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CharlieEckert

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Blog Entries posted by CharlieEckert

  1. CharlieEckert
    Jason Padgett has Acquired Savant Syndrome. 10 years ago he was beaten and kicked in the head by some muggers after his jacket. While recovering in the hospital he became obsessed with mathematical equations. Apparently the damage to his head allows him to view everything he sees as a Math equation! Padgett turns these formulas into intricate diagrams called fractals. Prior to his accident Padgett was a college drop out and had never taken a college level math class before. An example of his work his below.
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/30/college-dropout-jason-pad_n_1464835.html

    More of his work can be viewed here
    http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/jason-padgett.html
  2. CharlieEckert
    The physics of hypothetically cheating at swim practice. During Saturday practices, our coach has us do stations. One of these stations involves sprinting with a parachute.
    As you can see the parachute is quite small but despite this, it still creates a whole lot of drag. The parachute is very thin and creates a large pocket that water gets trapped into. As the parachute is pulled through the water, the water getting caught in the pocket creates drag. Now 100% hypothetically speaking if anyone were to be feeling lazy and tired at 7 am on Saturday and wanted to reduce how much work they have to put in, it is postulated, supposed, and imagined they could potentially hypothetically theoretically tie the parachute in a knot. Doing this prevent the parachute from opening up, minimizing its surface area catching water. The drag experienced would be just a fraction of the previous drag. Devin don’t tell Brian about this blog, OR ELSE!!!!
  3. CharlieEckert
    The navy is developing a prototype for an Electromagnetic Rail Gun. The Rail Gun would be use massive magnetic fields to accelerate a projectile at over 5000 miles per hour. The projectiles would have so much kinetic energy that warheads would become unnecessary components to the projectile. The projectile would be able to devastate a bunker just by making impact with it, making explosives unnecessary. Clearly such a weapon would be extremely useful in a wartime situation.


  4. CharlieEckert
    I find an amazingly informative video on the Cern's LHC. It covers basics particles physics with some other things. The best part, Its a rap!!!




    It was interesting to see the video theorizing the discovery of the Boson Higgs particle. The video - being made in 2008 - is abit behind with the times as the Higgs particle has recently been detected by experiments done with the LHC.
  5. CharlieEckert

    Pain Pong

    By CharlieEckert,

    So last night the swim team got together for some pizza and to hang out. Being highly intelligent teenagers, we decided to play some pain pong. For those of you who aren't familiar with pain pong, it is a variant of ping pong where everything you loose the point you turn around and your opponent smashes the ball with the paddle at your bare back. Naturally if your quite bad at ping pong(like me) the game can get very painful, but why? Well its because of physics, more specifically impulse!
    Δp= Ft
    The impulse or change in momentum is equal to the force applied multiplied by the time of the collision. In the case of ping pong ball hitting my back, the change in momentum is a constant. The force is inversely proportional to the time of the collision. Since the time it takes to stop the ball is quite short, it leads to a large applied force, thus the large welts on my back

    [ATTACH=CONFIG]602[/ATTACH]
  6. CharlieEckert
    Well, I thought of yet another aspect of swimming to analyze for my blogs posts!!! Sometimes at practice we use these bungee or stretch cords to work on resistance training. The premise is simple, strap one end around your self, and the around the block at the end of the lanes. The bungee cords act just like a spring in that F = -Kx, the further the displacement the larger the force. As you get closer and closer to the other end of the pool, the force pulling you back becomes larger and larger. This especially sucks when your coach is pulling on the other end, leaving you just enough slack to get really close to the wall but not enough for you to be able to finish!

