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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.
Category: acceleration
Through random surfing, I found this clip from The Amazing Race (which is apparently some type of reality show). Don't really know the set up except that it appears some girl is trying to launch watermelons with a slingshot. This looks bad, but she seems to not be seriously injured.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 3:37 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: air resistance
Oh, and they have a diagram - which doesn't seem to come form the original paper and they also have some nifty real-life soccer videos. I think this story is a little too light on the details. They could have done just a little bit more to make this a much better article. Essentially they said that the ball curves because of magic (but magic is physics).
Posted by Rhett Allain at 10:11 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Analysis
Suppose everyone in the world got together and jumped. Would the Earth move? Yes. Would it be noticeable? Time for a calculation.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 3:48 PM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Analysis
I have no idea what this thing is, but it is clearly tall. How tall? Instead of searching online for info about this structure (that wouldn't be any fun), I figured I could do a quick analysis of the shadow.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 4:29 PM • 41 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Analysis
But, the question is: how difficult are these shots? Are these one in a million? Are they easy? Are they essentially impossible? One way to answer this is to get some estimate of the variation in the angles and speed of a shot basketball. Oh yes, here comes the data.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 5:35 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: acceleration
Let me tell you the part that Jorge has an issue with. This guy on a ladder throws a basketball through the hoop. The ball then bounces back up and through the hoop again. Here is an annotated screen shot.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 8:21 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: acceleration
First, I can't believe that I looked at braking and then turning but not turning then braking. And what about braking while turning? I will model braking and then turning - but it won't stop here.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 12:49 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: air resistance
Really, there are two things I am interested in. First, commenter Scott Post suggests that the drag coefficient might be around 0.25 instead of 0.5. I don't know. For the discussion before, it doesn't really matter. My point was to see a numerical model for a falling ball would be similar to the time and distance from the video. Changing the drag coefficient to 0.25 gives values that are still close to the video.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 12:10 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Analysis
If each one of these documents were printed on one page, how big would the stack of paper be?
Posted by Rhett Allain at 3:17 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: air resistance
Real? Fake? How many tries did this take? Let the analysis begin. Before I do any analysis, let me state that I think this is not fake. I do not know that for sure, just my first guess.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 12:11 PM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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