Recent content by WarpedWatch

The speeding car has a certain amount of kinetic energy = 1/2(mv2). The action of the braking friction needs to "eat up" all that kinetic energy, and it does so by performing work against the car's kinetic energy, so that work is (Frictional Force) x (Distance over which the friction is...

Not anymore. These days they have adapters for that. A little exotic maybe, but these new neuroprosthetics are quite something to wield. :)

Among its many other uses, it looks like you can use the right hand rule for screwing in a light bulb or screwing on the cap to a jug of milk! Who said learning physics was of no practical use?

Chopin, thanks very much for your reply. Knowing that these "chunks" of energy are dependent upon their environment helps clear up some of my confusion. A large part of my confusion stemmed from how the electron shells would "know" where their "steps" would be and how such steps could be...

Perhaps this video of Seth Lloyd from MIT will help shine some light on your question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcXSpXyZVuY&feature=related

Does anyone know why quantum states exist? In other words, is there an explanation for why the universe is built from discrete levels vs. some other system? I've scanned over numerous books on quantum mechanics and the history of quantum mechanics but I can never find a layman's answer to this...

Nick, I'm not sure how to answer your question because I'm learning this, too. But there's a FEA program you can get a free student version of to tinker with. Check out this: http://www.quickfield.com/free_soft.htm

I applaud your imaginative thought experiments. However, you are still confusing the concept of force with the concepts of energy and work. Energy can be converted into work. Work performed on a system can store energy in that system. But a force by itself can not be converted into work or...

Maybe you won't stop it, but your exertion will indeed slow it down. Cars have clutches which often have a fluidic interface or some other kind of interface where energy is getting turned into heat from friction of parts rotating against each other. The force of friction is acting over the...

The wall provides a force to the clock, but that force does not move the clock, so work is not performed. Work = force times the distance the force is exerted. It's important to note the difference between force and work or energy. Force can perform work or generate energy only by moving...

On the microscopic level, the cells in your muscles are moving even when a limb is holding something in static position. Those muscle cells take turns contracting and relaxing, so that each cell can recover its ATP. Therefore on the microscopic level, lots of work is being done (force acting...

Dear geniuses, I'm planning on working with a magnetic circuit that consists of several bars of low carbon steel magnetically "powered" by two NIB permanent magnets. The steel bars are 1 inch square in cross section and so are the two magnets. When completed, the entire circuit forms a...

Greetings, I've been trying to teach myself about magnetic phenomena and I've recently been tinkering with a finite element package called quickfield (from quickfield.com). I made a model of a simple permanent magnet with one of the magnet's poles facing a steel bar. The software has a...

Thanks, Dr Du. I also found out about a book from 1993: Chemical Generation and Reception of Radio-and Microwaves. Interesting!

So could a chemical reaction create a plasma and at the same time somehow oscillate that plasma to produce a radio wave? Aside from being purely hypothetical, do you know of any particular type of chemical reactions that could create such conditions? Thanks! :smile: