It’s Time to Break Bad Pandemic Learning Habits
[ad_1] I’ve been in academics for more than 20 years as a member of the physics faculty at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. Here, the department is small enough…
How to Use Physics to Tell If That Steph Curry Video Is Real
[ad_1] A few weeks ago, Sports Illustrated tweeted this video of Golden State Warriors point guard Steph Curry that instantly went viral. It shows him taking a shot at the…
The Physics of Scuba Diving
[ad_1] Another unit is the bar, where 1 bar is equal to 14.5 psi. The value of 1 bar is very close to the pressure of air on Earth. The…
The Problem With Spinning Spacecraft
[ad_1] While it would be awesome for people to be able to live in space, a “weightless” environment poses some serious challenges. Humans function best on Earth’s surface, where they…
Could Namor’s Ankle Wings From ‘Black Panther 2’ Really Work?
[ad_1] But you don’t have to be a superhero to experience this kind of flight. If you have a set of carbon-fiber wings and four engines, you can fly like…
The Physics of Smashing a Spacecraft Into an Asteroid
[ad_1] There are a couple of things to notice. First, after the collision DART is moving backwards, because it bounced. Since velocity is a vector, that means that it will…
How Far Would You Have to Tunnel Underground to Lose 20 Pounds?
[ad_1] Now, what if I move outside this sphere? It turns out that the gravitational field due to a spherical distribution produces the same gravitational field as if all the…
The Physics of Going Fast—but Not Too Fast—on a Giant Slide
[ad_1] Really, the only difference is that this is a downward-curving path with the center of this circular curve below the slide instead of above. (Once again, the gray C-shape…
Could Climate Change Alter the Length of the Day?
[ad_1] Let’s consider an example with an imaginary planet. In this solar system, the planet completes one orbit around its sun in 8.6 solar days, instead of 365 days, as…
How Many Peanut Butter Sandwiches Does It Take to Fuel a Hulk?
[ad_1] Superheroes do superhero things: They jump, punch stuff, run fast, and sometimes shoot beams out of their eyes. These activities require energy, just like normal human activities. When you…
What an iPhone Lidar Can Show About the Speed of Light
[ad_1] But since this uses the total time of flight for the ball, it gives the total distance the ball traveled—to the wall and back. If you take that distance…
How to Simulate Walking on the Moon—Without Leaving the Planet
[ad_1] Even if the magnitude of the gravitational force and the buoyancy force were equal, having a different location for the center of mass and buoyancy will mean the object…
How Much Power Does Batman Need for His Ascender Gun?
[ad_1] Everyone has the same comment about Batman: He’s cool because he’s just a normal dude, but he’s also a superhero. It’s true, he doesn’t have superpowers. However, what he…