Frank's Physics Blog

lenses in my room

2008-05-18T20:54:00.003-11:00

sorry no video this week, youtube isn't cooperating with my computer.

so as i was thinking (panicking) for an idea i came across the shot glasses in my room.
as i pondered the structure of the little things i noticed something peculiar about the bottom of the glass. it forms a ) ( structure thereby making a diverging lens. i looked around my room and took the following pictures. a diverging lens is created when it takes light either from a parallel source and spreads it out or the other way around. in this case it takes light that is spread out and brings it together making it smaller. it takes light from all around the outside of the lens and condenses it to an area that is not as large. it doesn't converge the rays, only condenses.
and so there is my physics for the week.

lenses in my room

2008-05-18T20:51:00.001-11:00

2008-04-27T21:53:00.003-11:00

electrons. tiny bits of matter, or waves? the answer, both. shown in this experiment here we can clearly see how a bit of matter can act like a wave. the video shows a test from firing atoms at a wall (not actually a wall but i don.t know what it is actually called). the particles were fired at a plate that had two thin slits for the particles to go through. we beleive that the particles should have gone through the slits and formed two lines on the wall very similar to the two slits the particles passed through. but, they actually formed a pattern associated with an interference pattern from waves. the brighter spots are where the two crests of the waves met up and hit the wall, while the dark spots are where the crest and trough collided and canceled each other out. at first scientists believed that the particles were hitting each other and making this pattern. so they then tried firing the particles one at a time, the interference pattern still came up. this meant that the particles were suddenly turning into waves and passing through both slits at the same time, and then interfering with itself.
scientists then decided to look and see what was actually happening. the placed a measuring device near the slits to see what actually happens. yet when they did this, the particles behaved like particles again. they formed two lines. this meant that the simple act of observing the particles made them act like particles and not waves.
we have come to know this has the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

shockwave

2008-04-13T21:28:00.003-11:00

nothing says freedom like a really big explosion of old ammo. in this video we can clearly see what happens when something is detonated at a very high velocity. in the first few seconds of the clip we are able to see the shockwave. this shockwave occurs when an object is moving so fast through a medium that the medium does not have time to react, so when it finally does react it is almost instantaneous. we see the air almost instantly react to the massive amounts of heat and pressure that built up in the explosion. the second video is a good example of waves in the air. the explosion sets out a pulse in all directions creating lateral waves causing the air to compress and decompress very rapidly. this is clearly shown in the dirt on the ground as the air moves past it.

aaaand were back

2008-03-17T20:47:00.004-11:00

brief technical difficulties have been sorted out

anyways,

its kinda cute when people try to defy simple laws of nature. like Steorn and his "orbo" machine. he claims that it can create 30% more energy than it takes in. in theory it sounds like a good idea, but then again so does riding a 50 foot wave. so in theory we could hook two of these machines up together, one acting as a motor and the other acting as a generator (because we know that motors and generators are the same thing), and create an infinite amount of energy. we would basically have a machine that would be able to supply power to a bomb roughly the size of the big bang. so here we are in our world of infinitely created energy when a little thing called the law of thermodynamics has to come in and just ruin the party. we know that energy can neither be created or destroyed, just change forms. so it is physically impossible for this machine to "create"energy. in fact it is impossible for the machine to be 100% efficient when you factor in the slight wind resistance, small amounts of friction, sound energy lost, heat energy lost, earth's magnetic field acting upon the metal, ect. all these small things add up to energy lost on the machine making it impossible for it to get over 100% efficiency. well damn, i thought this crack-pot idea actually had a chance at succeeding.

i love how he even says that it is impossible.

because i was sick this weekend...

