Jump to content

MrMuffinMan

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    64

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Blog Entries posted by MrMuffinMan

  1. MrMuffinMan
    We have been told that nothing can go faster than the speed of light but what happens if we took a very long arm and rotated it around an axis. When a wheel is turning, the edges are turning faster than the middle in order to keep up. Lets say we took a laser pointer and pointed at the moon which is 384,400 km away, and flicked our wrist and a radian per second then the end of the laser pointer would be traveling 384,400,000 which is faster than the speed of light. So would the end of the laser be moving at faster than the speed of light?

  2. MrMuffinMan

    Plasma Physics

    By MrMuffinMan,

    Plasma by definition is a highly ionized gas that usually occurs at high temperatures that conducts electricity and is affected by a magnetic field. But did know that plasma is the most common state of matter(if you don't count dark matter which hasn't been proven yet) Plasma is what makes up suns as well as lightning bolts and some regions of the earth's upper atmosphere. A plasma is composed of positive charged ion and free electrons but they're separate despite the attraction for each other. If they were to combine, the would turn back into a ordinary gas. In order to overcome the attraction of the charges for each other, there ether has to be large amounts of energy which is usually heat that keeps the particles moving too fast to combine or there is so much space between the particle that they can't combine which means they have low density. Here on Earth we use plasma to cut metals while on the sun, the plasma form of hydrogen combines to form helium and releases massive amounts of energy.
  3. MrMuffinMan
    v=v0+at
    x=x0+v0+.5at2v2=v02+2ax
    F=ma
    F=dP/dt
    J=integral(Fdt)=change in P
    P=mv
    W=integral(Fdr)
    KE=.5mv2

    P=dW/dt
    P=F*v
    ac=v2/r=wr2
    T=F x R
    T=Ia(alpha)
    I=integral(r2dm)
    v=rw
    L=R x P=Iw
    K=.5Iw2
    W=w0+a(alpha)t
    ϴ=w0t+.5a(alpha)t2
    Fs=-kx
    Us=.5kx2
    x=Acos(wt)
    T=2pi/w
    Ts=2pi radical(m/k)
    Tp=2 pi radical(l/g)
    Fg=-Gmm/r2
    Ug=-Gmm/r
    Ug=mgh

    Part Two coming soon
  4. MrMuffinMan

    Fire Physics

    By MrMuffinMan,

    What is fire? Fire is hot but where does it come from? Fire is the result of extreme heat, usually when organic chemicals combusted with oxygen(thank you chemistry) but where does the light come from? The light results from electrons absorbing the heat energy and jumping up energy levels like we learned last year and the light is produced when the electrons fall back down to their ground state. However fire can look different. The fire from Bunsen burners in chem or propane fires look a lot different that wood fires. The propane fires burn cleanly and they give off blue light. However wood fires don't burn cleanly and there is some blue light but soot and other particles that are burning red hot give off the red glow.

  5. MrMuffinMan

    Maxwell's equations

    By MrMuffinMan,

    Gauss's Law

    Gauss's other Law
    Faraday's Law
    Ampere's Law

    We've already done the first one which isn't that bad and I hope they're all that simple. Although I think the second one means magnetic field though a closed surface is 0. And Faraday's law means something with E field is equal to the rate of change of magnetic flux. And i have no idea what Ampere's law is saying.
  6. MrMuffinMan
    With our last test we finished mechanics and official ended the first halve of the year. Surprising I didn't find the course as hard as I thought it was going to be. AP-B last year taught us most of the basics so we already knew most of the physics that we used this year. The major difference this year was the addition of calculus which isn't terribly hard compared to what Mr. Muz gives us. Also this year we aren't just given most of the equations and told to memorize; we are shown how to derive them and then expected to know the derivation as well as the equation. I'm a little afraid of Electricity and Magnetism because mechanics were easy to visualize which makes understanding easier for me, but when we're talking about tiny electrons, it's not so easy to picture. But hopefully it won't be too bad.
  7. MrMuffinMan
    http://crazyarcade.wikispaces.com/file/view/dagobah_happy_wheels_DEMO.swf/182259727/dagobah_happy_wheels_DEMO.swf

    Before reading this you should play this game and warning it is pretty gruesome.


