Recent content by silverpig

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    The Science Behind Why Water Freezes When Shaken

    You can find videos on youtube about this. As mgb_phys said, it's "supercooling"
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    How are materials brought to (near) absolute zero?

    There are several methods. Liquid nitrogen gets you sort of cold. Liquid helium gets you down to 4.2K. You can use a dilution refrigerator to get to tens of milli-Kelvin. It works by immersing your sample in a mixture of liquid He3 and He4. You then pump really hard on the vacuum above...
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    Schools Best Physics Graduate Schools in Canada

    I go to UBC and am in the physics/astro department. There are a lot of very bright faculty here. The main focus in physics is probably condensed matter theory, mainly superconductivity with some quantum information thrown in as well. Of course there are researchers in almost every field though...
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    What kind of work does an astrophysicist do?

    Not very many people do astronomy anymore. Historically, astronomy was more charting stars and cataloging magnitudes etc. There's not too much of that going on anymore. Most "astronomers" are really astrophysicists. Astrophysics is basically physics that you can't do on Earth :)
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    What is the concept of concentrated mass?

    Balance a book on your finger. The centre of mass is a point in the book just above your finger. It's the point where the mass of the book seems to be located. Now all binary systems have the bodies orbitting the common centre of mass. In the limit that one body is large (sun) and the other...
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    LAGEOS confirms frame dragging.

    The thing with this is the method used has a huge effect on the sattelites' positions due just to the fact that the Earth isn't a sphere. They're looking for a very small deviation in the sattelites' orbits when they have already been perturbed greatly by other factors. The accuracy of their...
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    Does Dark Matter's Interaction with Gravity Prevent it from Forming Black Holes?

    Because dark matter is weakly interacting with other dark matter. It doesn't act like normal matter. Take two large masses of normal matter, separate them, and let them go. They will gravitate towards one another and hit, eventually forming a large single mass. Take two large masses of...
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    Schools World`s best physics Ph.D university

    From what I can tell so far, schools look good sure... Princeton, CalTech, etc, but your degree will mean much more to you if you get with a good supervisor who is interested in the same things you are. Doing cosmology at Princeton might look good, but if you really want to do micro black holes...
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    Schools Physics Graduate School in Germany?

    I'm also interested in this. I'm Canadian, and will soon have a B.Sc in Astronomy (with a heavy emphasis on physics) from a Canadian university. I'm considering a lot of options, and one of them is Germany/Denmark/Sweden.
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    Calculate Airplane Weight | Help Solving Problem

    Bernoulli's equation may be applicable :)
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    Solve Particle in a Box Questions: Lowest Energy & Probability

    For #1 the energy levels of the box go as 1/L^2 So substitute in L/4 for L and you'll have the energy (16 Eo if I do my math right)
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    Gravity tend to decrease as an object's acceleration

    Nothing will happen. The force of gravity will be constant until you start getting into relativisitic velocities. I'm assuming a universe with nothing in it but an infinite massive plane and your box. The force of gravity will just be constant. You can push the box as fast as you want up to...
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    Graviton Effects in Different Media: Investigating the Variations

    That's a great question and one I'm going to ask my GR prof when I see her this week :) Photons slow down in a medium because of how they interact with the electrons (mostly) in the atoms. The photon group velocity is still c through the medium, but the phase velocity slows down (IIRC)...
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    Programs Physics degree & Astrophysics with Particle Physics degree?

    Most people don't work in the observatory. You get a degree and get a research grant. You then write a proposal to a committee asking for research time on a telescope and if they deem you worthy, you get some time. CERN is basically the same thing. Of course there are techs and engineers at...
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    Admissions Graduate Admission: Will they understand emergency?

    I've talked with a dean at Princeton about admissions into grad school and he said that all they care about for marks is to see that you've taken a rigorous course load and have done well. A few bad grades here and there aren't a big deal. That counts for relatively little though. Almost all of...
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