  7. CharlieEckert
    So I was reserving my last blog post for my momentum video I made last year. Unfortunately I couldn't find it last night. I went to Mr. Powlin today to get the video but it wouldn’t upload to the site, or to my email or Google drive for some reason. I’ll try to find the video again tonight, but if I can’t just picture me getting shot bare skin with an airsoft gun.
  8. CharlieEckert
    Two weeks ago on October 22, University of Texas at Arlington hosted a five day workshop devoted to the future of high energy linear electron-positron collider. At this workshop the future of two projects were discussed,the International Linear Collider(ILC) and the Compact Linear Collider(CLIC). The ILC is planned to have a collision energy of 500 GeV. The host country of the ILC has not yet been selected. The CLC is projected to have collision energy of 3TeV. The CLC (if built) will be located at CERN. Both projects are still in the design stage, so it will likely be many years before either one is built.
  9. CharlieEckert
    Recently physicists at the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany have registered a temperature a “few billionths of a Kelvin” below absolute-zero.
    Now you’re probably thinking what???
    If the Kelvin measurement of temperature is a measure of the energy of particles then how can we achieve a negative temperature and thus a negative energy? Furthermore if at Zero Kelvin particles stop moving how can you take energy from them?
    Well some scientists are now theorizing that the temperature scale is a loop with positive temperature on one half and negative on the other end. Zero Kelvin and Infinity separate the positive and negative. If temperature ‘exceed’ infinity or go ‘below’ zero, they end up in the negative loop.
    So how did physicists achieve this result? Well what they did cooled about 100,000 gas particles to a few nanokelvins in a vacuum chamber. At this extremely low temperature, the physicist than used a magnetic field to creating a stronger attraction force between the particles than the repulsions forces, resulting in a negative pressure. The negative temperature prevents the system from collapsing after a negative pressure is achieved. The end result was absolute temperature a few nanokelvins below zero. These negative temperature particles behaved exactly opposite of regular particles. The particles were more likely to occupy high energy level. Some physics also believe that the negative temperature has parallels with dark energy, the mysterious energy powering the expansion of the universe.

    It will be very interesting to see how the scientific community responds to this 'discovery'. Will we learn about it in college or will it be disproved.

    Here a link for any of you who want to read more about this very strange concept.
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/04/absolute-zero-record-setting-negative-temperature_n_2404666.html
  10. CharlieEckert
    Engineering researchers at the University of Michigan have crated a nanoscale coating that is super effective at repelling liquids. The major difference between this coating and other coating is that with other coatings, liquids with very low surface tensions such as oils, alcohols, and organic acids stick to the coating and eventually diffuse through the coating; however with this coating, even liquids with low surface tensions are repelled. After testing well over a 100 liquids, the team at Michigan University found only two liquids capable of penetrating the coating which were chlorofluorocarbons. The coating consists of between 95 to 99 % air pockets. This prevents the liquids from coming close to the solid surface thus reducing the intermolecular forces that would attract the liquid to the solid. The liquid droplets failing to interact with the solid retain a spherical shape and bounce right off the coating.
    http://www.ns.umich.edu/new/multimedia/videos/21099-a-material-that-most-liquids-won-t-wet
  12. CharlieEckert

    This quater

    By CharlieEckert,

    Reiterating Dave's recent blog post, I thought I would review what this last quarter has been like. So this quarter covered the E&M portion of the Physics C course. My general opinion is that the jump from Physics B to Physics C was far easier for mechanics than the jump for E&M. From the first two exams I learned that I was horrendously bad at the E&M free responses. I also found while taking the test, I would realize that I didn't really understand the material as well as I thought. However it seems that with the last two units, I've done better. With the practice free responses, I actually was able to get the majority of the points for the problem where as before I was getting a dismal amount of points. The last two tests, I actually felt like I understood the material and wasn't as stressed during the test. Hopefully the rest of E&M goes like the 2nd half of this quarter and not the first half.
  13. CharlieEckert
    The Physics of how i time traveled into the Future and therefore these blogs posts aren't really late technically kinda probably.

    Well um these blogs posts were due last night, which I didn't realize, also i thought they were just extra credit. So Ill discuss how I could have potentially traveled into the future which caused me to submit these late.
    As we learned last year E = mC^2. As the speed of a particle increases in speed, the mass increases. But while the mass increases, time will actually slow down to prevent a particle from exceeding the speed of light. Basically this means that if I had been traveling at near the speed of light this weekend my watch could tell me that's its still Saturday because time had progressed more slowly for me. I also could have spent the weekend indulging in my favorite pastime: orbiting a Super Massive Black Hole!!!

    What happens is that space-time will bend because of differences in gravity and velocity. Both of those examples would result in me traveling forward in time and missing the deadline!
  14. CharlieEckert

    10th post

    By CharlieEckert,

    Well I'm really starting to run out idea for creative content so ill be writing about the eraser i just dropped out boredom. The eraser weighs about 1 gram and is dropped from the height of 1 m. The potential energy eraser is given by mgh and = .01 J. Neglecting air resistance, the eraser has a final velocity of about 4.47 m/s. This gives it a momentum of .00447 kg m/s downward since momentum = v * m. Neglecting the fact that the eraser bounces a little, what happens to the momentum in the downward direction after the eraser hits the floor. Well the floor is so massive that the floor downward movement is negligible!!!

