This is what I do for Advanced Physics

Scimotional

ssangervasiadvancedphysics — Thu, 06 May 2010 05:42:58 +0000

1) If our knowledge only leads to more confusion, does knowledge provide any kind of answer? We’re we not satisfied with the tangible, intuitive world?

2) I don’t have emotions when reading anymore. I am not being sarcastic. In the past year I have lost my sense of poetry and cannot avoid rational analysis absent of emotion. As such, I can’t respond emotionally to such a philosophical/scientific passage.

3) I just think there must be a reason we have developed this way. And I don’t mean a “reason” as in “fate” or “meaning” but simply that somehow the progression of human thought has brought us to this point wherein we may have to abandon all that was considered to be the forefront of the human intellect. Perhaps we had to take apart the universe this much so as to simply prove that we cannot use this deconstruction. Perhaps we had to know this so as to have full faith in that which is not pure science.
Or maybe this is just newage speculation from someone who stand how hard science can be.
Meh.

lacking

ssangervasiadvancedphysics — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:46:00 +0000

confidence in concepts

Circular Motion Questions, November 22

ssangervasiadvancedphysics — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:32:14 +0000

6. Well sir, I would respond, if these astronauts in orbit have no weight — by which i assume you mean no gravity is working to pull them eathbound — then why would they maintain an orbit? An orbit implies they are moving in a circular motion, the velocity vector of which would be tangent to this orbit. Gravity is certainly not affecting them enough to overcome the velocity the have tangent to the orbit, but if gravity was completely absent there would be no reason the astronauts wouldn’t just follow the tangential path. So, my dear fellow, while their weight may not tether them to the ground, it is certainly present and actively changing their motion. (Gravity extends infinitely anyway, fool.)

7. If a person were to walk inside of a giant rotating cylinder, the cylinder/floor would push against the person’s feet. Hard to explain with my current knowledge, but because the person would have a tangential velocity roughly equal to that of the circle… wait, no, i’m confused. If i’m walking on the inside of a rotating cylinder, i have the same velocity as the cyl. but only the cylinder has a perpendicular acceleration (i think). If i were to jump, what would return me to the cylinder’s surface/floor? The cylinder is pushing towards the center, opposite my feet, but it can’t actually move towards me, so what happens to keep my pushed away from the center.
Unless i’m on the outside of the cylinder, then when i’m holding on to the cylinder i have both a tangential velocity and a centripetal acceleration. If i become detached from the cylinder, however, wouldn’t i then just follow the tangential vector and fly away? AHH help.

What the heck is Ken talking about?

ssangervasiadvancedphysics — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:00:44 +0000

Well, i believe the special type of acceleration problems you’re referring to is that of problems in which the acceleration is zero. We introduced four “Kinematics Equations of Constant Acceleration” at the beginning of the unit, and this makes sense as a starting place. It also makes sense in terms of the problem we were thinking about in class of the basketball’s position, velocity, and acceleration as it travels along its path of free fall. In that case, the acceleration — though we could not agree — was the constant of gravity (-9.8 m/ss). Then there is the fact that we are just being introduced to differential calculus, and equations that do not become constant after being derived twice are too complicated to be a starting place for us as we are being guided through physics and relating math to the real world.

Amidst the toolkit we developed in class, i believe the most useful so far has been the last step: checking to see if the answer makes sense. Our discrepancies in class were understood after we all agreed what effect acceleration had that made the most sense. We really have to make sure our solutions are in line with the logic of what’s occurring. (The other steps are important too, but this last one presented the greatest challenge.)

A Motional Question

ssangervasiadvancedphysics — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:39:53 +0000

11.

How do the velocities of two balls compare upon impact if one ball is thrown up at v and the other is thrown down at |v|? Well, we can see that the first ball will actually eventually be at |v| itself. We know this because the motion is a quadratic that is symmetric about the maximum height, i.e. the equation is even about this point. This property means that any value of F(t) the value of F(-t) is equivalent. With this equation, the value of the derivative of position is odd, meaning F(t)= -F(-t). Plugging initial velocity, v, into this means that at the point that is equally far away in time from the point of maximum height as the point of max height is from the initial point, ball one will be traveling down starting at the same height and velocity as that with which ball two begins: |v|. Continuing from there, the two balls will have the same final velocity before striking the ground.

What a convoluted explanation… math would be simpler… shucks.

