Shadoof

Awhile ago in class, our table group got in quite a heated discussion on which breakfast food is the best. Now the other side, pancakes, tried their best to convince me of the qualities that make them better than waffles. They brought up point such as fluffiness, and taste, but they failed to ignore that waffles can also have both of these properties. The way to achieve these properties is the cooking time and the temperature. In order to get maximum fluffiness, cooking for a lesser amount of time does not let the batter cook quite as much. Some points that I would like to bring to the table that make waffles way better is the increase in surface area that increases the flavor. Another feature that makes waffles much better is the pockets that holds the butter and the syrup. Lastly waffles are much better because they are much faster to make as both sides get cooked at the same time.

There's a YouTube channel that I watch called SmarterEveryDay, in one of his more recent videos he used a slow motion camera to see how a bullet would effect a Prince Rupert drop. Before I talk about the video I will first explain what a PR drop is. How they are made is some molten glass is dropped into some cold water, creating an incredibly strong price of glass. However everything has a weakness, in this case it is the tail of the glass piece which is incredibly fragile. The hardness of the glass comes from the rapid cooling creating a bulb that has a cold exterior that pulls inward on the hot interior which pushes out. These forces equal to something that is bullet proof. And here is another video of his showing the properties of the PR drop.

Depending on what the ropes are made of could greatly determine how much strength they have. They could be made of some pretty heavy duty nylon. I am sure the devs thought of it.

The SR-71 was developed in the 1960's by Boeing. This was a revolutionary aircraft in that it could travel at Mach 3 speeds, or 3 times the speed of sound. This plane is quite strange because when it is sitting on the ground the plates of the aircraft don't meet up properly and the plane actually leaks fuel. The reason behind this design is since the plane flies so fast and so high up. At an altitude 80,000 ft the pressure on the metal on the outside of the aircraft is so little that the outside begins to expand, the engineers at Boeing had to account for this so they made the panels fit together loosely. Another factor for why the metal would expand in flight is that it would get very hot flying at mach 3 speeds. At such high speed the external body would reach upwards of 500 degrees, and the inside of the windshield would reach temperatures of 250 degrees, this is all caused with how much friction the air has on the plane causing this massive amount of heat. To deal with this massive amount of heat they had to develop a special cooling system that would take the hot air from inside the cockpit and put it in the fuel right before being used.

Building a Death Star would be cool, but my question would be, would we be able to harness enough energy to actually blow up a planet.

Looks like this needs a little bit more work on the formatting, but it is interesting that these two are very similar to each other.

Wouldn't this also have something to do with frictional force as well. If leaning to one side there would be more normal force increasing the frictional force on the side slowing it down on that one side applying a torque force, spinning the sled.

It's a lot of fun to stick the balloon to a cat or dog and see them react to a strange object.

I have always liked ping pong, but if you are good you could hit it back even harder and surprise your opponent...

Anybody even slightly interested in science and technology will have heard of a relatively new space company called Space-X. They are very close to launching yet another craft into space set currently for Jan 14th. But, one of their most memorable accomplishments, for me at least, is when they had a Falcon 9 rocket land on an autonomous barge that was floating in the Atlantic Ocean. The physics and calculations that had to be done before hand, and during, had to be crazy. The team at Space-X would have had to write programs for the rocket and the ship to be able to talk to each other, they had to have very precise GPS to put the rocket in the same place as the ship. Other things they had to account for is that the ocean is wavy and the barge would be moving all over the place, they had to make the barge be very stable and still, making it move to directly under the rocket. To make sure that the rocket didn't have too much speed as it touched down on the barge they had to program for a very precise 'suicide burn' that would stop any lateral movement and greatly reduce the vertical movement. All of these physics calculations came into a very amazing and groundbreaking landing. Hopefully Space-X will continue to do new and exciting things to make space travel cheaper and safer.

In this picture above it can be seen that the gecko is standing on the water, but how? Well, in between the water molecules in this tank there are hydrogen bonds that connect the molecules together. What is surprising is that the gecko is able to stand and walk on the waters surface and not just stand on the surface. You can see that the water is 'bending' under the weight of the gecko and that the bonds in between the molecules have enough force to not break and let the gecko fall through. The way the gecko is able to stand on the water is to maximize its surface area as to not put all of its downward force onto one spot on the water. This works on the same principle that a snow shoe works. The larger the surface area, the more weight can be held by the water. This also works if a leaf is thrown onto some water, the leaf does not float but rather does not even break the surface of the water.

As you know I have written many a blog posts about sailing. Now when it turns cold in the winter, normal sailing has to stop because of the ice. But some persistent people can't let sailing go over the winter. They take to the ice. What is so surprising about ice sailing is that the 'boats' go much faster than they do in water. And I mean a lot faster. The main explanation as to why the boats go faster is because of the drastic reduction in friction that occurs. The boats that are made to sail on the ice only come in contact with the ice on relatively small ice skates. Now compared to the friction that happens with a normal boat pushing through the water, these boats can reach some pretty significant speeds. When it's not as cold and there is no access to water, people take to the desert for land sailing. People have reached speeds 126 mph, and the name of the game is efficiency and reducing friction.