    Yah quality physics topics!!!
  15. CharlieEckert

    Frozen Door

    By CharlieEckert,

    So this morning I went out to warm up my car for practice, only to discover that my car door was frozen shut. Now I know what your thinking, why don’t you just pull harder, well I did but unfortunately the door handle was poorly designed. As shown in the picture below, one corner of the metal holding the handle on is detached.

    [ATTACH=CONFIG]568[/ATTACH]


    In order to open the door, the handle is pulled up and out at an angle. Under normal conditions, i.e., the door not being frozen shut the door handle functions just fine. However this morning I realized the flaw with the design. If there is ice on the door, a certain amount of force is required to break it. But because the handle lifts slightly up, the force I apply contains a component in the vertical direction that is entirely useless. This additional component tears at the metal until it breaks as shown in the picture above. I ended up giving up on getting my car door to open after realizing the handle would probably break before the ice would.

    Fortunately my sister was home from college so I borrowed/stole her car so I could go to practice
  16. CharlieEckert
    This is our second independent unit in a row, meaning we haven't had traditional class in a very long time. This one seems a bit more difficult then previous ones though. Unlike previous independent units, I don't remember much about magnetism from last year making it more difficult. Magnetism also employs more complicated math like cross products and calculus based equations then the other independent units. I found it hard to understand the textbook and the only thing that stands out from the lewin videos his obsession with the magnetic monopoles. I feel pretty burnt out at the moment so I'm very glad the break almost here. I'm not sure if I even remember half of the equations from the book so I'm not sure how well I'm going to do on the test. Hopefully I can make it through the test okay, and then I can relax over break.
  17. CharlieEckert

    Dark Matter

    By CharlieEckert,

    It seems the search to prove the existence of the elusive Dark Matter might soon come to a close. A Minnesota mine, half a mile under ground, seems to have detected the existence of Dark Matter. For those of you who don't what Dark Matter is, I'll give a brief explanation. The ordinary matter that we can visibly see makes up an estimated 15.5% of the universe. Planets, Stars and pretty much everything else in space is made up of ordinary matter. However 84.5% of the universe's matter is estimated to be Dark Matter. Dark Matter differs from regular matter in the way it interacts or lack of it. Dark matter doesn't emit light or radiation or create a electrostatic or strong nuclear force. So how do we know it exits? Well it because dark matter still has gravitational effects on visible matter. My understanding is that galaxies form spirals because of gravitational effects between the matter in the Galaxy. However our calculations show there isn't enough mass in many of these galaxies to hold them together, therefore we believe that dark matter exists and holds galaxies together. Because dark matter doesn't interact much with regular matter, proving its existence is very difficult. Any ways using a super conductor cooled to 50 millikelvin physicists think they have detected dark matter.
    http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/153782-particle-physicists-discover-strongest-ever-evidence-of-dark-matter
  18. CharlieEckert
    I found an interesting article about how nuclear fallout has aided in studies on brain development. Nuclear fallout introduced small amounts of carbon 14 into our atmosphere. When our cells divide, they incorporate carbon from the environment. So the carbon 14 released from nuclear bombs eventually makes it way into the human body. This means that carbon 14 can be used to measure the age of cells. A team at the Karolinska Institute used this to show that new neurons were produced in a small part of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus. I guess nuclear fallout has some positive benefits in terms of research.
    http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/06/atomic-bomb-tests-confirm-formation-of-new-brain-cells/
  19. CharlieEckert

    1st blog post

    By CharlieEckert,

    Well this is a little bit late, but I had some problems getting this posted. Also physics teaches us that time is relative so its all good.


    I guess I should start with why I'm taking this class. I have always enjoyed puzzles and problem solving and I have no doubt that there won't be a shortage of those in this class! Last year it felt like we only touch the surface of many topic in Physics B, so I'm excited to dive deeper into the more complicated stuff.

    I know for certain that I want to pursue a career in math and science - possibly engineering- so this class will be great to have taken.
  20. CharlieEckert
    In Swimming, reducing drag is a huge factor in decreasing your time and increasing performace.

    Water is more than 700 times denser and 55 times more viscous than air. There
    are three main types of drag that act on a swimmer: friction, wave, and pressure
    drag. Frictional drag is the result of the interaction between the swimmer’s
    body and the water molecules and serves to slow down the swimmer. However, this
    drag also propels the swimmer through the water (Newton’s 3rd law).
    As the speed of the swimmer increases, pressure drag becomes a factor. The
    faster the swimmer is moving, there is increased pressure on the front region of
    the body (the head). This increase causes a pressure difference between the two
    ends of the body and results in turbulence. A third form of drag, wave drag,
    occurs when the swimmer or any object moves through the surface of a liquid. The
    pressure around the swimmer’s body increases because of the different water
    velocities, which result in waves.

