{"id":6735,"date":"2010-10-09T07:09:38","date_gmt":"2010-10-09T12:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=6735"},"modified":"2010-10-09T07:09:38","modified_gmt":"2010-10-09T12:09:38","slug":"if-only-it-were-a-bizzaro-world-headline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/6735","title":{"rendered":"If Only it Were a Bizzaro-World Headline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>But it&#8217;s not.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2010\/10\/small-scale-earthquake\/\">Lab-Sized Earthquakes Challenge Basic Laws of Physics<\/a>.  Really?  No.  Invariably, no.  A more accurate headline would be &#8220;Lab-Sized Earthquakes Advance Understanding of Physics&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A model earthquake on a lab bench shows that a basic assumption of introductory physics doesn\u2019t hold up at small scales. The finding could have a wide variety of implications for materials science and engineering, and could help researchers understand how earthquakes occur and how bad they might be.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And a more accurate lead-in would be rewritten to say <em>a basic assumption of introductory physics <strong>class<\/strong><\/em> \u2026<\/p>\n<p>In reality, friction is a very complicated thing, and there are two common approaches to complicated things in introductory physics:  ignore it, or use a very simple model of it.  Which is why introductory physics problems include a lot of frictionless surfaces (and no drag), and when friction is included, a linear model is used.  This really should be no surprise \u2014 we generally don&#8217;t teach them relativistic kinematics in the intro class, either.  It&#8217;s hard enough to get a grip on the basic tenets of momentum, force and energy without getting into the nitty gritty details.<\/p>\n<p>Other than that, though \u2014 interesting stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>But it&#8217;s not. Lab-Sized Earthquakes Challenge Basic Laws of Physics. Really? No. Invariably, no. A more accurate headline would be &#8220;Lab-Sized Earthquakes Advance Understanding of Physics&#8221; A model earthquake on a lab bench shows that a basic assumption of introductory &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/6735\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}