work

Note: This is an old post from the time before my blog was in wordpress. I noticed there was some incoming link for this, and I never moved it over. Here it is in it's unaltered (except for this part) format. I don't know why I even suggest a new energy source. Fusion power is only a few years away in the future (just like it as always been). This will replace any other sources of energy that we could come up with. But, I can't help myself, I need to share my idea and save the world. It's what I do. (call me a superhero is you want). We can get all of our energy from the rotation of the…
Another electric motorcycle post. (Here is the post on the wind-recharged drag racing motorcycle) This new one is a solar powered motorcycle. The site claims that the bike can go 50 miles on a full charge (from Gas2.org). This is easily possible, but how long would it take to charge with normal solar panels? Here is an image of the bike. Questions to be answered: How much energy would the bike need to go 50 miles? How much power (average) could you expect to get from the solar panels? And...how long would it take to charge this sucker. I am sure you can store enough energy in a…
Last night was Wednesday, so of course I watched Mythbusters. You never know when a good blogging opportunity will come up. I could talk about the kinetic energy of arrows, but instead let me talk about their episode for next week. I only caught a glimpse of it in the preview. It looks like they are doing something about jumping on a see-saw and launching the other person. It could be this video they are looking at: EMBED-Extreme Catapulting - Watch more free videos From my analysis of this video, I found that the likely outcome was a broken board (if it were not fake). Also, if the…
Christmas greeting card, school unknown, circa 1920. Dittrick Medical History Center from Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930 Slate has an intriguing new review by Barron Lerner of a book called Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930, by John Harley Warner and James M. Edmonson. The book delves into the turn-of-the-century practice of photographing medical students with cadavers - photos that today read as weird, grotesque, even offensive. The photos unearthed by Warner and Edmonson depict an astonishing variety of…
I've been thinking a lot lately, and it seems to me that I spend way too much time puking on other peoples' shoes and not nearly enough time prancing about in my own fancy high heels. So this past weekend I did some shopping. Here's one result: Let me tell you, Mr. Zuska is happy about this turn of events! I also got these: Of course, after an evening in those, I couldn't walk at all the next day due to my arthritic toes but it was all worth it, because I knew I had finally consumed my way into modern womanhood. I know this because I was reading Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines…
I said I would come back to this, and I am. I am a man of my word. Yesterday, I posted a link to a video of this really cool water rocket thingy. How does this work? What is the physics going on here? I think this can be best explained with the momentum principle. Let me start by pretending like I have some object that shoots out a piece of water (or really it could be anything). Also, let me pretend like this is in space ore something where there are no external forces. Above is a before and after picture. Initially, there is something (the box) with water inside. Through some process…
I saw this video posted on Physics and Physicists: It reminded me that I had at one point tried to analyze this. I had actually posted something about this on the first generation of my blog (which no longer exists). I have found the analysis, and here it is from the archives. Thanks ZZ for reminding me. Could this be true, or is it fake? I started to do an analysis of the trajectory, but I found the following frames: Look at the guy's back. His back starts moving before the water bottle rockets. It must be some type of cable pulling him. If the rockets were propelling him, the rockets…
I finally saw the movie Iron Man. It was good. I feel that I am qualified to evaluate the movie. When I was in high school, I was totally into comic books. Mostly Spider-man, but I still have a significant collection of Iron Man comics. Ok, now you know I am not an Iron Man attacker. I will now attack the movie. Sorry, it's what I do (remember, I already said I liked it). There are several things I could comment on, in fact I recall some other blog talking about the physics of Iron Man. My attack will center on the scene where Tony Stark (Iron Man) escapes from captivity with his home…
Clearly, I am not a professional blogger. I am an amateur. This is because I was under the impression that only amateur bloggers could compete in the blogging olympics. When did they change these rules? Anyway, Adam Weiner did a physics-based analysis of the latest Star Trek movie trailer. Here is the trailer: In the trailer (oh, spoiler alert) a young Kirk jumps out of a car before it goes over a cliff. It does look odd, and that is why I had intended to analyze it. In Adam's analysis, at PopSci.com the basic approach was: Take the initial velocity of the car (from the clip) Assume the…
Here is a video of a guy jumping 35 feet into a pool of water only 1 foot deep. UPDATE: Apparently, that video went away. Here is another version. How does this work? I don't think I even need to do a video analysis of this motion, all the important info is given. I will assume that air resistance did not play a signficant role (and that is a good assumption - or good enough - see this for example: motion of a falling tennis ball). So, here is the situation. Part 1: guy falls 35 feet 5 inches (10.8 meters). ![Screenshot 16sd](http://scienceblogs.com/dotphysics/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/…
Here is what is cool about [Fantastic Contraption](http://fantasticcontraption.com/) - it's like a whole new world, a world ready for exploring. I am Newton, and I can see if this world follows the models that I propose. In this post, I am going to explore the elastic nature of the "water-sticks". If you have played fantastic contraption, I am sure you noticed that the water-sticks are springy. How does these springy sticks work? Are they just like the springs we have in the real world? An excellent model for springs in the real world is Hooke's law. It says the force exerted by a…
**Pre Reqs:** [What is a Force](http://scienceblogs.com/dotphysics/2008/09/basics-what-is-a-force.php) [Previously, I talked about the momentum principle](http://scienceblogs.com/dotphysics/2008/10/basics-forces-and-the-moment…). Very useful and very fundamental idea. The other big (and useful) idea in introductory physics is the work-energy theorem. Really, with work-energy and momentum principle, you will be like a Jedi with a lightsaber and The Force - extremely powerful. Well, what is work? What is energy? How are they related? In [another post, I talked about energy.](http://…
I was recently re-watching a MythBusters episode and I found something I had wanted to explore previously (but accidentally deleted the episode). Here is a short clip from the "shooting fish in a barrel" episode: Did you see what I found interesting? That big barrel of water left the floor from being hit by a bullet. The question here is: Does a bullet have enough energy to increase the gravitational potential energy of the barrel to that height? First, let me gather some data. From the episode, the Mythbusters were firing a 9mm pistol round into the barrel. I don't know much about…
Which wastes more fuel? (and thus produces more carbon dioxide). This is a difficult to question to answer for a variety of reasons. The main reason is that a speed change from 71 mph to 70 mph is different than a reduction from 56 to 55 mph. First, let me be clear that the question of how much fuel is wasted using daytime running lights (or DRL as they are called) has already been addressed. The first source I found was howstuffworks.com **Assumptions** The daytime running lights on a car run at about 100 watts (for the pair) The energy density of gasoline is 1.21 x 108 Joules/gallon. A car…
Friction in Line Rider Is there friction in Line Rider? Does it function as physics would expect? To test this, I set up a simple track: ![Page 6 1](http://scienceblogs.com/dotphysics/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/page-6-1…) Basically, a slope with a flat part to start with and to end with. Let me show you something simple before further analysis: ![Page 6 2](http://scienceblogs.com/dotphysics/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/page-6-2…) This is the x-position vs. time for the line rider on the first horizontal portion of the track (before he or she goes down the incline). This shows the rider…
I recently saw a comment on a blog somewhere about putting satellites into space (I think it was from a post about a rocket that blew up). The poster suggested using a giant catapult to put things in space instead of rockets. Maybe he or she was kidding, or maybe not. But I have heard this idea before. Would it work? First, how do things get in orbit? Orbit is a motion in which the gravitational force on an object makes it move in a circle around another object. In order to be in a circular orbit, it takes a certain amount of energy. Let me just start with some calculations. How fast…