetary nebula. As both basic chemistry and physics teaches us, excited atoms emit light. The gas surrounding the stars in the planetary nebular phase indeed emit a LOT of light, though often times this light is not emitted in the visible spectrum nor even in only one spectra. The emitted light comes in various wavelengths and therefore on various areas of the spectrum (visible, infrared, ultraviolet ect).

    To capture images of the emitted light with the most possible information, there are various telescopes and sattelites that take images on different levels of the spectrum (ie Galex sattelite takes xray images). Different spectral images are also useful because different levels of the spectrum correspond to different heats, which help astronomers figure out what is going on in the stars. With all of this in mind, astronomers can use wavelengths to figure out distances, numerous spectral images to deduce shapes, and emissions to figure out the temperature of things happening in space.

    Knowing that different things are emitted in numerous levels of the spectrum, my job was usually to gather images from different wavelengths to either see if there was any emission to begin with or to compare emissions we already knew were there. Physics plays a HUGE part in asrtronomy, since we have to use what we know to figure out things that we can do nothing more than observe from a great distance away. You can't exactly take a sample of a nebular gas (even if you found a way to handle the temperatures), so we have to use our knowledge of physics to figure out the mysteries of space.

    (the attached images are xray farthest left, and 3 different infrared wavelengths next to that)
    [ATTACH=CONFIG]525[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]526[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]527[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]528[/ATTACH]
  13. Momentumous
    Recently I've acquired skullcandy over-ear headphones that have many noise canceling qualities. Still, I find myself wishing I could afford the Bose. Without any doubt, the Bose Noise Cancelling headphones are the best of their kind.
    With this in mind, I though it worth the research to figure out why.
    As with nearly anything, there's actually quite a bit of physics involved in optimizing sound quality. For starters, to make headphones in general involves coils and magnets and a whole slew of physics. Optimizing the sounds quality is a little more simple in theory (though not necessarily in practice).
    Bose headphones in particular actually have sensors designed to pick up outside sound waves and create counter waves to negate these sounds and optimize what you're listening to. It's also important to ensure that the headphone rests that go over your ears are large enough to make a seal of sorts, thus making it harder for sound to get out or in where it's not wanted. The material the headphones are made out of is crucial as well. Bose puts lots of research into finding the best material to insulate sound waves and direct the desired noises to your ear. Of course Bose doesn't publish much on all the calculations behind this, but it's pretty easy to see how quickly this can involved elaborate physics problems.
    I don't know about you, but I'm determined to own a pair someday!
    http://worldwide.bose.com/axa/en_au/web/noise_cancelling_technology/page.html
  14. Momentumous

    Non newtonian fluid

    By Momentumous,

    Sadly I still can't figure out how to embed a video and more likely than not no one will watch it if its a URL so a picture will have to do!

    This odd goop is called non-newtonian fluid. A newtonian fluid has a stress vs strain curve that is linear and passes through the origin, showing it has a constant viscocity. With a non-netonian fluid, it follows no such rules, and it's viscocity can change depending on stress, strain, time, or all of the above.

    A simple example is this oobleck seen above. Its a simple 1-part water 2-parts cornstarch mixture. If you try to make it, eventually the stirring becomes suspiciously more difficult. This is because once it's thoroughly mixed, it is a non-newtonian fluid, and the stress caused by your stirring makes it become temporarily solid.

    Infact, this corn starch mixture becomes pretty easily stressed out. When you place the mixture on a subwoofer, the vibration from the sound waves are enough to stress it out, causing it to move and solidify in strange ways, as you can see in the picture above.

    Origionally I was going to make a video on how to do such, but I have no cornstarch and still need to figure out how inserting a video works, so perhaps another blog!
  15. Momentumous
    There was a lot of picture taking going on today, and considering it being a noteable passion of mine, I figured it's a good thing to ponder the physics of.