If you live anywhere remotely cold, you have experienced one thing snow. With snow comes many things, terrible driving, ice, shoveling driveways, all not fun things. But if you have ever taken a walk through the woods on a snowy day, you will recognize one thing, or rather a lack of one thing, sound. The reason why it becomes so quiet when there is snow on the ground is due to the physical shape of a snow flake. Because there are so many snowflakes on the ground, there is a lot of empty space between them. This large amount of space causes the snow on the ground to be a very good sound insulator. To test this out next time there is snow on the ground, grab a friend, go outside and stick your head under the snow and yell. Your friend can then observe how muffled your sound becomes.

And now I want some bread, or maybe waffles. Cool to think that physics occurs on such a small scale.

That is one active cat. All mine does is just sleep all day.

It's kinda like the convection currents seen in the mantle of the earth.

If the speed bump is small enough I find the opposite. At a slower speed the entire car is moved up and down over the speed bump, but if the car is moving faster the shocks take all that movement away because it is a much faster action. But yes if the car had no suspension the slower way is better.

I could go for some french fries right now, although it is right before dinner...

In my previous blog post I talked about how the Hyper Loop worked, the maglev train works in a very similar manner just in a less efficient way. As seen above the train actually wraps around the track and 'floats' on the track by using magnets to pull the train up into the air to reduce any friction of the track. There is also a 'guidance' magnet to make sure that the train stays centered on the track and that it won't crash into the sides. As mentioned in my Hyper Loop blog air resistance can be a huge factor as to how fast these trains can go. Because these trains are not in a sealed tube they have to deal with the problem of air resistance, this is solved by giving the train a very pointy front as to cut through the air more efficiently. (Personally I think they look a little like a platypus)

Some of you may know about the new development from the amazing person that is Elon Musk, the hyper loop, The new radical form of transportation could make trips from NYC to LA take under 4 hours. The ways this is possible is how the system will be operated in tubes that air will be sucked out of drastically reducing the air pressure and therefore reducing the air resistance the pod has to counteract. Another technology that the system will use is magnetic levitation, which is currently used in high-speed trains. When the pod floats in the air it will reduce the drag on the ground because it will not be touching anything. This dirastic reduction of friction from the air and from the ground allows this pod to go close to 800 mph will very little energy lost to friction. Predictions on when this new form of transportation will be ready is around 2018, here's hoping.

Magnetism is very cool, its interesting to see how fast the mag lev trains can go. It will also be interesting to see how Musk's Hyperloop works out.

The stunts the people are doing in the videos seem insane, very cool!

In small boat sailing there is a type of capsize called the deathroll, and from the name you can probably tell that it is not the most fun thing to do. Let me start off with a picture of this looks and it will help with the of how this happens. Here we can see that is quite windy and that the boat is also on its side, not good. This can happen when one sails in a direction called "by the lee", this is when the flow of wind on the sail becomes reversed from the normal direction. On the right, called downwind, the wind is following across the sail from left to right, or from the mast (the big dot) to the end of the sail (the leech). This is how normal sail flow works, but when we go to "by the lee" the direction of the wind across the sail changes from leech to luff (end of the sail to the mast) as shown by the green arrow. When this type of flow exists on the sail the direction of the force of the sail also changes direction. On the left of the diagram the boat will tend towards leaning to the right, this is the same direction the force of the sail is in. On the right of the diagram the force of the sail is towards the left causing the boat to want to capsize like the first picture. This can be explained by this diagram. Now imagine the direction of the arrows reversed. (My terrible paint rendition) The big arrow represents the force of the sail and we can see that it is pointed to the side of the boat that the sail is not on, this leads to our dreaded deathroll.

In dinghy sailing a persons weight becomes a much bigger deal in sailing the boat and keeping it upright. As it gets windier out on the water more force is applied to the sail, and the boat is tipped, or heeled, over more. This is were the weight of the sailor becomes more important. In order to counteract the tipping force of the sail, the sailor needs to move their weight out of the boat to create a stable system. In the picture above we can see that the sailor has to "hike" out of the boat to counteract the force of the sail pushing the boat towards a capsize. Since the wind is always changing the sailor needs to constantly be moving around and shifting their weight in and out of the boat. This is very similar to how torque work in that the farther a mass is out of the center the more force it applies in the direction of gravity. If the system of the boat is not in equilibrium, caused by lack of hiking or a strong gust of wind, the boat can end up on it's side, this is called a capsize.

Most people think that a sail works only in one direction, thanks in part to the tall ships of the past. (these things) What appears to be happening here is the wind is just pushing the sails and then in turn pushing the boat forward. But what actually is happening here is a vacuum. As the wind fills in the sail it creates a high pressure system on the inside, the lack of wind on the front side of the sail creates a low pressure zone, and since systems move towards a lower pressure the boat gets pulled forward. This also applies to modern boats and this lets boats go into the wind . You can see that the resultant force pulls the boat forwards, and so the boat would naturally get pulled sideways. This is solved with a board that is put directly beneath the boat so the sideways force it directed forward.