I know most of you aren't physicists, but it's very important to me that physics education be designed to effectively teach physics to any and all audiences. After all, if you want people to have some inkling as to what you do, you want to be able to come up with a way to explain the necessities without getting bogged down in all the details. When you do this, it prevents the person you talk to from feeling like a moron and also allows you to talk about yourself and what you do to someone who
Saturday: Received final. Four questions pulled from Jackson and Griffiths' textbooks. Finished one problem (the Griffiths one). Sunday: Finished two more problems. I am on fire! Worked on the fourth problem. Way uglier than the other three. Monday: Woke up at noon. Haven't continued working yet. Hungry. This has been a look into the life of a grad student during finals week! Tune in next time where we see whether said student has eaten in the last three days!
So, it's currently my fall break, and I decided the best way to spend that time would be to visit my brother, KopakaKurahk. I arrived Saturday evening and enjoyed a fun day yesterday of meeting people at his grad school, checking out his lab, and enjoying some relaxation (also watching JonTron and MentalFloss and discussing physics and geology). Good times. EDIT: Also, apparently this is my 200th entry! This is a milestone for some reason!
Hello, BZPeople! I just wanted to drop in and let you know that I'm quite alive and well and have had a wonderful holiday season. I thought I'd give you all a quick rundown of my last month or so after I vanished without a trace. Went home and celebrated Christmas with my folks. Got AN AWESOME INSECT COLLECTION from Tekulo; a custom lightsaber, a LEGO coffee mug, and a Knights minifigure set from KK; a portable charger thing from my mom; an Elvis mug/cocoa mix from my aunt; and a gift box from
>> << Normal - Togekiss Fighting - Lucario Water - Milotic Grass - Breloom Fire - Chandelure/Volcarona Electric - Rotom Poison - Haunter Ghost - Shedinja Psychic - Lugia Bug - Galvantula Flying - Zapdos Dragon - Zekrom Rock - Tyranitar Ground - Steelix Ice - Lapras Steel - Magnezone Dark - Zoroark Gen I: 3 Gen II: 3 Gen III: 3 Gen IV: 4 Gen V: 4/5 (if you count both Chandelure and Volcarona) I couldn't decide between Chandelure and Volcarona, because they be beastly.
Today I want to talk about mass. Sometimes you'll hear it defined loosely as "the amount of stuff in an object." There are, however, two separate definitions of mass in classical physics. The first definition comes from Newton's second law. This mass is known as the inertial mass. The larger an object's inertial mass, the more it resists being accelerated by a given force. The second definition of mass also comes from Newton, but it is instead determined by his law of gravitation. T
So much more enjoyable. I'm on Chapter 10 of Conquest (decided to switch it up), and already I feel much more positive. The characters have fun quirks and interactions, the plot is interesting, and I'm invested in finding out what happens next. Glad that this version is my physical copy.
I hope everyone had an enjoyable, reflective Memorial Day today. Since I couldn't come up with a comic, I decided to work on another retro set review. This time, we switch gears back to the Time Cruisers with the 6493 Flying Time Vessel! Presentation From the design of the box to the instruction manual, these are the first things you see before building the set. I just love the backgrounds for Time Cruisers and Time Twisters. They're so trippy and cartoony yet so dark and spooky. Th
Seriously, this game is awesome. I can't wait for it to come out on Wii U/3DS so I can play it with a for reals controller rather than a keyboard. Also I submit my thesis on Monday. That's cool.
Source: Gravity Falls Topic I made a Gravity Falls discussion topic in Completely Off Topic. Feel free to fuel the discussion over there if you're a fan of the awesome Disney show.
So, I'm working on a computer project for my Electrodynamics course. I'm using a computer method called the Relaxation or Finite Difference Method. It basically takes a physical scenario, divides the space of interest into a grid, and assigns voltages for each grid intersection. Then, using a computer language of choice (I'm using FORTRAN, like a boss), I make a program that essentially takes a weighted average of all the points whose voltages aren't fixed until the program doesn't change those
So this weekend two of my friends and I journeyed to the New England city known as Boston. We didn't actually do anything downtown, but we did get to see some history in Concord, such as the Old North Bridge (site of the fabled "shot heard 'round the world") and walked past Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (we didn't have time to walk through it, unfortunately), and went to a birthday party for a friend of a friend. We also saw one of my grad school professors who left my school due to his wife and him ge
So, today was the second day this week where classes have been cancelled for snow/winter weather. Today the cancellation occurred due to power outages and falling frozen tree branches. So, I'm now at home doing work since there's actually power here. So that's been fun. Outside looks especially pretty, though.
Already I'm nearly through my first week of summer research. That's kinda weird. What I've gained from this experience thus far: aligning a laser beam so that it hits a fiber optic cord that's ~1-2 microns in diameter is tedious, painful, and annoying. However, magneto-optical traps and ultracold plasmas are awesome. I am learning a lot about optics and atomic physics despite it only being week one, and I'm sure this lab will be fun. This weekend I hope to work on my Whirling Time Warper re
Blarga, I need to make a comic soon. It's been eons, I swear it has. I need a good idea. I really want one done by the end of the weekend. Perhaps something about finals...
Yeah, after my History and English finals yesterday, school is now officially over! WOOT!!! I can live again! At least until I have my SAT course to take...next week. ><;;
Yeah, summer's gonna be interesting...going to visit my cousins, helping my Science Olympiad team, marching band camp...ah, those are th
A magneto-optical trap. We just got it back up and running again after many days of realigning things (which is quite a pain, but it builds character ). The image is taken from a TV screen since the collection of atoms shown (the bright, white dot in the center) scatters light very dimly in the near-infrared, so our eyes can't see them, but security cameras can. The collection of atoms in the center is just above absolute zero (-273.15°C) by millionths of a degree. I don't remember off hand