    Photography is derived from the greek words "photos" meaning light, and "graphos" meaning writing. Writing with light. Aptly named, as light is the largest component of any good photograph. Every camera has exposures and f-stops that corollate with apperatures and shutterspeeds. Each of these are tools to control how much light is allowed to be exposed on the film or SD card. I don't think I know enough about SD cards to be able to confidently say how they work, but I'm sure they're incredibly similar to film, which I know more about.

    Flims starts out as a sheet of chemically soaked material. These chemicals are designed to interact with light. The lense focuses and directs light from the outside world onto the film, where the reaction (once developed) takes place to mirror the image. This works for both black and white as well as color flim. Everything we see is simply a reflection of light, be it brightness and darkness or any shade of color.

    There's really an incredible amount of physics involved in photography. In fact, a lot of physics takes effect in simply staging and setting up pictures (diffusing light, velocities, the speed of light, reflections ect), however I won't get to into that. When you know as much as I do about photography, talking about everything you can do with it can take more time than anyone would care to read, particularly when you're looking at all the physics behind it as well!
  16. Momentumous
    Of all the tv shows we watch, each and every one retains varying levels of accuracy with respect to physics. Here's my personal reflection on the accuracy of some shows I watch:

    The Big Bang Theory:
    The big bang theory is a hilarious comedy relating to the lives of social awkward phsyicists. We don't have any problems with someone leaping too far out of a window or something blowing up when it shouldn't because... well that stuff doesn't happen in the big bang theory. Noteably, however, is all the physics they talk about. The directors of the show truly put a lot of research into making sure things are accurate. Every single equation you see on white boards in the background are real, and everything they talk about (though I doubt the actors actually do them) are real physics concepts and researches. Funny, and realistic? I think yes!

    Myth Busters:
    This one is pretty obvious. The whole concept of the show is to use phsyics to disprove or prove common place misconceptions or wives tales. In fact the whole concept of the show is kind of how I'm currently treating all the shows being reviewed. I approve.

    Merlin:
    Merlin is a show in a magical world about (you guessed it) Merlin, a warlock who is destined to protect the King Arthur. Considering the magical nature of the world they live in, it's hard to say what is or isn't accurate. Physics and magic are concepts that don't mix well. Particularly since magic often seems to create and destroy matter and energy without putting any effort into it--which goes against the most basic and fundamental concepts of physics. So it's truly hard to judge the accuracy of a show like Merlin. But if we disregard the impossibility of magic and still look at the physics, Merlin is actually pretty plausible. It's not too hard to keep it physics-ly plausible, it's pretty easy to stay accurate when you're only worrying about things that can happen in the medieval ages. Overall, with disregard to magic, Merlin gets my approval!
  17. Momentumous
    Upon thinking about dinner, I was pondering what I could possibly blog about, when I saw some pasta...

    Truly there's a lot of physics involved in cooking. Pasta is a pristine example! Spaghetti initially comes in a solid, brittle form. However, when it's heated up in boiling water, it becomes flexible. This flexibility is due to the increased speed of the molecules in the solid. Clearly its not made into a liquid, but it is similar in that the molecules are slightly more free too move. It also becomes more flexible because of the water it absorbs. The water is a liquid and thus the molecules move far more freely by nature.

    Thus, your pasta made edible thanks to physics!
  18. Momentumous

    Physics Jokes

    By Momentumous,

    When a third grader was asked to cite Newton's first law, she said, "Bodies in motion remain in motion, and bodies at rest stay in bed unless their mothers call them to get up."

    Q: What is the name of the first electricity detective?
    A: Sherlock Ohms

    A neutron walked into a bar and asked, "How much for a drink?" The bartender replied, "For you, no charge."

    Have you heard that entropy isn't what it used to be?

    Q: How many theoretical physicists specializing in general relativity does it take to change a light bulb?
    A: Two. One to hold the bulb and one to rotate the universe.

    Does a radioactive cat have 18 half-lives?

    Q: What did Donald Duck say in his graduate physics class?
    A: Quark, quark, quark!
    :glee:




  19. Momentumous

    Physics of skiing!