    This game has pretty good physics mostly although some parts of the game defy real life. For example the projectile motion is great because when you go off a jump or are sent flying by a land mine your body as well as the part of body that were probably blown off all have a parabolic path. Even the blood spurting out of your body follows projectile motion. You can also see that all objec
  8. MrMuffinMan

    Catapults

    By MrMuffinMan,

    There were many different types of catapults but every single one relied on the same principles. They all took potential energy, and transferred it into kinetic energy that sent the balls flying across the field or at least tried. There were different ways of storing the potential energy; spring potential energy or gravitational potential energy. Both proved to be very effective. However what really separated the best from the rest was the use of a slingshot. A slingshot increases the effectiveness of the catapult because slingshots allow the ball to swing around the end of the arm which increases the speed of the ball. Also the slingshot allows the arm of the catapult to get moving before the ball starts moving which then causes the ball to accelerate faster to catch up with the arm which made the ball come out faster and therefore go further.
  9. MrMuffinMan

    10

    By MrMuffinMan,

    Time to finish this. And This is just going to be all about how i feel the class is going so far. Right now I enjoy this class because it's not extremely hard. Yes the tests are hard but we're not learning anything new were just using derivatives and integrals on equations we used last year. I think the reason we think the tests are so hard is because we're not always taught everything that's going to be on the test and Mr. Fullerton leaves some stuff for us to figure out; which wouldn't be to bad except we don't always have enough time during the test to work through the problem and discover the trick. Like i remember on one test, we had to figure out an equation for the horizontal distance a projectile was going to travel given only the vo and the angle. When i got to this question i just when oh **** and moved on which is what most people i assume did. But going back and looking at it later i realized that it wasn't too bad because we could solve for time in the air and multiply it by the velocity in the x direction. But also there was a trick that you had to remember that 2sin(x)cos(x)=sin(2x) which i feel like would of thrown a lot of people off if they got to that point and didn't remember. I hope that as the year goes on I will be able to see things like that faster and be able to work my way through problems the likes of which i have never seen before.
  10. MrMuffinMan

    How Bullets fly

    By MrMuffinMan,

    Skipping the intro, bullets gain all of their kinetic energy from expanding gas. When the trigger is pulled, the firing pin in the gun comes forward and ignites the gun powder in the shell. The chemical energy stored in the powder is then convert into heat which cause the temperature of the the air between the bullet and the shell to rise rapidly. Remembering the equation from last year PV/T=PV/T this shows that when the temperature increases ether the pressure or volume has to increase also. In this case, the first thing to increase is the Pressure and this increase pressure creates a force on the bullet that sends in flying out of the barrel. All of this happens in a fraction of a second.
  11. MrMuffinMan
    Were as the idea for planes and the physics behind them make sense, the helicopter is completely different. In order to create the same lift as a plane does by getting air pass over the wings very fast, a helicopter has to lift by spinning it's rotor blades very fast. the same principle of fluid dynamics is responsible for the lift force on a helicopter. The blades on a helicopter are shaped almost the exact same as plane wing so that when they are spun they create a upward force on the helicopter. All the blades together spinning create a small low pressure system above the blades and the air below pushes up. However since the helicopter is in the air, they is no force to stop the cabin of the helicopter from being spun the other way which is why almost all helicopters have the tail rotor which uses the same physics to create a force that keeps the fuselage from spinning. Using physics we have been able to conquer the sky.

  12. MrMuffinMan
    In today's world we've almost all been on a plane at least once in our lives but it was just over a hundred years that the Wright brothers flew for the first time. The physics behind flight is not very complex at all but most people don't think about what's keeping them from dropping 30,000 feet in a 490 ton airplane. In the follow picture we see the all the forces acting on the plane and we all know that for the plane not to fall from the sky the net force in the up direction has to equal 0 so the lift has to be greater than the weight of the plane. But what causes lift? Fluid Dynamics. Even though air isn't a liquid it's still a classified as a fluid and follow the same rules. According to Bernoulli's Principle, faster flowing fluids exert less force than slower moving fluids. So when the air flows over the wing, it has to go further because of the shape of the wing so it goes faster and exerts less force than the air flowing underneath the wing. This creates a force up lift which is how a plane stays in the air.

  13. MrMuffinMan

    One way only

    By MrMuffinMan,

    Every Police/Law enforcement show has an interrogation where the criminal sweats it out while the detectives stand behind a one way mirror. How do this mirrors work? It's all about the light. Think of you're favorite interrogation room with a one way mirror in it. It's almost always bright in there while the room on the other side is kept dark. you might of thought like I did that it was to blind the suspects but in reality it's how the mirror works. A one way mirror is basically just half a mirror. The glass is treated with a special substance so that instead of every molecule in the glass being reflective which would make it a no way mirror, the reflective molecules are spread out so that only about half the molecules are reflective. Now when the police make the interrogation room really bright, half the light bounces back and there's enough of it to create a reflection. The rest of the light passes though the mirror so that eyes in the other room can take in the light and pass the image to our brain. On the flip side since the other room is so dark, the light from the interrogation room drowns the other rooms light, like a loud noise drowning out a quiet noise, and nether side see the image of the other room in the glass.

