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HegelBot153

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  1. HegelBot153
    Group work has become especially prevalent in the classroom of '17. As teams form, a psychological phenomenon can be observed under the right conditions, social facilitation. The performance of individuals in the presence of others, in other words as a group, tends to be better on doing simple tasks rather than complex or abstract thinking. In physics C, it is quite often we learn new information and thus the performance of the group with ill-rehearsed tasks and problems will most likely degrade and therefore be ineffective. So as this tend of teamwork endures long into the year, remember that utilizing cooperative efforts to acquire new skills may be ill-fated to end sourly. 
  2. HegelBot153
    I have thought for a long time about 'truth', what it is and how to know it. Many things have a claim to 'truth' but the honesty of these declarations, all various and in disagreement, speak only on the obscurity of 'truth'. What holds fidelity in all contexts about 'truth' is that it is equivalent to reality and absolute certainty. There is no error in 'truth', it is the absolute security of fact and foundation and seemingly, by notions entirely self evident, Neil deGrasse Tyson holds a piece of the 'certainty' pie. 
    Really, his twitter account speaks a great deal on his ardor for science and scholarship, passion for science fiction and his penchant for relating information. Neil deGrasse Tyson's tweets, nearly each and all, speak of science as a necessary fact or 'truth' to describe our world. But my consternation, my nit-pick, so to speak, is how obnoxious and alienating his media tends to be. As a figure of pop-science, I cannot fathom how, in my sparsely condensed brain cells, anyone would find pedantic, unamusingly pompous and disingenuous diatribe on science trivia to be insightful. If my dreadfully verbose locutions are even indicative of my sarcasm and ornery wrath, using science as a pretense to patronize a generation of presumably young followers is profusely wrong and unhelpful. But hey, I am just a humble student, my say is not to be treated with the same gravity as Carl Sagan's premier astrophysicist and really, this melodrama is all for my student's blog. Still here are examples, courtesy of whosoever took these screenshots.


    I suppose, for some of us, especially when it seems as if we have much to be thankful for from science, it is somewhat of a second nature to use science to lend credence or 'truth' to ostentatious claims of this or that for validation but these are ultimately missteps.
    Post Statement: I had a lot of fun coming up with words, being on twitter and doing homework at once. Happy New Year.
  3. HegelBot153
    I was watching this video of a man slapping a molten stream of metal. Let there be no doubt that this fiery stream was beyond glistering, the scathe of flesh and branches, such that man has never seen. Anyways it was bizarre because his hand passed through unscathed, leaving nary a mark. Perplexed, I began to think and when I could not find any bulletproof conclusions I searched the vast corners of cyberspace to discover the existence of what is called the Leidenfrost effect, there before my eyes. In short, when a liquid contacts a surface of far greater heat than its self, the outermost layer of the liquid will boil into naught but a layer of vapor, insulating the whole from heat. The man must have had some sweat or the like on the surface of his skin and when they came in contact with the hot metal the vapor formed a vapor and under the aegis he was not harmed. This phenomenon can be observed when dropping water on a hot pan, they scatter because of this vapor.
  4. HegelBot153

    The Leyden Jar

    By HegelBot153,

    As the nature of electricity was investigated into the eighteenth century through static electricity and to a certain extent the triboelectric effect, it was only natural that the discovery of electric charge and capacitance would follow. Independently, three scientists named Ewald Georg von Kleist, Pieter van Musschenbroek and Andreas Cunaeus. A machine of sorts, one that would supply charge through triboelectric electric effect by friction, would transfer the charge to two conducting, metallic foils that act as electrodes, generated a disparity in charge and electric potential. The plates are on the inside and the outside of a glass jar, the glass acting as a semiconductor and because of the electric field, electric potential is created across the glass. This glass would "hold" the charge in a sense. You see, the mystery at the time was the exact nature of electricity. Many believe electricity was some invisible fluid-like thing. Electricity could only be observed from sparks, repulsion and other natural phenomenon so at the time humans were working with an incomplete theory of electricity. However the later two scientists Pieter van Musschenbroek and Andreas Cunaeus identified the mechanism of action that we now know today. The idea is that the inside and outside surfaces of the glass became charged by the foils, equally and oppositely, causing a potential difference across the glass itself as a dielectric. The discovery of capacitance has lead to the advent of a variety of useful modern technologies like computers and circuitry which I hope to investigate at a later time.
  5. HegelBot153
    At the time of writing Christmas is over, its before the New Year and the impetus to do anything school related has left my body and soul. Nonetheless I have a smithereen within me crying against the apathy that crowded so densely among my brain cells and I have found it and nourished it and it becomes this blogpost. According to the Wikipedia page, the small angle approximation is a convenient and necessary estimation where in some cases you can replace a trigonometric function of theta(Θ) with theta(Θ) itself. This is almost true as the angle in radians approaches zero, tan(Θ) and sin(Θ) will equal zero and cos(Θ) will equal one and this is approximately true for radian value slightly higher than zero. It seemed pertinent because one of the proofs we did in the last packet used this simplification and I'm certain that whosoever figured that one out thought themselves clever and are within their right to think so!
  6. HegelBot153

