Showing posts with label gravity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gravity. Show all posts
Monday, October 31, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
Gravity's effects on chemical reactions
Kyle Bosanko posed a GREAT question on my article last week about mapping out g on the moon. (My only regret is that I didn't get around to reading it until today! Sorry!) Here's Kyle's question:
This simulation (Just click it to run!) shows the behavior of an ideal gas, which is where gas particles roam freely until they bump into each other or the walls of the container. There's a slider that will allow you to adjust the strength of "gravity" (really, our g) to see what effects different levels of gravity have on the gas's behavior!
Enjoy!
I just finished up some chemistry homework and was wondering how much gravity [a]ffects chemical reactions. Would a reaction differ it were on the moon. I am particularly interested in reaction rates.I'm not as familiar with gravity's impact on chemical reactions (though I suspect it's minimal), but I DO have a neat simulation to show you about a similar problem!
| Click to Run |
This simulation (Just click it to run!) shows the behavior of an ideal gas, which is where gas particles roam freely until they bump into each other or the walls of the container. There's a slider that will allow you to adjust the strength of "gravity" (really, our g) to see what effects different levels of gravity have on the gas's behavior!
Enjoy!
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Mapping g on the moon
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/10/140361610/nasa-launches-probes-to-study-moon describes a recently launched unmanned NASA mission to the moon to map out the moon's gravitational field. What is the gravitational field? It's quite simply the acceleration due to gravity ("g" as we've been calling it in class) as a function of position around the moon!
On the surface of the earth, g is a pretty consistent 9.8 m/s^2, but it does vary depending on your position on the planet, since Earth is not a perfect sphere. And once you start to get out into space, g begins to diminish drastically, dropping off like 1/r^2, where r is the distance between you and the center of the earth!
The moon's acceleration due to gravity behaves much the same way. On the surface of the moon (at least the parts we've been to!), it's about 1/6 of our g on earth (so about 1.7 m/s^2, give or take), and also drops off like 1/r^2 (where r is the distance between you and the center of the moon) as you leave the surface.
These probes will measure these variations in the moon's g as they orbit on opposite sides of the moon! By the way, the GRACE mission (http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/) did the same thing on earth! Here's a map of the results, depicting the difference between the local g and the average g: http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/gallery/gravity/03_07_GRACE.html, where the red regions represent a higher value of g and the blue regions represent a lower value of g (measured in units of "milligals," which are named after Galileo; 1 gal = 1 cm/s^2).
On the surface of the earth, g is a pretty consistent 9.8 m/s^2, but it does vary depending on your position on the planet, since Earth is not a perfect sphere. And once you start to get out into space, g begins to diminish drastically, dropping off like 1/r^2, where r is the distance between you and the center of the earth!
The moon's acceleration due to gravity behaves much the same way. On the surface of the moon (at least the parts we've been to!), it's about 1/6 of our g on earth (so about 1.7 m/s^2, give or take), and also drops off like 1/r^2 (where r is the distance between you and the center of the moon) as you leave the surface.
These probes will measure these variations in the moon's g as they orbit on opposite sides of the moon! By the way, the GRACE mission (http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/) did the same thing on earth! Here's a map of the results, depicting the difference between the local g and the average g: http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/gallery/gravity/03_07_GRACE.html, where the red regions represent a higher value of g and the blue regions represent a lower value of g (measured in units of "milligals," which are named after Galileo; 1 gal = 1 cm/s^2).
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