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CharlieEckert

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  1. CharlieEckert
    The physics of Swim Paddles. Some times at swim practice our coach makes us use these paddles.
    These paddles typicality increase how far we go with each stroke while slowing down our stroke as it takes more force to pull. This because with the paddles, our hands have a greater surface area. When we pull our arms through the water, we pull more water behind us. Based on the law of conservation of momentum, if I catch and push more water at the same velocity backwards I will have a greater velocity forward. However pulling more water takes more force causing us to slow down our recovery part of the stroke to compensate for the extra work, so overall we swim at close to the same speed. After using the paddles, our arms and shoulders are always more sore. When we’re feeling lazy, we will grab the smaller paddles because its less work for us. Yah Physics
  2. 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
  3. 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
  4. CharlieEckert
    Let’s say we have a person with a mass of 100 kg who can run at 5 m/s.
    Now we can make use of Einstein famous equation of E = MC2 :einstein)
    When the person is at rest, the total energy of the person is 100 * (3x108)2 or 9x1018 J
    When the person is running, their Kinetic energy can be defined as ½mv2
    Ke = (½)*(100)* 52
    Ke = 1250 J
    Therefore the person total energy is (9x1018 + 1250)J
    With a little reworking of the equation, we can get Δ m = (Ef – Eo) / (C2)
    Δ m = (1250 J / 9x1018 m2/s2)
    Therefore Δ m = 1.3888x10-16 kg
    This means the person running has gained mass (even if very small) and therefore Weight.
  5. CharlieEckert

    Physics of Ironclad

    By CharlieEckert,

    So I was watching Ironclad and decided that I could use the movie to blog about physics stuff.
    The main character, Templar Knight Thomas Marshal was ridding around on his horse at Rochester castle, wailing his flair around, total bossing up those bad guys, when suddenly he is pulled off his horse. A huge crowd of bad guys form around him beating him with axes and hammers and stuff. Luckily our Templar Knight is tied to his stead who eventually/after an eternity, the horse decides it would be a good idea to drag his master back to safety.
    So I will be analyzing how much his amour protected him, since he later walks away with out so much as a broken bone.

    Now according to my precise calculations, Knight Marshal was left on the ground for a grand total of 10 seconds. I also estimate that he received three attacks per second that he was left defenses on the ground. This means that he received at least 30 strikes while lying on the ground.
    Now wiki answers informs me that the average human can exert a force of 680 Newton’s, but these bad guys weren’t average humans, they were Danish mercenaries. I will therefore estimate the force each one applied to be 1000 Newton’s. Considering it is now 12:20 right now and I don’t want to go out to my garage and measure the surface area of an axe and a sledge hammer, I will just estimate them!!!
    S.A. of Axe/slegehammer: .0005 m2
    Since pressure = Force/ area, the pressure exerted by these goons with their primitive weapons is a whooping 2000kPa.
    This is equivalent to 290 Psi or Lbs per square inch.
    Once again, Wiki answers informs us that a human skull will crack under a mere 15 Psi. If we assume that the amour doesn’t damage with each hit (which we all know isn’t true), that must mean that Knight Marshal’s armor absorbs at a bare minimum of 95% of the pressure applied, which is just simply incredible. Multiple the 290 Psi by the 30 blows that Marshal suffers, and it seems far fetched that Marshal is still alive let alone able to continue to fight afterwards!!!

    Picture of our Templar Knight below!!!
    [ATTACH=CONFIG]562[/ATTACH]

    Time for Sleep!!!
  6. 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
  7. 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.
  8. 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!
  9. 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!!!
  10. 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
  11. 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!
  12. 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!
  13. 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!
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.

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