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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: acceleration
Actually, it should be called Happy "Magnitude of the local Earth gravitational field" day. You know, 9.8 N/kg on September 8 (9/8). Get it?
Posted by Rhett Allain at 12:36 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: what is it
It is of course a gas discharge tube. You put these tubes in there (as shown above) with helium or neon or whatever in there and it excites the gas to give off light
Posted by Rhett Allain at 10:37 AM • 5 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: Demo
Here is the item:
Posted by Rhett Allain at 8:11 AM • 12 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
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
How can he pour upside down? Well, there are two ways to look at this. First, I can look at this in the frame of the plane. For this case, I can invoke the fake force - centrifugal force. Oh yes, I am going to do it.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 8:19 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: education
Perhaps the best thing about The Mechanical Universe is that it might be the best that traditional lecturing can provide. Oh, I know it isn't quite the same. Students can't ask questions while watching a video. But the main point is that if you want to go with some type of traditional lecture style format for a class, you would be hard pressed to do better than this.
Posted by Rhett Allain at 9:58 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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