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What happens when you take some basic, introductory physics and apply them to cool things you see? Dot Physics happens. This blog looks at movies, experiments, demos and other topics typically aimed at the introductory physics level.
Rhett Allain is an Associate Professor of Physics at Southeastern Louisiana University. He
enjoys teaching and talking about physics. Sometimes he takes things apart and can't
put them back together.
July 31, 2009
Two things. First, my wife started blogging. The best thing about this is that she can no longer complain about my blogging. Her blog is over at HyperHomeschool.com. Basically, she is keeping up with her homeschooling stuff online. I see...
Posted by Rhett Allain at 10:58 AM • 4 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
July 30, 2009
Category: physics
The fall semester is coming up soon. Some students will be taking physics in college. So, here are some pre-class tips - mainly aimed at college students taking algebra-based physics. Are you afraid? If you are reading this, maybe you...
Posted by Rhett Allain at 12:13 PM • 1 Comments • 2 TrackBacks
Category: science
Surprisingly, I STILL get comments and questions from students and teachers about Pluto. Questions such as:
Posted by Rhett Allain at 10:03 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 29, 2009
Category: physics
The problem is that vpython doesn't make pretty graphs. Oh, they are quick and simple - but sometimes you want pretty also. Well, what if you just don't use vpython? Of course then I could use some other plotting package like pylab (which actually uses something else like matplotlib or something - I get confused)
Posted by Rhett Allain at 10:52 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: physics
You have no idea how long I have been sitting on this one. I made some videos like a billion years ago, and still no post. Why? Oh well, here it is.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 5:22 PM • 1 Comments • 2 TrackBacks
July 28, 2009
Category: physics
If you look the video, the boys move in closer to the center around the 1:00 minute mark. This corresponds to the arrow in the graph above (the time is different because I only used a small part of the whole clip). And yes, the merry-go-round did speed up
Posted by Rhett Allain at 5:10 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 27, 2009
Category: physics
Another reason to analyze this movie is that it is obviously fake. Elephants are one of the few animals that can't jump. Not even a little bit. They don't like to have more than 1 foot off the ground. Ok, on to the analysis.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 5:28 PM • 8 Comments • 2 TrackBacks
July 25, 2009
Category: education
Here is an interesting article from Mashable: In the Future, the Cost of Education will be Zero In the article, the author Josh makes the following points: College is expensive and some people can't really afford it. There is a...
Posted by Rhett Allain at 2:29 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: random
This is not really physics stuff. Well, it could be, but I am not going to take it that way. This is just a post that I consider to possibly add to the usefulness of the internet. When ever I...
Posted by Rhett Allain at 1:58 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 23, 2009
Category: education
At the basic level, cramster gives solutions to homework problems. I was surprised how many introductory physics texts were available. They even had Classical Electrodynamics by Jackson. They did not have the text I use for calc-based intro physics, Matter and Interactions
Posted by Rhett Allain at 1:47 PM • 8 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
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