Physics, tech and humor. Because science and learning are cool, and life’s too short not to laugh.
In basketball, shooting angle has a big effect on the chances of scoring
It’s the elegant arched trajectory naturally formed by any projectile, from an artillery round to a tomato, moving in a gravitational field. Parabolas have been extensively studied since people started throwing stuff at each other, and they shape the outcome of many ballistic [...]
Over at Cosmic Variance, JoAnne tells a story about dialing Pi on the phone:
Several years ago, before pi-day was famous, a student called the phone number associated with the digits in pi that appear after the decimal point, i.e., 1-415-926-5358. Apparently this is rather common now, and in fact, appears to be promoted as a [...]
What happens when a balloon explodes?
At 2700 fps.
On the Periodic Table, that is. Fun with the alkali metals.
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I’ve witnessed a pretty nice Rubidium reaction, when I was cleaning out the oven we used to make an atomic beam. The oven was little more than a pipe with a hole [...]
It’s that point on the orbit again: Talk like a physicist day. In case you need to brush up on your vocabulary, you can refer to my original post and its follow-up.
It’s getting much harder to come up with new examples, which means in physics-talk I’m approaching a local maximum in entropy. [...]
Today was chosen as Talk Like a Physicist Day because it’s Einstein’s birthday, as well as Pi day in the US date format: 3/14 (Just wait 5 years and it will be precision Pi day: 3/14/15). So here’s some Einstein.
The New Yorker: Time Bandits
What were Einstein and Gödel talking about?
Bonus Einstein: [...]
He was on the other night, but you can travel through time (or not) and see the video: The Colbert Report and Sean’s post on the experience
ISS Solar Transit
Hearing The Uncertainty Principle
The frequency content of that little pop spans several octaves. It no longer resembles a pure note at all. The large degree of certainty with respect to the time of the note means a large degree of uncertainty with respect to the frequency of the note.
It’s the uncertainty principle and it’s not [...]
Branch falls on some power lines
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Dot Physics: Vacuum Spider-Man
Using a vacuum cleaner to lift things. Or a person. In this case, by creating a vacuum and utilizing atmospheric pressure, while previously, I had demonstrated lift using higher pressure (i.e. the blower) to hoverboard around.
Rolling out the (optical) carpet: the Talbot effect
Wish I could have read this when I was learning about the subject in grad school…
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