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Dot Physics
Category archives for python
Why would I think that?
Posted by Rhett Allain on May 31, 2010 So suppose you saw something that looked like this: This is a ball shot out of a shooter device. Well, it is a vypthon animation of a ball. What would you do if you came to see this video? If I had not made it, I would say it is an unrealistic video. It does…
Star Trek Space Jump
Posted by Rhett Allain on May 24, 2010 While I am still fresh on the Space Jump topic, let me take it to the extreme. Star Trek extreme. SPOILER ALERT But really, is this a spoiler alert if it is from the trailer of a movie that has been out forever? Of course, I talking about the latest Star Trek movie where three…
What could you do with 54,000 watts?
Posted by Rhett Allain on March 23, 2010 I already looked at ESPN’s Sport Science episode where they calculate that Marshawn Lynch produces 54,000 watts when pulling some tires. Yes, that is way too high. However, what would happen if some was actually that powerful? What could that person do? How fast could they run 100 meters? That is what I am going…
Debris field for a broken meteor
Posted by Rhett Allain on March 23, 2010 I happened to catch two parts of two different episodes of Meteorite Men – a show about two guys that look for meteorites. In both of the snippets I saw, they were talking about a debris field for a meteor that breaks up. In these fields, the larger chunks of the meteorite are further down…
On the 8th Day, God made Pi
Posted by Rhett Allain on March 10, 2010 Pi day is March 14th – get it? (3.14) I am a big fan of Pi. Here is my first post to celebrate the awesomeness of Pi (I know this is early, but I was too excited to wait). How can you determine Pi? Oh sure, tons of high schools do the classic experiment. Measure…
The wind giveth a little and taketh away a lot
Posted by Rhett Allain on February 28, 2010 I ride my bike and mostly the wind makes me unhappy. On a very few days the wind is with me on the way to work and then changes so that it is with me again. But most days the wind is fairly constant. So, if the wind is constant then shouldn’t everything even out?…
Stratos Space Jump
Posted by Rhett Allain on February 19, 2010 Red Bull is sponsoring this sky dive from really really really high up – Stratos: Mission to the Edge of Space. Seems dangerous. The basic idea is that Felix Baumgartner will take a balloon ride up to 120,000 feet and jump out. Here are some questions: Will he reach supersonic speeds? The Red Bull site…
How do you represent vectors?
Posted by Rhett Allain on February 4, 2010 Recently, I was talking about vectors. At that time, I had to stop and recall how I had been representing vectors. Ideally, I should stick with the same notation I used in Basics: Vectors and Vector Addition. But let me go over the different ways you could represent a vector. Graphical Maybe this is too…
RP 6: Throwing a fooball, Part II
Posted by Rhett Allain on December 27, 2009 In part I of this post, I talked about the basics of projectile motion with no air resistance. Also in that post, I showed that (without air resistance) the angle to throw a ball for maximum range is 45 degrees. When throwing a football, there is some air resistance this means that 45 degree is…
Pendulum – a third way
Posted by Rhett Allain on December 6, 2009 Looking back at part I of this idea, I don’t think I did a very good job. Let me summarize the key things I wanted to say: Normally, there are two ways of modeling the motion of an object: Calculating the forces on the object and using the momentum principle or Newton’s second law (which…