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baseball00

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  1. baseball00

    MLB opening Day!

    By baseball00,

    Major league baseball opened up the season this week and there were some exciting stats and physics involved in the 11 games that were played on Thursday the 29th. Here are some of the great physics highlights of opening day. 
    Giancarlo Stanton hit 2 home runs on his yankee debut. One of his home runs leads the league, so far, in exit velocity off the bat: 117.4 mph. With a launch angle of 19.8 degrees, its projected distance traveled is 426 feet. 
    Jordan Hicks of the St. Lous Cardinals has the fastest pitch of opening day at 101.6 mph. At this speed, Hicks produced a spin rate of 2,233 rpm. While this ball had a great amount of kinetic energy, it also had a large amount of rotational kinetic energy as well. The highest spin rate of 2,649 rpm was thrown with a 99.2 mph four-seam fastball by Aroldis Chapman. 
    The farthest home run of the season so far is by Matt Adams of the Washington Nationals. He hit the ball 460 feet with a velocity of 109.3 mph and launch angle of 28.6 degrees. 
    Physics is always relevant in baseball. Throughout the 2018 season there will be a lot more exciting stats while it is only the beginning. 
  2. baseball00

    Magnetism

    By baseball00,

    Our latest unit in Physics was learning about magnetism. A magnetic field occurs when charged particles are moving. According to greek legend magnetism was discovered by a Shepard in a field as he suddenly felt a force of attraction coming from the ground as he wore shoes with iron on the bottom. The substance he found later became known as magnetite, after the place it was found, Magnesia. Another common magnetic substance that was well known was lodestone. This was used in ancient China by the first emperor to protect his palace. Huge blocks of lodestone were placed outside the entrance. This was meant to attract soldiers in armor so they were prevented from entering the village. In ancient Egypt magnets were used for entertainment by doing (non) magic tricks. They would place objects above a magnet so that they would repel so the object would seem to be floating in mid-air. 
    It wasn't until the 1500's that magnetism was scientifically investigated by William Gilbert who discovered that the earth itself is a magnet with a magnetic north pole and south pole. Not too much later came Friedrich Gauss and Charles Coloumb, where our understanding of magnetism became less of a mystery. In 1861 James Clerk Maxwell used equations to relate magnetism and electricity.  
  3. baseball00
    The first telescope to be invented was a refracting telescope. A refracting telescope works by using converging lens to collect light. A refracting telescope has a convex lens that bends the parallel light that is coming into it to a focal point. That focal point is where an image is formed of what is being observed. At that point is the eyepiece that you look through to see the focused image. This diagram shows the inside of a refracting telescope.

    A reflecting telescope was invented after that refracting telescope by Isaac Newton. A reflecting telescope works by collecting light and reflecting it off of a concave mirror. The light that is reflected comes to a focus point where a flat angled mirror reflects that light up toward an eyepiece where the viewer sees the image. This diagram shows the inside a reflecting telescope. 

     
  4. baseball00

    The Doppler Effect

    By baseball00,

    The Doppler effect occurs in everyday life more often than you may think. It is the change in frequency or wavelength of a wave relative to a moving observer. 

    In this animation a car has sound waves that it is emitting. As the car starts to move the wavelength of the wave becomes smaller on the side of the car that it is moving toward and larger on the side that it is moving away from. An observer on the left side of this car would hear it gradually become higher pitched. An observer on the right side of the car would hear it gradually become lower in pitch.
    The Doppler effect is true for light waves as well. This is wear the terms red-shift and blue-shift come from. Blue light has a higher frequency than red light; therefore if an object appears to be becoming more blue that means it is moving toward you. If an object appears to be turning more red than it is moving away from you. This is only noticeable on very large scales like when observing space. Because of the Doppler effect, scientists have determined that our universe is expanding since most objects in space are red-shifted relative to earth.
  5. baseball00
    The gold foil experiment is the famous experiment conducted by Ernest Rutherford that we all learned about in chemistry class. This experiment proved that atoms are made up of mostly empty space. In fact 99.9999% of an atom was proven in this experiment to be empty space. Lets say we could eliminate all that empty space by condensing the parts of an atom together. How much weight could we fit in a small space such as a single teaspoon? Over a billion tons! 
    This idea is common when studying astronomy. At the end of a stars life, it collapses and explodes in a supernova explosion. The remaining mass that the supernova leaves over is so dense that the star begins to collapse in on itself. As a result of this, electrons fall into the nucleus and smash into protons becoming neutrons; hence the name neutron star.
    This animation shows a star going through a supernova explosion. The accuracy of this animation is highly questionable but it certainly looks cool.


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