Everyday
Category archives for Everyday
Mysteries of the Simulated Pendulum
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 23, 2013 
Last week, I spent a bunch of time using VPython to simulate a simple pendulum, which was a fun way to fritter away several hours (yes, I’m a great big nerd), and led to some fun physics. I had a little more time to kill, so I did one of the things I mentioned as…
Simulating a Pendulum
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 16, 2013 
There’s a famous story about Richard Feynman at Cornell suffering from the science equivalent of writer’s block, after WWII. He was depressed and feeling like everything he did was pointless, until one day he spotted a student throwing a plate up in the air in the cafeteria. As the plate spun, it wobbled, and the…
Playground Physics
Posted by Chad Orzel on April 24, 2013 
The playground outside SteedlyKid’s day care, amazingly in this litigious age, has a merry-go-round, a rotating disc with a really good bearing. The kids can really get the thing flying, which is kind of terrifying at times. But on the bright side, it’s an excellent venue for the physics of angular momentum: In the embedded…
How Good Is My Starbucks Cup?
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 26, 2013 
It’s been a while since I’ve done a post over-analyzing some everyday situation, because I’ve been too busy to do any silly experiments. We’re on break this week, though, so I took a little time Monday to bring excessive technology to bear on the critically important scientific question: how good is my insulated Starbucks cup?…
Science Kids, Fictitious Forces, and Frictionless Surfaces
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 12, 2013 
SteelyKid has started to demand Sid the Science Kid videos, which of course we are implacably opposed to around here. One of the recent episodes available online was “Slide to the Side,” talking about friction. While this partakes a bit of the Feynman “Energy makes it go” problem, it was generally pretty good, and prompted…
Physics Is About Rules, Not Facts
Posted by Chad Orzel on January 24, 2013 While in the library looking for something else, I noticed a book called The Trouble with Science by Robin Dunbar, whose description made it sound very much on point for my current project: In The Trouble with Science, Robin Dunbar asks whether science really is unique to Western culture, even to humankind. He suggests that…
The Psychology and Improbability of Shuffle Play
Posted by Chad Orzel on January 7, 2013 Kate and I went down to New York City (sans kids, as my parents were good enough to take SteelyKid and The Pip for the weekend) this weekend, because Kate had a case to argue this morning, and I needed a getaway before the start of classes today. We hit the Rubin Museum of Art,…
Hobbits and Prime Ministers: The Physics of Doors
Posted by Chad Orzel on November 16, 2012 
Over at Tor.com, Kate has begun a chapter-by-chapter re-read of The Hobbit, and has some thoughts on Chapter 1. It’s full of interesting commentary about characters and literary technique, but let’s get right to the important bit: Physics! Kate mentions in passing in the post that the Hobbit style round door with a knob in…
Gender and Balance in Aviation
Posted by Chad Orzel on October 2, 2012 
In which we use math and physics to show that the pilots of my flight from Toronto to Albany this past weekend were full of crap. ———— As previously noted, I was in Waterloo, Ontario this past weekend for the Open House at the University of Waterloo’s new Quantum Nano Center. My talk went very…
More Physics of Sprinting
Posted by Chad Orzel on April 18, 2012 Yesterday’s post on applying intro physics concepts to the question of how fast and how long football players might accelerate generated a bunch of comments, several of them claiming that the model I used didn’t match real data in the form of race clips and the like. One comment in particular linked to a PDF…
