acceleration
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Tag archives for acceleration
Watermelon Collisions – ouch
Posted by Rhett Allain on September 9, 2010 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. Watermelon smashed on face. Wow.…
Happy g day
Posted by Rhett Allain on September 8, 2010 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? Well, the idea was for the physics students and faculty to build some stuff to do outside – projectile motion type stuff. Well, we had the idea a while ago and…
More on turning and braking
Posted by Rhett Allain on August 16, 2010 I can’t let it go. There is more here to explore. 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. Consider a few motions. I could turn and…
Chased by a Zombie
Posted by Rhett Allain on July 1, 2010 Title: Chased by zombies When I heard word about the ScienceBlogs Zombie Day, I knew I wanted to participate with a post – but I had no idea what to do. My first thought was to somehow talk about living off the electric grid in the case of a zombipocolypse – you know, like how…
Do Bikers Cheat?
Posted by Rhett Allain on June 8, 2010 Well, maybe that isn’t the best title. You see, there is this video going around saying that it is possible that a professional bike racer was cheating by putting a hidden motor in his bike. I am not really going to talk about the cheating aspect (my gut feeling says that it would be too…
How fast was the car going?
Posted by Rhett Allain on June 3, 2010 Reader Colin asked a great question about this popular clip. How fast was the car moving? First, a quick assumption. I will assume that the frame rate on the video is correct (meaning not slowed down). Colin already looked up the length of the Chevy Impala on Wikipedia for me. It has a length of…
Tail-Drop Analysis
Posted by Rhett Allain on May 27, 2010 I don’t know why they call it a tail drop. Here is a video: The link I clicked that brought me to this video said the equivalent of “OMG!” That is not what I thought, really I am not sure what is so impressive (except that he didn’t fall off the skateboard). If the original…
Hey, look kids! There’s Big Ben.
Posted by Rhett Allain on May 20, 2010 And there’s parliament. Ok – sorry, I had to make a “Tom (Swans on Tea)” title for this one. Tom, forgive me. Here are two great circular motion videos. First, this one is from Dale Basler. He made himself a fine little floater-type accelerometer. Better than just make it, he made a video of the…
Preemptive MythBusters: Giant Water Slide Jump
Posted by Rhett Allain on May 16, 2010 I am excited. This Wednesday, the MythBusters are doing the giant water slide jump. Maybe you are new to the internet and you haven’t seen this video. Here it is: And since it is as old as the hills, of course I have already analyzed it – actually twice. First, the video is fake –…
Where is the accelerometer in an ipod touch?
Posted by Rhett Allain on April 27, 2010 There are several free iPhone-iPod Touch apps that let you look at the acceleration of the device using the built in accelerometer. I was planning on reviewing some of these free apps, but I didn’t. When I started playing around with them, it was clear that I needed some way to make a constant acceleration.…