physics
You are viewing stuff tagged with physics.
Calvin and Records
You are viewing stuff tagged with physics.
“You’ve got to realize the world is a big place—try not to be so up tight.”
After his frank indictment of my character, I stared blankly at Mr. Mortenson, my high school physics teacher and tennis coach. His classroom had the idiosyncrasies of a long-occupied room: a non-standard office attached to the back wall, lined with 20-year-old physics instruction adjuncts and old tennis rackets. We had just handed in another assignment, on which I was accustomed to acing, but had flubbed a sign or made some minor error. I’m sure I looked crushed by my mistake and was redoubling my efforts and asking questions to get the concept right. I really didn’t like any grade less than 100%.
In the New Yorker article Time Bandits lies the best plain English description of special relativity that I have ever run across (you owe it to yourself to read this carefully — it’s worth it):
Here’s a quick physics idea: compression forces can be modeled as tension forces. And that’s exactly what Gaudí did in order to get the angles of his fantastic arches correct.
Take a close look at what’s going on here — this is a photograph that has been turned upside down.
Common sense and a little physics seem to show that the radio waves from Wi-Fi internet connections (non-ionising as they are) are nothing to be concerned about:
A typical UK resident receives far more radiation from analogue radio broadcasts than they do from Wi-Fi. Radio broadcasts have operated in the UK for almost 85 years, so if we’ve not heard of any long term negative health effects caused by radio waves so far, it’s unlikely that we will do in the future.
Leó Szilárd, an important member of the Manhattan Project, was quite an interesting character. While he was politically active and had a tendency to be extremely blunt with such dealings, those aspects of him are not what I’d like to share. First, from the Wikipedia article (emphasis mine):