Where was this a year ago, when all I could think of was last-name-phonetic-translation-of-first-initial?
Category Archives: Physics
Making Eye Contact
Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space. D. Adams
So you got a telescope for Christmas…
Now the sky is a big place, and telescopes don’t often come with an astronomer to explain how to use them. I’m not an astronomer either, but I’ve been an amateur stargazer on and off for years and I might be able to give you some good advice.
I think one company did offer an astronomer along with the telescope, but it ended badly. They require a lot of care and feeding and are nocturnal by nature, so they tend to keep you awake (Ooh! Come look at this!) even when you don’t want to observe.
An Answer to the Eternal Question
“What happens when you hit a webcam with a particle beam?”
A web camera is placed into a particle beam to show visually the affects of space radiation on electronics. This video shows the particles striking the camera along with streaks due to high angle impacts.
It’s not explained why the impacts aren’t localized — is it because of scattering occurring in the air or in the webcam lens? I assume so, and also that the high-angle strike is due to a scatter very close to the CCD, though it could have been from a cosmic ray — you see effects of these in cloud chambers. (I’ve thought it would be a great idea to have a webcam on a cloud chamber, and transmit a live picture, but when I searched to see if there was one I came up empty)
The Mouse Problem
Man: Well… I was about seventeen and some mates and me went to a party, and, er… we had quite a lot to drink… and then some of the fellows there … started handing … cheese around … and well just out of curiosity I tried a bit … and well that was that.
Interviewer: And what else did these fellows do?
Man: Well some of them started dressing up as mice a bit … and then when they’d got the costumes on they started … squeaking.
Oh, wait. Wrong source of squeaking. It’s winter here, so we’re talking about snow.
ScienceGeekGirl discusses Why does snow squeak when it’s cold?
More snow-related stuff: Why does snow sparkle? I’m dreaming of a white and sparkling christmas at Morning Coffee Physics
Update: I shoveled some squeaky white stuff this afternoon. Just as I finished, it started coming down heavy again. Prediction: 2″-4″, actual was about 6″.
Feel the Burn!
The science du jour is physics of weight loss, which is useful for this time of year when some of us tend to act as sanctuary for some extra mass (those poor, persecuted cookies and brethren, seeking asylum)
Here’s my own The Physics of Weight Loss
Matt has just posted on the topic over at Built on Facts:
54! Surely something that difficult would burn a lot more calories, you’d think. And it does. The immense effort you expend in climbing is mostly budgeted to different bodily processes. You have to move extra air in and out of your lungs. You have to circulate blood at a much higher rate. You have to process the complicated chemistry required to keep your muscles moving. All of these things take energy, and by the time the shoe meets the stair most of the energy has already been lost, eventually ending up mostly in the form of heat. Your body can’t afford to overheat and so you begin sweating to carry the excess heat energy away. All that energy had to come from somewhere, and it came from the food you ate. By the time you’re on the observation deck looking over Manhattan you’ll have used up a lot more than 54 calories.
As Matt notes in his posts, this is all about thermodynamics. Your body is basically a heat engine operating somewhere around 25% efficiency, so that 54-Calorie change in potential energy is going to require that you burn about 200 Calories of food.
(related: No Sweat)
More Unstable Equilibrium
I saw rock stacks all over the place when I visited the beaches at Monterey in October. Nothing as advanced as the ones depicted in the link, though.
The Last Bastion of Imperial Units
Foxtrot shows the importance of metric for some football players
It Was a Dark and Stormy Experiment
Mr. Faraday’s (most excellent) experimental researches in electricity (1831)
I started to investigate Faraday’s writings while working on a post about Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel The Coming Race, which quotes Faraday to justify B-L’s fictional source of energy, vril. This led me back through Faraday’s monumental collection of researches on electricity, a collection of over 25 articles published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society under the blanket title, “Experimental researches in electricity.”
Faraday is also appearing at Cocktail Party Physics
I’ve always had a soft spot for Michael Faraday, for any number of reasons, but one of those reasons is that he was a brilliant experimentalist with world-class instincts for investigating the behavior of this strange new phenomenon, and yet he possessed only rudimentary mathematical skills — something that hampered the broad acceptance of his concept of how electromagnetism worked.
Merry Christmas!
It’s just 7:30. In stark contrast to just a few years ago, nobody else is up yet. There was a time when my nieces would be staring at the clock, impatiently waiting for the agreed-upon time when they were allowed to wake everyone else up. No more. They’re teenagers.
And here is a physics-related safety message for the holidays:
Hallmark Recalls Jumbo Snow Globes Due to Fire Hazard
Hazard: When exposed to sunlight, the snow globes can act as a magnifying glass and ignite nearby combustible materials, posing a fire hazard.
Incidents/Injuries: Hallmark has received two reports of the snow globes igniting nearby materials. No injuries have been reported.
Well, duh. Convex surfaces and a larger index of refraction.
Me, Too
Moment of Clarity at Abstruse Goose