2008-03-10T20:43:00.003-11:00

i was basically vomiting most of my stomach contents into that once-was-shiny-porcelain bowl of mine so i didnt really have time/ enough energy to make a blogpost. but it seems to have subsided now, so please forgive the tardiness of this post. now on to the "phun".

this neat little app allows us to play with physics like some kind of sick god bent on playing with colorful blocks and then turning them into water. yes, at the click of a button we can change the friction, mass, density, gravitational force, ect, and just overall change physics to better understand how it works. this app was originally designed to just kill time but i think that it has great potential. we could use a setup where we have spinning bats to hit a ball and we find the velocity of the object. or find out how much friction it takes for that box to start sliding downhill. it is a perfect digital world with no air resistance, perfect repeatable results, and im pretty sure that it cant screw up the lab computers more than they already are. not to mention that this program works well on my computer when i have trouble trying to run the java apps on the online text.
just consider it.

truck go boom

2008-02-24T21:19:00.003-11:00

cement truck+a few hundred pounds of dynamite and c4= greatest episode of mythbusters ever. so lets start off with the basics first. the massive potential energy is set off by the added energy of the detonator which is basically just two metal poles stuck into the c4. a charge is run through the poles and travels through the c4 because the c4 acts as a bit of a resistor. sparks fly and just like the pickle in class the c4 ignites and sets off a chemical reaction that produces a lot of heat, light, and sound energy. the truck then tries to hold itself together but the force of the explosion is too much for it to handle and the truck just starts to move with the explosion. all the pieces of debris are thrown in to the air and act like projectiles landing far from the point of origin because of the massive Force(X) and Force(Y) vectors caused by the explosion.

great balls of lightning!

2008-02-10T21:20:00.000-11:00

we all know that lightning is when there is no longer an equilibrium with the charge in the ground and the charge in the clouds. and it is this imbalance that causes the charged particles to jump from the cloud to the ground ( or ground to cloud). but what happens when the charged particles just stagnate in mid air? this video has a very good example of a weather phenomenon called ball lightning. there are several theories about what is happening here. some believe that there are thousands of tiny nano-particles in the air acting as sort of a battery. and when enough of these come together they discharge and create the ball lightning. others believe that it is due to irregularities in air pressure and dryness that creates small pockets of trapped charged particles that discharge in midair rather than connecting with the ground-cloud. it almost reminds me of that weird staticy noise we heard when landon's finger got close to sammy and we heard a sizzling noise. i think that it is that same effect just in a more concentrated area and with enough charge that it is visible to the eye.

i also wanted to throw this in. just some classic Bill Nye with a nice tribute to The Vapors at the end.

2008-02-03T20:20:00.000-11:00

ok this one is pretty cool. the tesla coil is supercharging its metal sphere and making it very very negative. so negative that the air around it seems almost positive and the shocks jump out from the metal sphere. ok that was the charge part of this thing. now here is the cool stuff. each shock is played many times a second to get the desired sound from the coil. which means that it could be fired a few hundred times a second for a very high pitched noise. this is what plays the song. the electrons jumping off the metal heat up the air creating a mini thunder bolt. only this thunder bolt is short and in a frequency that we can hear easily. i would go into more detail about this but we havent covered sound yet and i dont really know what im talking about.
finally is the coolest part, those little neon lights at the bottom of the screen. they light up when ever the coil is firing due to the electrons just flying through the air. they enter the light and turn the light on. i thought that was pretty damn cool.
there is another video (not posted) that has almost the same thing only on a much smaller scale and you can better see the neon light effect.

2007-12-09T21:48:00.000-11:00

ok this one is pretty cool. we all know that air travels in waves, but because they are waves we have a pretty hard time actually seeing said waves. the Rubens Tube is a way to easily visualize these waves... WITH SCIENCE.
what is happening is, when a note is played on the speaker, the sount travels through the tube in its usual wave pattern. the wave contracts in some parts and expands in others thus creating the alternating heights of the flames.
the wave compresses the propane in some parts of the tube while expands in others, where the gas is compressed we see a smaller flame, where it is expanding, we see a higher flame.
this beats the crap out of the music visualizer on iTunes

btw, you might want to turn down your volume for this one

excuse me god... i'd like to report a bug in your system

2007-12-02T22:32:00.000-11:00

how the hell is this possible? it is either the most amazing form of balance i have ever seen or pure shenanigans.
the two ends of the fork and spoon must provide enough torque to cancel each other out. the stick is only there for the balance point. it is amazing that all that weight can balance on just a few cm of wood.
so either the spoon and fork each provide enough torque to cancel out eachother and keep the whole system balanced, or the burning stick created a super sticky resin that has such a high Coeff of friction that it is able to cancel out the outward and downward forces of the fork and spoon. either way, the system is at complete equilibrium.

