Tag Archives: dot-physics

Why are we even having this discussion? It's crazy that there are people who not only believe the Earth is flat like a pizza but also try to prove it. It's like trying to prove you shouldn't add pineapple as a topping on your pizza (which you obviously should). Maybe …

It's been crazy cold this week, even down where I live in Louisiana, thanks to an outbreak of a polar vortex. This frigid air is bad for all kinds of things, including football helmets, apparently. But it's actually a great time to demonstrate one of the basic ideas in science: …

Perhaps the most iconic instrument in modern rock is the guitar. It's really just a bunch of strings stretched across a board, which you can strum to make awesome tunes, thanks to the physics of waves and sound. A Wave Pulse on a String Let's start with a demo you …

A batter hits a baseball, NASCAR has a 21-car crash, or maybe Thor punches the Hulk. When one object collides with another, we can describe the interaction with an impact force. But putting a specific number on that force is actually quite difficult.Let’s go over some methods we can use …

I saw this post on Reddit: Would a cockroach survive a fall from the stratosphere? Oh, what a lovely question. But why stop there? The stratosphere only goes up 50 kilometers—what about a cockroach falling from outer space? Space starts at the Kármán line, which is 100 kilometers up (or …

This Halloween, when you grab a candy bar, pay attention to the wrapper. In the United States, a "nutrition facts" label has been required for all packaged foods since 1994, giving the serving size and the amount of sugar, protein, fat, and sodium the food contains. But the most interesting …

The world relies on electromagnetic waves for communications: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 5G, even radio waves. But suppose you want to prevent a device from communicating—or interfering—with the rest of the world. You can't block EM waves, but you can cancel them by surrounding the device with an electrically conducting material. We …

Although Spider-Man started as a comic book character, he has made his way to live-action video several times. I remember seeing him appear on The Electric Company in the 1970s for a short skit; it was cool but a little odd. In the modern era of live-action Spider-Man movies, we …

Most people interpret radiation as a bad thing—but it isn’t always. In fact, radiation is a very normal phenomenon. For now, let’s just say that radiation is when an object produces energy. When a material is radioactive, it emits energy either as particles or electromagnetic waves. The particles are usually …

This summer has been hot—one of the hottest on record—and it's probably just going to keep getting hotter. I feel like we are getting to the point where air-conditioning isn't just something nice to have, it's a necessity. There are several ways to cool things off, but the most common …