    By Momentumous,

    Yesterday I went skiing for the first time (and no, I did NOT look that cool). And somehow as I was going down the slopes (very VERY slowly with lots of falling involved), I realized there's a LOT more physics going on that one would think initially.
    For one, there's a LOT of friction problems. Obviously the goal of most skiers is minimal friction, and therefore go faster! However that was NOT my goal, considering speed led to panic which lead to crazy turns which lead to the unavoidable fall. So my goal was to maximize friction.
    The easiest way to do this is to make a wedge and to turn a lot--go across the slope at small angles rather than straight down. This helps for obvious reasons; with the wedge, the edge of your skiis dig into the snow more, causing more friction and removing some of the slick, waxed surface area from the low-friction snow. The turns are a little more complicated, considering you can go QUITE fast if you do them a certain way. However in a sense the concept of using turns to go slow is simple; the ground you cover when you go down a slope in wide turns is less than if you were to go straight down. Energy is expended on turning, and friction is increased by going more sideways (using more of the edge of the ski than the waxed bottom) rather than going strait down.

    There's a lot more physics involved when you look at moguls, jumps, and even the design of the skis themselves. However, considering I've only gone once, I'm going to leave an analysis of that up to the experts.



    Friendly ski tip to beginners: NEVER fall backwards downhill on your skis if you can avoid it, you will NOT stop going down the slope
  20. Momentumous

    Physics phever!

    By Momentumous,

    Have you ever had someone point something out to you, and then you notice it EVERYWHERE?

    In the middle of my second year of physics, I'm starting to feel the torture that is physics phever--it's everywhere!

    When you decide which shoes to where, you can look at style, or you can look at comfort. If you look at style, you're looking at texture (which we can detect because of our sense of touch, which isn't REALLY touching but our sense of the repellent force of the electrons in our body with relation to whatever we're 'touching'), and color (a reflection of whatever light wavelength is reflected rather than absorbed). If you look at comfort, you look at arch support--which increases the surface area that the force of your body is distrbuted over, alieviating pressure--and the squishy-ness of the material--which increases the impulse over which you feel forces from as well as forms to your foot more or less, increasing or decreasing surface area to distrubte the force.

    But it's not just shoes.

    I have coffee every morning, and start to ponder the physics of why the microwave seems to make the heat fade quicker then coffee brewed from a pot. Is it something about how the molecules are moving? A property of a microwave itself?

    I listen to the radio and start to actually notice the slight fading and amplification of the sound levels--due to the wave nature of sound and radio emissions.

    My sister brings home a wooden car and I start to point out every misconstued notion as to why her perception of what good aerodynamics are is wrong...or maybe that's just because she's my little sister and it's my duty to bother her...

    Even toilet paper has physics to it! Impulse is why you can unroll toilet paper and also rip it with the same hand motions over different amounts of time.

    Physics is EVERYWHERE. And thanks to the lovely courses of physics I've taken, I'm noticing it everywhere. Physics phever is a traumatic disease and I'm very sorry to announce--there is no cure.
  21. Momentumous

    Physics phever!

    By Momentumous,

    Have you ever had someone point something out to you, and then you notice it EVERYWHERE?

    In the middle of my second year of physics, I'm starting to feel the torture that is physics phever--it's everywhere!

    When you decide which shoes to where, you can look at style, or you can look at comfort. If you look at style, you're looking at texture (which we can detect because of our sense of touch, which isn't REALLY touching but our sense of the repellent force of the electrons in our body with relation to whatever we're 'touching'), and color (a reflection of whatever light wavelength is reflected rather than absorbed). If you look at comfort, you look at arch support--which increases the surface area that the force of your body is distrbuted over, alieviating pressure--and the squishy-ness of the material--which increases the impulse over which you feel forces from as well as forms to your foot more or less, increasing or decreasing surface area to distrubte the force.

    But it's not just shoes.

