Lschneiderphysics's Blog

lschneiderphysics — Fri, 07 May 2010 13:43:23 +0000

1) Reason, individualism, happiness, rights, and capitalism. I am aware aware of these pillars of western culture, in the sense that I have grown up with them, so that is part of who I am and when I look at something or try to understand something, I look at it with this background.

2) Aristotle, Homer, Thales, Galileo.

3) Newton is #6 on their list of top heroes in western culture.

It says that Newton’s laws, “show the power of human reason,” which I believe is a fundamental part of western culture.

lschneiderphysics — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:37:16 +0000

Nicolaus Copernicus- heliocentrism

Tycho Brahe- tychonic system

Johannes Kepler- laws of planetary motion

lschneiderphysics — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 06:09:25 +0000

1) The physics of superhero abilities 2) I chose this project because I am intersting in finding out how plausible different superheroe’s abilites are and because superheroes are interesting 3) Goal: How possible are different abilities 4) The finished project will be a movie 5) http://www.popsci.com/entertainment-gaming/gallery/2008-01/superhero-physics The Physics of Superheroes Spectacular Second Edition. Copyright (c) 2009 by James Kakalios. Reprinted by arrangement with Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc.

Final project

lschneiderphysics — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 23:46:18 +0000

See Midori’s blog

links:

http://www.popsci.com/entertainment-gaming/gallery/2008-01/superhero-physics

http://www.livescience.com/culture/phsyics-of-figure-skating-100216.html

#4

lschneiderphysics — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 07:39:57 +0000

When you have something rigid revolving around an axis, the rigid objects amount of resistance to change is its angular momentum. For our mousetrap cars, the rigid object experiencing angular momentum would be its wheels. In this case we would want a low amount of angular momentum. If we have a low amount it means that the wheels will have to face less resistance so they can go faster and farther which is what we want. The difference between angular momentum and rotational inertia is that there is no net force acting on an object for angular momentum (it is able to continue on with out a net force, although something had to act on it for it to start moving at first) and there is a net force acting on an object for rotational inertia to occur.

q2 and 4

lschneiderphysics — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:43:17 +0000

#2: Since the small wheel is attached to the large wheel, they will not have the same rotational speed. Rotational speed can be expressed in RPMs and since the smaller wheel is smaller it will have to have multiple full rotations in order to keep up with the larger wheel which will have fewer rotations. Since tangential speed is greater the the farther you get from the axis of the object, the larger wheel will have more tangential speed than the smaller one. This is because it has a larger distance between its rim and axis than the smaller wheel does.

#4: The reading on the speedometer will be lower because of a few factors. Snow tires are made to be able to get more traction than regular tires which means more resistance and friction than regular tires. The car has to work harder with snow tires than it does with regular ones. Since the speedometer reads speed in proportion to rotational speed a larger but still regular (for everyday, not snow) tire should have a very close reading to when the smaller tires are used.

#10

lschneiderphysics — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:26:49 +0000

The Earth is not a closed circuit of energy conservation. It comes very close to being a closed circuit, but still is not. Most of the Earth’s energy is kept in its atmosphere due to the greenhouse gas effect, but a very small amount does leave the atmosphere, making it a nearly complete circuit… but not quite.

#9

lschneiderphysics — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:12:27 +0000

Kinetic energy and momentum

“Kinetic energy and momentum are both properties of motion. But they are different. Momentum, like velocity, is a vector quantity. When two objects move towards each other, their momenta may partially or fully cancel. Their total momentum is less than the momentum of either one alone. But their kinetic energies cannot cancel. Since kinetic energies are always positive (or zero), the total kinetic energy of two moving objects is greater than the kinetic energy of either one alone.” Two objects move toward each other and hit. The momentum will be the same as when they both started, zero, because the two objects that collided were able to cancel each other out. Momentum can be negative (going one way is positive and the other is negative) which is why is it possible fore them to cancel. However, the kinetic energy is almost opposite. Kinetic energy cannot be negative like momentum, so it is not possible for the kinetic energies of the two objects to cancel out and they instead add up. The kinetic energy is in a different form (light, sound, heat) so even though it seems as though it may not be there, it has just changed forms. Momentum and kinetic energy are both properties that are seen in moving objects, but they follow different rules and therefore have different end results.

#8

lschneiderphysics — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:40:36 +0000

elastic collision- kinetic energy is conserved

to solve- use conservation of momentum and kinetic

inelastic- kinetic energy is not conserved

to solve- conservation of momentum

if completely inelastic, then will stick together when collision happens and have the same velocity as when started

to solve- conservation of momentum and velocity (that was used for teh beginning, before collision)

#7

lschneiderphysics — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:48:15 +0000

A weight on a spring is always subject to elastic energy. At its lowest point, the weight has potential energy, while it goes up it has kinetic energy, at its highest point I am unsure if it would have neither or if it would be potential because we know that it will be going down, which is kinetic energy. To get that kinetic energy when the weight is going down, it needs to have potential energy to turn into kinetic, so the weight at the highest point must have potential energy.