    The Sound Shadow

    By HegelBot153,

    Mechanical waves move through matter as a medium and as such many of the natural laws that pertain to motion and dynamics have special places in the study of mechanical waves. One type of wave is sound which most easily propagates through air however because of the laws of momentum one could expect that a mechanical wave is maintained through any matter. A solid barrier for example would be so rigid that it would absorb the impact of a wave and impede passage slightly beyond the barrier. This would produce a sound shadow where the sound loses its momentum in passage through the solid. 
    Anyways this is the last blog post. Thanks FizziksGuy, even in the darkest of nights, you were by my side all along, my true mentor,

  7. HegelBot153
    The triboelectric effect manifests from frictional contact between materials resulting in contact electrification but why? Why are things like this? Why do we live? Why do we die? But anyways here the things we have to know. People have been using this effect like a play thing, charging objects to repel another or zapping frogs apparently (thank you) and I believe it was quite important to our discovery of electromagnetism, especially in the ancient world. If your childhood was at all interesting, you have tried building some sort of potential difference on your person by sliding around on a rug and feeling the power crackle at your fingertips, jolting some poor door knob or family member. That visible stroke of electricity, the spark, indicates to us that there was some level of discharge and depending on the conductivity of the air, it becomes easier to achieve. So when two materials contact they may make a small amount of chemical bonds where one is more likely to receive a negative charge and the other a positive charge due to the inter-molecular forces at play, this is the triboelectric effect. Now that there is some polarity, potential difference is developed and this discovery has had quite an effect in the advancement of the field of physics. Join me for part two: The Leyden Jar in this series.
  8. HegelBot153
    We consecrate thanksgiving in the abundance that has come to us, not in vainglory but of thankfulness for our lot in life. With a class of a few, we know each other by name and are never far apart. These blogs keep our thoughts fresh and physics at the forefront. Really, AP physics C is a paradise. The packets are straightforward and with a bit of searching, the answers are conveniently there with little confusion on the whole. Our equations are adequate and fulfilling, they are means to an end and I am thank that my forebears had thought them. Thanks, to my teachers and my peers. This year will be worth it!
  9. HegelBot153

    What makes an Atom?

    By HegelBot153,

    I had a very thought provoking conversation with some fellow students in the spare time of seventh period. The subject of some debate was the true nature of the atomic elements. We are talking of the chemical elements of the periodic table, nothing to do with Avatar: The Last Airbender, one of the greatest animated shows to grace our planet but I digress. Atomic manifest their properties from protons and electrons. A nucleus of protons, positive charges, tends to attract an equivalently charged quantity of electrons, negative charges, that occupy energy levels. Energy levels are stratum of electrons a certain radius from the positive proton nucleus. It follows that a relatively large positive charge would attract a large amount of electrons for multiple energy levels and a wide radius. Only certain discrete amounts of electrons can occupy  an energy level but generally those closest. Now that the groundwork has been established, we can discuss how certain period groups have their properties in a part two.
  10. HegelBot153
    Where do elements get their physical properties? Well the short answer is inter-molecular forces and that's really all the time I have to spare before the second quarter. Several inter-molecular forces keep an element at a certain phase of matter. The tenacity of these forces depends a great deal on the circumstances of pressure and temperature but for blog purposes, it is safe to think of these at standard pressure and temperate so it is easily visualized. These so-called inter-molecular forces exist in four main types. The first is dipole-dipole bonding which includes hydrogen bonding. This type entails the attraction of oppositely charged particles which are already included in chemical and typically organizes the molecules into some sort of crystalline solid. Secondly, network covalent bonding is where atoms are never truly singular compounds and bond with themselves continuously in a relatively massive "macromolecular" network. An example of this is diamond, a typical example with hardness and high melting point. The third is metallic bonding. For metals, the electrons that occupy their outermost energy level are distant from the positive nucleus and are so feebly attracted that they can transfer from the radius of one nucleus to a neighboring positive charge. In a sense, their electrons are in constant flux which allows metal to conduct electricity. The final are the London dispersion forces. If one could imagine the electrons surrounding the nucleus as a mobile cloud, then the electron of neighboring molecules would repel each other and also be attracted to the positive nucleus. This is a very mild force and often falls by the way side but it it is the reason why gases sometimes freeze at extremely low temperature, that ever-present weak force.

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