Thanks for the responses, I've decided against switching subject areas as I've found the glut of documentation seems very OTT, for example, 73 pages of documentation for what was little more than a riveted aluminium plate box that ejects a parachute held back by a spring ...
The better part...
Hi, are there any pitfalls of switching subject area like this? I'm doing as much as I can to interact with engineers at the moment (such as student projects within the engineering dept. and generally trying to focus my physics towards what I understand to be engineering related as opposed to...
I tend to check out as many related books from the library as I can. I don't usually read them all in-depth, but a skim/light read over as many sources as possible seems to smooth out any rough patches in the set text(s) you may have to principally work from. It's extra work, but you...
I've known about the basic story of the first nuclear pile since before I can remember, but never found information on what the associated nuclear reaction actually was and was wondering if anyone here knew or could point me in the right direction.
"What math should I study which would at least help me later on in physics?"
I'm not sure there's any math that wouldn't help you, depending on what you want to specialise in (by the sounds of it, theoretical / computational physics). Set theory and other discrete math has been part of my...
Juval, you may want to learn about the subject yourself before you misread a post and lecture someone on neophytic errors they thought they'd made clear they were never going to make. LiPo packs exist, not least within the consumer electronics market, and it is clearly possible for their use to...
Hello,
I'm trying to learn about LiPo battery pack safety and was wondering if anyone could head me in the direction of some good sources of information.
In particular I'm trying to learn enough to safely re-build and extend a laptop's 6-cell (3S2P) pack, but hopefully to extend it to a...
I've been using the value \hbar = 6.58 * 10-16 eV.s
Also, for m I was using 9.11 * 10-31kg
I did wonder if maybe I'd messed up with \hbar vs h, but with the 2π inside the square root rather than outside along with \hbar or h made me question that.
I'll use the constant values you've cited...
I'm not that clued up on this myself, but stationary states appear to be similar to solving for standing waves on a string.
The assumption is made that the wavefunction y(x,t) = Bsin(kx +/- wt) (B arbitrary, k the wave number, w the angular frequency, x position and t time) and the wave is...
Homework Statement
Solve for the allowed energy values E of a finite square quantum well of depth U0 = 25eV, width a = 0.5nm that contains an electron of mass m (I'm presuming that m = 9.11*10^-31kg, the question doesn't indicate a specific value to use).
I'm defining the interior potential to...
It was brought to my attention that career-wise I might find 'instrumentation development' a particularly good choice given my interests. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of time to go into what this entailed at the time and I was wondering what it involves from the point of view of physics...
"Snag with fission plants is that a lot of the decommissioned material will stay 'hot' for geological times."
But what are the real-term health impacts of spent nuclear fuel with / without reprocessing as opposed to current non-nuclear power generation waste?
Nuclear fusion and the "end of energy problems" claim
Hi,
Is it me, or does the following claim seem naive?
"If we can achieve fusion here on earth, then the world's energy problem will be solved."
As I understand it, our energy problems are more to do with greed and waste than...
Could anyone offer some feedback?
I'm reasonably sure I got the gist of it, but I'm not sure how neat a solution it is (i.e. nothing relevant missing, or irrelevancies included). It's a past paper question so I haven't tried to tidy it up.
Homework Statement
Homework Equations...