I nominate Frank

Frank Noschese is a physics teacher and a blogger (and frequent commenter on Dot Physics). And I nominate Frank as the new librarian of videos that can be analyzed for realness or fakeness. Or, as Frank calls them Win-Fail Physics. Note that I sort of changed his theme a little - sorry Frank.

Win-Fail physics videos are all over the place. You know I like these things. They are videos that look cool and people question if they are real or fake. Sometimes it is easy to tell, sometimes it takes a little analysis, and sometimes it is very difficult to tell (and I get it wrong).

So, here is the site. Win? Fail? Physics. There are already videos there, just waiting to be analyzed. These would be perfect for a class activity (I will try to restrain myself - but really, what was Frank thinking sending these to me? Oh, I won't analyze them. Oh, I can stop analyzing at any time. I am totally in control of myself........arrrrrrrrrhhhhhggggggg)

One last hint: for motion videos, the easiest thing to look for in falling type videos is the vertical acceleration. It should be constant. Oh, and the horizontal acceleration in projectile motion is zero - if it is real.

More like this

It's one of those days where none of the stuff I probably ought to be writing seems even slightly appealing, so instead I'm going to do something frivolous and morale-boosting, namely think out loud about an imaginary course. Despite being on sabbatical, I do still check my work email, and have…
GrrlScientist sends a link to this rather wild stunt from India: How is it possible? What kind of friction is necessary, and is it any more difficult for the cars to do the stunt than it is for the motorcycles? Before we do any math, I want to think about the problem qualitatively. Let's tally…
slacktivist: In the belly of the fish "My fundie Bible teachers considered this the main, or even the only, point of this story worth considering. Their task, as they saw it, was to defend the story as being "literally" true, and so they'd share legends (see Bartley, James) of sailors swallowed…
One of the more annoying points of contention back in the days of the Sokal hoax and the "Science Wars" was an argument over social construction. This is, loosely speaking, the idea that our understanding of the world is not strictly rational and objective, but is heavily influenced by interactions…

the first step to overcoming your physics video analysis problem is admitting that you...oh forget it. the first step is to break out the tools and analyze!!!!