2007-11-12T23:00:00.001-11:00

the below post is my post for the week
i just thought this was funny

2007-11-12T22:49:00.000-11:00

chain reactions. the cure for the really really bored man. as we can see in this video the chain reactions are all set off by an initial push which gives the whole reaction enough energy to continue. the moving parts must have enough energy to activate the next portion, which must have enough energy to activate the next part and so on. the amount of energy changes due to most of the objects falling or rolling down hillls. momentum is not constant in all cases because friction has a lot to do with some of the reactions. the friction takes some momentum out of the reaction.

oops

2007-10-21T23:31:00.000-11:00

looking at the asignment sheet i see that i was supposed to do a self/ course evaluation.
well i think i am doing good, i understand all the concepts as shown by my test grades (although not nessisarily by my homework grade). i feel that i am comfortable with what we are doing and the pace we are moving at. some of the homework can be frustrating when i cant get it right away, but life goes on and eventually i get the problem and it helps me in the end.

i like the course. it is fun, and keeps me interested with all the fun labs that we do. these journals are getting to be a pain. especially when i sit here, late at night, trying to think of something to use that involves physics. but they arent all that bad. some of the other people's journals can be kinda funny.

so thats my journal/ eval
and here is a pic for you

2007-10-21T22:54:00.000-11:00

i was pretty excited this week. a new game that i have been wanting for a while has finally come out. it is called "portal" and the basic gist of the game is that you have this gun that can shoot portals which you use to solve a series of puzzles. the interesting thing is that whatever you do going into the portal is exactly what you are doing when you come out of the portal. for example, if you shoot a portal on the ground and another some where else, then jump into the portal, you will come flying out the other portal with the same speed and velocity as you did jumping into it. your velocity remains constant but the effects of gravity change on you as you enter and leave the portal. one moment gravity is pulling you down and the next it is pulling you from a different angle. watch the video to see what i mean.

see what i mean? isnt it cool?
anyways, when jumping into the portal from an elevated height your acceleration is (or should be) around 9.8 m/s2, which is your speed when exiting the portal. terminal velocity can be reached when two portals are placed one over another then falling in an infinite loop of portals at which point air resistance will slow you down to a speed slower than 9.8 m/s2.

i could go into the quantum physics involved with this whole portal thing, but im pretty sure my head would explode from over thinking.

so i was watching some TV...

2007-10-15T20:08:00.000-11:00

and i was flipping through the channels and i happened to stumble upon mythbusters. which is good because they usually are doing something physics based in their busting of myths. today i was extra lucky, they were doing baseball myths. one myth in particular was the myths of balls moving in different directions with the different types of throws. for instance a fastball has the straightest path while a curve ball takes a sudden dip at the end of its path. this was due to the different amount of force put on the ball in mid flight. in a fast ball the ball is spinning away from the plate (or towards the pitcher) causing low pressure to build up on top of the ball and higher pressure to build up underneath the ball. this gives the ball more lift which also gives the ball a straighter flight path. this is due to the added normal force that is now acting on the ball counter-acting gravity. however they were able to debunk the myth of a "rising fastball" because it is not physically possible for a pitcher to throw a ball with enough force to have it spin hard enough to create enough low pressure to cause the ball to actually rise. it is merely an optical illusion.

a curve ball is slightly different, the ball spins in the opposite direction of the fast ball causing high pressure to build on top forcing the ball downwards adding to the force of gravity and causing the ball to drop quicker.

and here i thought they were just throwing a ball.

i dont have a video from the show (youtube failed me) so a ms paint and random picture will have to suffice

2007-09-30T22:34:00.000-11:00

edit: got the picture to work here it is

so i'm pretty easily distracted by shiny things. such is the case with this weeks blog. so there i was innocently doing homework when i heard the crinks and cracks coming from the corner of my room which houses my used space blanket (i don't know why i haven't gotten rid of it yet). anyways, the light from my ceiling lamp made the light dance across my walls. the light from the lamp was reflected off of the surface of my space blanket and contorted into different shapes and patterns. i experimented a bit with the shape of the blanket to make it concave and focus the light to a single point, and make it convex so that the light is spread throughout my whole room. the light photons bounce off the smooth surface of the blanket and are shot off at an angle to form the many different patterns and shapes that now fill my wall

