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SgtLongcoat

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  1. SgtLongcoat
    Something tells me that the junior/senior class trip to Italy might not be happening this year, as Italy has recently been hit by a series of earthquakes, the most recent of which hit cental Italy and was a 6.6 on the Richter scale. According to recent news, approximately 90% of buildings in the area, many of which had significant historical value, were affected or destroyed by the shockwaves, and many were injured (luckily no reported casualties). As the shockwaves radiated from the epicenter, surrounding areas felt aftershocks of around 4.4 on the scale, and aftershocks are estimated to continue for the next week or two.
    Being forces between two tectonic plates at fault lines are what cause these tremors, it can be assumed that there's been an increase in the amount of tectonic activity underneath Italy. For everyone's sake, I hope these tremors end soon, because if they migrate any further south, there may even be a chance we see Mt. Vesuvius erupt again.
    I wish the best of luck to the people of Italy in rebuilding and returning to their normal lives. My heart truly goes out to them.
  2. SgtLongcoat
    One of the most beautiful, awe inspiring landscapes to explore in a video game is none other than the floating island. Imagine being surrounded by plains, forests, mountains... and blue sky and clouds as far as the eye can see. As beautiful as they are though, just how do they stay in the air?
    Some games offer a semi-plausible explanation, such as giant fans on the bottom of islands, or simply "It's magic." Other games, however, offer no explanation whatsoever, and the islands simply float. The force of gravity should be pulling them down, and there isn't some giant hand holding it up, so there's no physical force pusing it up against gravity. This leaves two options:
    1) A force field, likely caused by magnetism, creates an upward force on the island which counteracts gravity.
    2) The island pushes something else (air) down. The impulse of the air over time causes an oppsite force on the island which counteracts gravity.
    Both of these are semi plausible, until you actually factor in entering and exiting the island, which changes the island's mass, and would cause it to move due to unbalanced forces. In the end, maybe the "It's magic" definition is better.
  3. SgtLongcoat

    WoP #7: Moon Drop

    By SgtLongcoat,

    Let it be stated that I am a huge Legend of Zelda fan. I've played a ton of the games, and have even made it a personal goal to seek out a couple of the "older" ones. One of my two favorite games from the franchise is The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, in which the player runs around the land of Termina with a 3 day time limit, trying to prevent the moon from falling and destroying the planet, and using magic to periodically reset time. This game is one of the darkest, yet most emotional in the franchise. However, it doesn't quite handle gravitational physics well.
    Considering the moon in the game is constantly approaching the earth, the force of gravity should be constantly increasing, and the acceleration of the moon due to gravity should also be constantly increasing. Despite this, the moon appears to fall at a pretty constant velocity, and even seems to slow down in the game over screen, right before it hits the earth. In addition, in the actual ending, the moon's descent isn't stopped until it gets extremely close to the earth. Assuming I'm wrong and the moon is accelerating towards the earth, considering the moon's mass and the relatively great impact velocity, the force required to change its momentum from its initial momentum to 0 would be so great that there would be some form of crater on the earth's surface from where the four giant's who actually stopped the moon from falling were standing.
  4. SgtLongcoat

    WoP #8: Tightropes

    By SgtLongcoat,

    So, today I saw a show in which a circus was being performed, and saw one of my favorite types of acts, the tightrope walker. Though it's one of my favorite acts, as a kid, I always wondered why they carried around the big, funny looking stick. Wouldn't having more weight make it harder to walk the rope? Actually, it's quite the contrary. The weight of the pole, extended over the distance, makes it easier to balance. Without the rope, they'd have to wiggle around like crazy on the rope in order to stay on. With the pole, by making slight changes to the angle of the pole, the torque on the pole makes major corrections to the walker's balance. As such, it creates the illusion of elegance atop the rope.
  5. SgtLongcoat

    WoP #9: Black Hole

    By SgtLongcoat,

    Black holes: one of the most (theoretically) dangerous things in the universe. They consist of highly concentrated matter at a single point, such that the gravitational force exerted by the black hole is so great, even light cannot escape. However, this isn't entirely because the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. Some astrophysicists believe that the major reason light cannot escape is because the mass of a black hole is so concentrated that it warps space around it such that every path leads towards the center of the black hole.
    In addition, the high gravity of a black hole causes some time dilation. In theory, if we could get close enough to a black hole to experience the effects of time dilation, but not so close that our escape velocity would be too great to leave orbit, we could utilize a blackhole to create forward time travel. The major problem, however, would be getting back afterwards.

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