The FULL story behind the slinky drop!

Enjoy! http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1110/1110.4368v1.pdf

Engines

I think this post will interest you chemistry and physics majors

Engineers, physicists and chemists are developing innovative fuel efficient engines. Physicists and engineers are making engines smaller , while chemists are developing additives for fuel and oil. Chemists are also trying to develop renewable additives. This could be very beneficial and economically friendly to you!

How do you think that these new engines can benefit you?

Here is the article:

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2011/October/EnginesOfInnovation.asp

Hope you enjoy,

Walter Hill

spinning birdfeeders

I meant to show these in class today, but explaining my Halloween costume took longer than I had thought!

Here are two videos featuring a spinning bird feeder, designed to keep pesky squirrels from stealing the bird seed.

What force creates the torque that spins the squirrel?

And where does the squirrel's increase in kinetic energy come from?

What physical factors determine how long the squirrel can hold on for?

Energy (the Dark Kind)

Dark Energy. Photo Courtesy of Deviant Art (deviantart.com)

This semester you've been studying a lot about energy. Remember the equation for kinetic energy? k=1/2 m*v^2 right? Now I have a question for you: What is the equation, then for dark energy? And what role does it play in our universe?

The first question remains perhaps the greatest mystery in Physics, and in the universe. Nobody knows what dark energy is or how it works, but even the most intelligent, well-respected and prestigious scientists believe it exists and it has a purpose.

To the second question then, scientists believe that dark energy is what drives the acceleration of the expansion of the universe due to the Big Bang.

All of this information and much more came out of a project that would win the Nobel Prize in Physics 2011, as well as 10 Million Swedish Krona, or about 1.6 Million US Dollars. Three U.S. citizens are responsible for the discovery and became the recipients of the award: Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt, and Adam Riess.

These men spent upwards of two decades studying light emitted by supernovae. Based on their findings (which I will not pretend to understand or to be able to explain) they have postulated that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. Of all the implications of this discovery, the most significant is that they know believe that the universe will end in ice.

SO, HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT FREEZING TO DEATH IN A COSMIC WINTER?


HAPPY HALLOWEEN! MWA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAH!!!!!!!!

Read more about it at the website for the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Bomb!!!

The nations most powerful nuclear bomb, the B-53 bomb, is currently being dismantled. The B-53 bomb weighed 9 megatons, and was hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan during World War II. The bomb is being dismantled because they are very large and inaccurate. The process of dismantling the bomb requires removing explosives from nuclear material. Engineers and physicists were consulted to ensure the bomb was dismantled safely.

Bombs used today are smaller and more precise, which reduce the amount of collateral damage.

If you are interested here is the article:

http://news.yahoo.com/uss-most-powerful-nuclear-bomb-being-dismantled-071325260.html

Walter Hill

Wobbling Earth

Here is a great article since you guys are learning about rotational motion.

Keeping with Dan's subject let stay with astronomy and how the earth spins or should I say wobbles.

As young student, is there any physics research you would like to do if given the opportunity.

The direction of Earth’s axis is not fixed, but instead wobbles by a tiny fraction of a degree. Astronomers track this change by continuously monitoring the position of distant quasars in the sky. But now Ulrich Schreiber of the Technical University of Munich and his colleagues, reporting in Physical Review Letters, have, for the first time, measured the wobble in a lab with a ring laser.

A ring laser is basically a laser cavity that has been bent around into a square or triangle loop, with mirrors at each corner. Laser light will travel around the ring in both directions. However, if the ring is rotating, then light moving in the same direction will have farther to go to complete a loop than light moving in the opposite direction. This travel difference causes a measurable frequency shift between the counterpropagating beams.

Ring laser gyroscopes are commonly used in aircraft, but the systems typically are not stable enough with respect to environmental fluctuations to measure the long-period changes in the Earth’s axis. To address this instability, the authors constructed a 4 -meter by 4 -meter square ring—the “Gross Ring”—out of zerodur, a ceramic glass with very low thermal expansion. Using data from spring 2010, the team extracted the signal of the dominant Chandler wobble, which is a 435 -day free oscillation of the Earth due to pressure fluctuations at the sea floor and wind activities around the Earth. This shows that ring lasers could provide an alternative to costly astronomical methods of studying the Earth’s rotation. – Michael Schirber

Crazy New Scientific Discoveries

When I was a grade school kid I learned all about our solar system, consisting of the nine planets I've always known and loved (see Figure 1 below).

Figure 1 - The solar system I've always know and loved (Photo Courtesy of the Monarch Academy Library)

Well, things have changed. In my lifetime they've downgraded old icy Pluto from planet to non-planet. Now I have just been made aware that there is much more to our solar system than I ever would have imagined.

Introducing the Kuiper Belt, pictured below in Figure 2. Ethan Siegal, a theoretical astrophysicist and author of a blog entitled Starts with a Big Bang, recently wrote an article reporting on our new perspective on the solar system with respect to the Kuiper Belt. He reports that since 1992, scientists have become aware of a vast, dense ring of icy "worlds." I mean we are talking hundreds of thousands of these things in a large belt between Neptune and Pluto.

Figure 2 - The Kuiper Belt (Image courtesy of NASA)

WHAT CHANGES HAVE YOU SEEN IN YOUR LIFETIME? HOW HAVE SCIENTISTS PERSPECTIVES CHANGED? WHAT IDEAS HAVE BEEN OBSOLETED OR UPDATED THAT YOU HAVE NOTICED? HOW HAVE THESE CHANGES IN SCIENTIFIC THINKING AFFECTED YOUR PERPECTIVE ABOUT SCIENCE IN GENERAL?

Physics Jokes

I was recently looking on through internet and found some physics jokes that i thought were funny.

Check out these websites below!

http://jupiterscientific.org/sciinfo/jokes/physicsjokes.html

http://www.jokesclean.com/Physics/

http://www.physlink.com/fun/jokes.cfm

Walter Hill

How has Your Experiences At JU Been

What are your feelings about JU, dislikes, likes? Anything that you want to talk about.

What schools did you turn down to come to JU?

For engineering students, what school do you plan on attending for your last 2 years.

Midterm

Its midterm time for this semester and i just wanted to know what you have learned so far in Physics 151 and have your thoughts about physics changed.

Walter Hill

A Bar on Campus ????

Ok, we all need a break from physics...........

I recently wrote a 10 page proposal on how a sports bar on campus would change JU.

I believe in almost every way a sports bar, on campus would help the JU community.

I want to know what you think.....

Please feel free the disagree with me.

Post some ideas, good or bad...lets make this a little debate.

Let's Run the Numbers: Salaries for Nerds

Today I thought it might be fun to simply run some numbers.

According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average yearly salary for a Physicist (if you can find a job, of course) is $106,370. That is equivalent to $53.86 per hour. Currently there are close to 17,000 Physicists employed in the United States, doing work in industries such as medicine, scientific research, education, and even management. Interestingly, the highest paid Physicists in the country work in Minnesota.

What do you think about these numbers? Are they helpful? Do you think they are deceptive in any way? Why or why not?

I encourage you to follow the link below to the website for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I encourage you to poke around and check out the employment and salary statistics for any industry that you are interested in. Find out what you can expect the employment picture to be like in the career you want to go into.

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes192012.htm

Here is a qiuck video on free body diagrams, Dr Lane said you guys could use a little help with free body diagrams.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFgKj4w35BM

Phil

Electric Aircraft

Recently, NASA hosted a Green Flight Challenge aviation contest. In the contest teams built innovative and energy efficient aircraft. Planes in the competition travels over 160 kilometers per hour on less than 3.8 liters of fuel per passenger. NASA says they hope technology developed during the competition will lead to innovations in electric aircraft, and lead to innovations in the aviation industry that result in quiet, emission-free aircraft.

Here is the link to the article:

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/science-technology/NASA-Awards-13-Million-to-Winner-of-Electric-Airplane-Contest-131011588.html

I thought that this article was interesting. I did not know that full sized aircraft could operate and fly using only electricity. This is definitely innovative and i am curious to see electric aircraft in the future.

Would you feel safe traveling in a fully electric powered aircraft? And what are your opinions on electric powered aircraft?

Walter Hill