2007-09-23T20:08:00.000-11:00

one thing i love about having not enough free time is the fact that i have to literally run everywhere. which is probably the reason i do cross country and track, however these guys must really be in a hurry. when i'm late for a class i usually just take the stairs, these guys jump out of a window. the amazing examples of projectile motion exhibited here are.... well, cool.
when jumping out of a window or off the top of a building the x velocity they have at the moment of jumping is the same throughout their flight but the y velocity is what is affected by gravity. in most of these clips they are merely falling off of what ever they jump from, but in a few we can see them move vertically by having a velocity great enough to momentarily escape the -9.8 m/s2 and fly upwards long enough for the force of gravity to not make them move in a negative direction.
there are also many good examples of momentum and rotational force throughout these videos but i do not know enough about that to properly explain them.

funny thing happened to me today

2007-09-16T21:01:00.000-11:00

so i was playing some world of warcraft last night and i noticed that when i jumped off a ledge or cliff, i would fall at a steady pace. i thought "well this is weird i should be accelerating in stead of falling at a constant velocity". well actually i wasn't thinking that, i was thinking about how i was going to get away from the guy chasing me. then it dawned on me, i would cast the spell that allows me to fall slower when i jump off a cliff (it is called "slowfall" incase you wanted to know). so i would run off the cliff with the guy chasing me, cast the spell, and watch as i decend at a much slower velocity than the man who was following me. also, as an interesting side note, because i was falling at a slower rate i was able to cover more ground in the x direction than had i jumped normally. my decreaced rate allowed me to continue moving forward at my Vo velocity from when i had initally jumped.

who says video games aren't educational?

hooray physics

2007-09-12T22:06:00.000-11:00

yeah, i am really looking forward to this year. i was not really a fan of chem for reasons known to me and everyone else who had the same teacher for me. i liked biology, but i think that physics will have more meaning to what i want to do in my life. since i want to become a aerospace engineer, or just an engineer in general, physics will probably be the most important class i could take second to calc. but i am looking forward to this year because of all the hands on labs. i didnt like chem because i could never really get a grasp on what was happening, but in physics i can really apply everything to my life. pic is related because physics and cyborg pirate ninja jesus are both completely awesome.

sept 9 2007

2007-09-09T20:58:00.000-11:00

so i was watching some youtube and i stubled upon this little gem of the internet proving two things. 1, you neck is enough of a conductor to allow the flow of electricity from one end of a circuit to another; and 2, people are really really stupid. in the video a man is electrocuted from a dog collar intended to keep dogs in the yard by emitting a radio signal that will trigger the shock if the dog goes beyond a certain point. well, the man passes that line and receives a healthy dose of e- from those two nodes sticking into his neck. his skin is used as a connector between the two nodes to complete the circuit. however, not all of the electricity flows to the node, most of the electricity stimulates the muscles in his neck causing what is commonly known as pain. he twitches and writhes on the grown as his arms flail in an arching motion. at the moment of shock he accelerates his body backwards away from pain and his body falls at the acceleration of gravity assuming there is no wind resistance and his body is not fighting gravity on the way down.

so that is my journal this week.

sept 2, 2007

2007-09-03T19:10:00.001-11:00

as i was thinking (read: scrambling) for an idea for my physics journal i decided to toss my lighter around for a bit. up and down, up and down it went until i finally dropped it on my foot. considering the lighter wasn't very heavy it didn't cause much pain. it did, however, give me an excellent idea for my journal.
my lighter was making a very nice parabolic shape as it was being tossed up and down and i noticed how its velocity and acceleration changed each time i threw it. i tried to then make the speeds about the same when i threw the object up and down. i also noticed the increase in acceleration and velocity as i increased the height at which i threw my lighter. all of these reminded me of the kinematics we discussed in class just a few days earlier. i would have tried to find the speed at which the lighter was moving by taking the total distance covered by the lighter on its way down from my ceiling to the floor and then dividing by the amount of time it took to reach my floor, but then i realized that it was the weekend and i really just did not want to do that right now.

its up and here it is

2007-08-26T19:02:00.000-11:00

here is the first post on the physics blog
expect more