  14. MrMuffinMan
    The most important technology that came out of WWII was the nuclear bomb. But the second most important technology and probably the most used today is Radar. Every airport in the US uses Radar to track flights. But the physics behind this technology is very simple. It's the Doppler effect. A Radar system has two parts a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter sends out a burst of radio waves. These waves go until it hits an object, say a plane and bounce back with a different frequency because due to the Doppler effect a plane moving would cause the waves to bounce back faster or slower depending on the direction of the plane in regards to the transmitter. Then the receiver detects the frequency of the returning waves. Using the equation f'=fo(c+vplane)/c where c is the speed of the waves in air, the Radar computer can determine the speed of the plane. Also the computer can find the location of the plane by using the difference in time from when the waves were sent to when the waves were detected by using D=2Ct since the time is for the waves to get there and back.

  15. MrMuffinMan
    Today is a beautiful day for a hurricane and since we have no school we all get to sit home and watch the hurricane bear down us on the radar. Looking at the Google earth we can all see that Sandy looks like a giant cloud with a hole in the middle that is spinning counter clockwise. But why? The answer is the Coriolis effect. Now what the heck is that? "In physics, the Coriolis effect is a deflection of moving objects when they are viewed in a rotating reference frame." This is saying that an object traveling "straight" like winds, on something that is rotating, such as the earth appear to curve when looking from the earth. So the Coriolis effect causes winds to deflect to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and left in the Southern. So when a low pressure system forms in the Northern Hemisphere, and air rushes to fill the area, the winds deflect to the right and cause the counter-clockwise motion to start

  16. MrMuffinMan

    Free falling

    By MrMuffinMan,

    Afraid of heights? Well this guy isn't. Felix Baumgartner just made skydiving out of a plane look like a joke. In case you haven't heard because you don't get service or internet under the rock you live beneath, Felix just jumped out of a balloon 128,100 feet above the ground. Yeah that's over 24 miles. He also broke the world record for the fastest skydiver; reaching a velocity of 833.9 mph, faster than the speed of sound. I guess I have to talk about the physics behind this crazy stunt. If we look at it like we would of last year, neglecting air Resistance, vf2=vo2+2ax and in this case a is 32 ft/sec2 so if there was nor air he would be falling at 2863 ft/sec or 1952 mph or Mach 2.5 and I don't even need to know about impulse or momentum to be able to say for certain that's instant death. Plus if there's no air resistance, there's nothing to slow him down when he opens his parachute .Also it would only take him 89 seconds to fall that distance instead of the 4 minutes and 20 seconds. But since he didn't reach that speed and go splat against the ground, we can assume that there was air resistance on this day. Remembering the equation that we were "taught" in class F=bv and bvt=mg and since I don't know Felix on that level, I didn't feel comfortable asking he weight so we'll just have to use the average mass of an adult(175lb) to get b at about 4.6 lb/sec(gotta remember convert 833mph to 1223ft/sec). Of course there is error in all this because acceleration due to gravity isn't exactly 32 ft/sec2 24 miles above the earth surface and the force of air resistance increases as he gets close to the earth and the density of air increases but that requires a lot more information then i could find.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19943590
  17. MrMuffinMan

    First post

    By MrMuffinMan,

    I'm going to start off with why I'm taking AP-C physics because I think that's the best place to start. But anyways I'm taking AP-C because i last year AP-B physics was one of my favorite classes and i really enjoyed learning how the world around us works. Also applying the things that we have been learning in math for the past four years is really rewarding because finally there's a reason to learn it instead of just because the teacher says we have to in order to past the final.

    I am the kind of person who is better at Math than English and i always like science but didn't really find it interesting until last year in AP-B. Also right now my career of choice is an engineer, I don't know what kind yet, but this class will teach me things that all engineers must know which is one of the reasons I signed up for this class.

    This year i want to continue to learn how the world works especially electricity and magnetism because I find those the two most interesting topics that we covered last year. Also I hope to have fun in in this class while learning the kind of math/physics that engineers use.

    I am most excited about being a senior because it's our last year of high school and we get to have fun.

    I am most anxious about applying and selecting a college because it's a long process and I hate making decisions and I can barely think about it. Maybe I'll just apply early decision.

Terms of Use

The pages of APlusPhysics.com, Physics in Action podcasts, and other online media at this site are made available as a service to physics students, instructors, and others. Their use is encouraged and is free of charge. Teachers who wish to use materials either in a classroom demonstration format or as part of an interactive activity/lesson are granted permission (and encouraged) to do so. Linking to information on this site is allowed and encouraged, but content from APlusPhysics may not be made available elsewhere on the Internet without the author's written permission.

Copyright Notice

APlusPhysics.com, Silly Beagle Productions and Physics In Action materials are copyright protected and the author restricts their use to online usage through a live internet connection. Any downloading of files to other storage devices (hard drives, web servers, school servers, CDs, etc.) with the exception of Physics In Action podcast episodes is prohibited. The use of images, text and animations in other projects (including non-profit endeavors) is also prohibited. Requests for permission to use such material on other projects may be submitted in writing to info@aplusphysics.com. Licensing of the content of APlusPhysics.com for other uses may be considered in the future.

APlusPhysics Books

APlusPhysics Books

×
×
  • Create New...