there is a contest to build an electric motor for which we can get some bonus points on the final in my E&M class. they give us a very limited kit and we can only use what comes in the kit which is a couple pieces of thick poster board, 6 feet of insulated wire, a couple paper clips, a couple...
I haven't been able to get any file sharing programs to work with my computers connection. I'm using a school connection - T1 I think. I've tried Limewire, Ares, and WinMX. I got WinMX to connect and search, but nothing would download - they all just said Waiting for network response and then...
Can you elaborate on this?
I haven't yet studied quantum physics, but to my knowledge we don't really know for sure what light actually is, only that sometimes it behaves like particles and sometimes it behaves like waves.
I admit I didn't read the whole thread cause I'm feeling like a lazy ass tonight, but I saw a lot of math, and in physics I like to think about why things occur without using equations. Of course you need them to get exact answers in problems, but its nice to just think about the concept to see...
This may be wrong, but here's how I imagine it:
The sun provides a certain centripital force with its gravity, which changes depending on your distance. If a planet comes along and it is moving with a certain velocity and has a certain mass, you could do the math and figure out the radius of...
I have some crystallized sodium hydroxide drain cleaner that I want to use on my bathroom sink drain, but I just put in a plastic drain and the trap is plastic as well. The clog is past the trap, somewhere deeper. So will the NaOH be alright with the plastic? Not sure exactly what kind of...
The idea popped into my head today of building an extreme telescope (larger than hubble) to orbit an outer planet such as Jupiter etc.. I'm thinking that with it being past the asteroid belt, we would be able to see farther and clearer than with the hubble. Is this an accurate assumption? The...
I took the barlow out and it works pretty good now. Not a perfect image, but it's cloudy tonight so it seems to be working good. Which eyepieces are for higher magnification - long or short focal length?
I decided to dust off my old telescope to see what I could see. I was looking at the moon and messing around, but I could only get a sharp image with the eyepiece removed. Without the eyepiece, I can focus in a good image with my glasses on or off, but with it in it is only a blob of white...
whozum, I see what you're saying now.
James, I understand now. My physics teacher didn't do a great job of clarifying. Also, I misread some of the class notes about it. The first formula I gave is the correct formula for difference in GPE, \Delta U. The second one is for the specific...
whozum, you can't set a = 0 because the this gives you an improper integral. This also implies that the two objects, if allowed to "fall" toward each other, could become infinitely close, which is impossible. To find the GPE of the object at some distance, you have have some reference point...
The gravitational potential energy (U) of an object, from some reference point - such as the surface of the earth, is defined as the amount of work required to move the object from the reference point to its position.
The force of gravity is given by:
F = -\frac{GMm}{r^2}
where r is...
I have a few years of physics experience, and as I was thinking about a few things the other day, something about the concept of torque seemed a little weird to me.
Simple Forces are easy to understand - gravity pulls down on an object, the ground pushes back up with an equal and opposite...