Recent content by TestTubeGames

I have to agree with BobG and others above: Slide Rules are the reason I enjoy logs. Cbray, if you haven't checked one out, I encourage it. (I raided my parents stash of them and now have my own collection). It is a triumph of simple & clever over complex. Sure, I'm a child of the computer...

So does the secondary coil have the right impedance, while the primary coil doesn't? I'm not sure I quite understand yet. In my mind, there are two circuits (with antenna in them). LRC circuits, the whole shebang. One of them is configured to have low voltages across the L&C, say, yet high...

I've been trying to hash this problem out with some friends of mine, but we haven't been able to find a satisfactory answer: Tesla coils are (in an extremely basic sense) like a transformer. There are two coils of wire... the first one having a large current and not-so-large voltage. The...

Goodness, how could I have left Feynman out of my list! +1 to him as well from me And I've really enjoyed Cosmos (the TV series) but never read any of Sagan's books. I'll have to check that one out - read of course in the Sagan voice in my head.

I'm sure many of us have books like these. Maybe they are textbooks, maybe pop-sci books, but often something in between. And whatever they are, they're so good that we don't just read them for reference. This evening I once again pulled Kip Thorne's "Black Holes and Time Warps" off the...

Thanks for the clear proof, Tom. That's one thing I've always enjoyed about Quantum Mechanics. In a topic where your intuition can so easily run you astray, the math is surprisingly clear.

Thanks to both of you for clearing my head about this issue. I am familiar with the operators you speak of, and from a QM perspective it seems pretty clear. (You can swap two electrons and take into account what happens to the wave function, but not two distinct particles). I was doubting...

The trouble is that in easy situations, we get used to thinking of tension as the force on the ends of a rope. But that view assumes the tension is the same all the way along the rope (which, as you note, isn't the case here). So the tension will vary as we head up the rope in question. While...

Fermions are well known for NOT being able to exist in the same state, whereas bosons can. Hence why once an S orbital in an atom has two electrons (with opposite spins), that's it. But I've only ever seen this discussed for a single type of particle at a time. For instance, could a muon...

However 'well-known' it may be, I think it bears repeating. There is a big difference between what is measured and what is seen... and I feel like that fact is swept under the rug in most classes. For all the problem set questions on relativity, I can't think of one I did that dealt with how...

Yes, I've got to say, streamlining the math was no easy task. Knowing how to calculate a single, symmetrical solution for a problem set is hard enough. Generalizing it to a simulation was tougher than I even imagined. Then making it run smoothly, phew! Certainly a fun challenge, though. I...

I've been working on a Special Relativity simulation/game, and I'm interested in getting some feedback. Basically, it is a flash game that incorporates time dilation, length contraction, and so on. I'm hoping that it will be a fun way to make these abstract (and confusing) ideas hands-on...