    I have coffee every morning, and start to ponder the physics of why the microwave seems to make the heat fade quicker then coffee brewed from a pot. Is it something about how the molecules are moving? A property of a microwave itself?

    I listen to the radio and start to actually notice the slight fading and amplification of the sound levels--due to the wave nature of sound and radio emissions.

    My sister brings home a wooden car and I start to point out every misconstued notion as to why her perception of what good aerodynamics are is wrong...or maybe that's just because she's my little sister and it's my duty to bother her...

    Even toilet paper has physics to it! Impulse is why you can unroll toilet paper and also rip it with the same hand motions over different amounts of time.

    Physics is EVERYWHERE. And thanks to the lovely courses of physics I've taken, I'm noticing it everywhere. Physics phever is a traumatic disease and I'm very sorry to announce--there is no cure.
  22. Momentumous
    Over the past few weeks, I've gotten to know Kerbal Space Program quite well. I can honestly say it's quite the addicting game, but if you don't do any research, it can get very frustrating. Personally, I'm a trial and error kind of gal. When being completely honest, I almost never actually calculate the physics behind everything going on in KSP, I just make behemoth rockets and see if they do what I want them too. As a result, I've probably had more crash landings and test flights than there are grains of sand on the beach. If we were to look at the actual physics, there's so much going on in building a rocket and taking it to the moon, it's not even funny.
    For starters, there's weight and drag force to consider when designing the rocket. The more weight on the rocket, the more powerful an engine you need. You also need more liquid fuel to get places with heavier rockets, however liquid fuel actually weighs quite a bit itself. You can see how it can get complicated to actually calculate the right fuel-weight proportions. The other major thing in design to look for is aerodynamics. That $50 piece that smoothly transitions from smaller to larger pieces is probably the biggest bang for your buck in the entire game; the added drag force without can easily be enough to pull apart your rocket into multiple pieces, or simply make it never lift off the ground.
    Then, once you've figured out all the thrust needed from an engine to lift up your behemoth to get it to actually move, you have to actually be able to fly the thing. One simple error in staging can completely blow up the entire mission, and if your not paying attention, you could have blow thousands of kerbencian dollars on a rocket you blew up because you forgot to turn down the throttle a smidge.
    And then, once you get out of the atmosphere, you have to worry about gravitational forces. Furthermore, if you're actually trying to get somewhere, there's all sorts of messing with orbits that has to happen, not to mention transfering orbits from one gravitational pull to another.

    Really the physics behind this game is astounding. Just thinking about it all is enough to make any mind whirl, not to mention calculating them!
  23. Momentumous
    I don't know about you, but I'm always interested in quirky little facts that can be used to go up to someone smarter than you and say "hey, I know something you don't know!" So to aid you all in this admirable endeavor, watch this video!


  25. Momentumous

    Spiderman's webs

    By Momentumous,

    Aside from the snazzy suit, you know who you're looking at is Spiderman as soon as stick webbing starts shooting from his hands.

    So if Spiderman does manage to shoot web through his spandexy-body-suit, this webbing must be seriously strong. For one, it can be shot through the air quick enough to go in relatively straight lines, and then miraculously latch on to some sort of object, and THEN can hold all of Spiderman's bulk!

    Spiderman is a hero, so he's probably around 5'10 and weighs 160 pounds (comprised mostly of muscle of course). This means that this webbing can can hold at LEAST 711.5 Newtons.

    But no, it can hold more than that!
    In one of the Spiderman movies, Spidey shoots out some webbing to catch a falling bus Presuming this is a smaller school bus, empty it weighs around 10,000 pounds. Considering the mixed crowd, its hard to say how much the people weigh, but lets say there were 50 people (comfortable seating) of each 100 pounds. That's another 5000 pounds, making the weight of the bus 15,000 pounds. So this webbing can actually hold up to a force of at LEAST 66678.22 N. That's pretty tough stuff!

    Oh, and spiderman can break it with a flick of his wrist. No big deal.

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