    This results in a lot of drag slowing you down when your swimming.
  21. CharlieEckert
    As I talked about in my last post, drag force is a huge factor in limiting performace in the pool. So how can we combat this problem?
    Well for dedicated swimmers, shaving can make the difference. Since many races come down to fractions of seconds, any hair you can cut off can mean the difference bewteen first and second! Optimizing the distance you travel in the air when you dive of the block can make or break a race. As stated in my blog post, water is over 700 times denser and will offer far more reistance. Therefore the farther you can travel in the air, the more time you can cut off!
  22. CharlieEckert
    Keeping with the subject of physics of swimming, I'll be discusing why breathing right after the walls is a very bad idea. When you enter the water after your dive or when you push off the wall after your turn, you should be in the streamline postion as shown in the picture.
    This position minimize the surface area exposed in the direction you are moving reducing the drag force. When you breathe while swimming, you pick your head up which causes the rest of your body to sink. This increases the surface area exposed and increases the drag force. The reasion breathing off walls and off your start is bad, is becuase you are going your fastest off your walls/start. And since drag force is related to speed, a bigger drag force will be applied therefore you will slow down more then if you breathed in the middle of the pool!
  23. CharlieEckert
    Keeping with the subject of physics of swimming, I'll be discusing why breathing right after the walls is a very bad idea. When you enter the water after your dive or when you push off the wall after your turn, you should be in the streamline postion as shown in the picture.
    This position minimize the surface area exposed in the direction you are moving reducing the drag force. When you breathe while swimming, you pick your head up which causes the rest of your body to sink. This increases the surface area exposed and increases the drag force. The reasion breathing off walls and off your start is bad, is becuase you are going your fastest off your walls/start. And since drag force is related to speed, a bigger drag force will be applied therefore you will slow down more then if you breathed in the middle of the pool!
  24. CharlieEckert
    Ever heard of the Superconducting Super Collider before? I certainly hadn't.

    In 1983, plans for the Superconducting Super Collider were being developed by the U.S. Department of Energy. Its planned ring circumference was 87.1 kilometers with an energy of 20 TeV per beam of protons – numbers that surpasses those of the now operational Large Hadron Collider by a factor of three (27 kilometer with an energy of 7TeV per beam). The project initial goal was to detect the Higgs Boson. The project began construction in 1991 with a budget of $4.4 billion. In 1993 the project was scrapped when cost projection rose to $12 billion.

    It's Interesting to think about what would be different if this project had been completed. The Higgs Boson would have likely been discovered years ago Since the SSC had a head start on the LHC by several years. In addition, the SSC could harness almost three times more energy lending more potential for discoveries.

    Instead of contributing to science and our understanding of the universe, the SSC sits abandoned with 22.5 km of tunnel and 2.2 billion dollars spent on it before the project was cut.
    http://www.amusingplanet.com/2010/12/abandoned-remains-of-superconducting.html
  25. CharlieEckert
    Well I am sure that you are all familiar with the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) discovery of the Higgs boson, but it looks as if the LHC as made another discovery, this one accidental!!!

    After 2 million lead-proton collisions, the CMS team at the LHC discovered that several pairs of particles - that were created from the collision- flew away from each other with their respective directions being correlated. I am not a particles physicist so I have really no idea what this means or the significant of this, but physicists certainly found this surprising. “Somehow they fly at the same direction even though it's not clear how they can communicate their direction with one another. That has surprised many people, including us,” says MIT physics professor Gunther Roland

    Physicists have two theories on what this matter is, “The new type of matter, which has yet to be verified, is theorized to be one of two possible forms: Either “color-glass condensate” — a flattened nucleus transformed into a “wall” of gluons, which are smaller binding subatomic particles, or it could be “quark-gluon plasma,” a dense, soup or liquid-like collection of individual particles.”

    Both of these theories believe that this matter would be present at the inception of universe, moments after the big bang. I imagine scientists will attempt to replicate this finding to better their understanding of the beginning of our universe.

    Perhaps the most interesting thing is that fact that the team at the LHC were not searching or expecting for this discovery of new matter. They were caught with complete surprise from their findings.
    “It was supposed to be sort of a reference run — a run in which you can study background effects and then subtract them from the effects that you see in lead-lead collisions,” Gunther Roland

    http://www.rdmag.com/news/2012/11/cern-collider-may-have-produced-new-type-matter
    http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/11/large-hadron-collider-may-have-produced-new-matter.php

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