New Model O’ The Atom + Ms. Terry

ssangervasiadvancedphysics — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 02:21:48 +0000

With the new, that is, quantum model of the atom, there is more going on than simply electrons orbiting the nucleus that is made up of solid protons and neutrons.
For starters, the electron is in fact not orbiting, but is contained in a cloud of probability that no one specific path. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle lets us know that we can’t be certain of where the electron is going and where it is simultaneously. Therefore, the we can only say that 90% of the time the electron is within a certain range. The electron is drawn toward this are because of the electromagnetic force, which is not simply magically attractive and repulsive, but relies on a force carrier. Photons are absorbed and emitted from the electron and transport force at the speed of light to the other electron(s) in the atom (if there are any) or to the nucleus.
Meanwhile, in the nucleus there is more to protons and neutrons than just solid balls of matter. These nuclear particles are the result of the combination of three quarks. Up quarks have an electric charge of 2/3 while down quarks have an electric charge of -1/3. The combination of two ups and a down makes a proton that has an electric charge of +1 (remember that the force of this charge is carried by photons). Two downs and an up add up to zero, and a neutron results.
The quarks themselves are held together by the sharing of gluons. The gluons carry the strong force by trading colors with the quarks. Every time a gluon interacts with a quark, they switch color. The overall color of the large particle is always neutral, however, and for this reason the colors are red, blue, and green (plus the anti-charges).
The nucleus itself stays together as a residual effect of the strong force occurring within the the particles that make up the nucleus.

Ms. Terry
The Higgs Boson

The goal of finding the Higgs Boson is tied to the search for an explanation of why there is mass. The unification of the electromagnetic and weak forces, electroweak, provides the necessity of a particle that is neutral and has no spin.
The Higgs boson would be essential in the Higgs field. This field sticks to particles that would have no mass and gives them mass, thus making have mass at all.
The Standard Model does not account for the mass of the Higgs Boson, but there are certain masses that allow the boson to fit into the model.
No experimentation has been able to prove the existence of the Higgs boson, though there is great expectation that CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be able to show this particle (once the thing isn’t broken anymore). The discovery of the particle could show the reason there is mass at all, and if the boson has a counter mass it could alter the standard model.

Whatz i hazz lernd:

ssangervasiadvancedphysics — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:30:17 +0000

I have learned some new subatomic chemistry/quantum mechanics. I don’t think i had ever heard of leptons before, and now i have a limited understanding of what they are (this information is included in the previous post). Under the category of leptons i have learned about the existence of the Muon and Tauon (I still don’t know if it’s called a Tau or a Tauon though). I also now have a somewhat better understanding of the properties of an antiparticle.
Along with this information I now know that beta decay includes the creation and expulsion of an electron and an antineutrino. Before this i had no idea what a neutrino was. Now i still don’t know what a neutrino is but i know how its existence was postulated and how it is involved in beta decay. More information on beta decay that i now know is that a neutron becomes a proton in the process.

What questions do i still have about this information?
What on earth happens to make a neutron somehow become a proton? Does this change also create the beta particles?
How do force carriers work? I already knew that particles were responsible for the interactive forces, but i want to know why.

I Lepton to the physics train

ssangervasiadvancedphysics — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:44:18 +0000

The two problems the Electron Neutrino solved were the problems in spin and conservation of energy. Pauli’s postulation of the release of a second particle meant that there was a double drop in spin, so that the relative odd or evenness of the spin would remain consistent, and that energy in kinetic and mass forms would make up for the previous discrepancy. Fermi later redid the postulation of a “little neutron,” the neutrino. The important change was that Fermi’s neutrino creation took place paired with an electron, both of which were then instantly expelled from the nucleus.
The neutrino(s) have no charge, tiny mass, and only interact weakly. This makes detection only probable with extreme amounts of trials. As for what an electron neutrino is, it seems simply to be a neutral companion to the electron that is created during beta decay.

Distinguishing:
Leptons:
Weak interacting, non quark, half spin, fundamental particles.
Baryons:
Heavier, odd integer half spinning, strongly interacting particles that are made of quarks.
Mesons:
Also made of quarks and strongly interacting, they have whole number spins. (Apparently they have masses b/w that of the proton and that of the electron.)
Quarks:
Building blocks of other particles, quarks always accompany other quarks. Some have positive fractional charges, others have negative fractional charges, the combination of these results in the actual charge of the resulting particle.
Force Carriers:
Considered fundamental (do not break into anything) every part of their existences results in the carrying out of a force. (Need to learn more.)

ssangervasiadvancedphysics — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:42:12 +0000

HW#3

ssangervasiadvancedphysics — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:38:50 +0000

1.
Leptons = Particles with spins of 1/2, either neutrally or negatively charged, and have no known size. Leptons do not interact strongly like quarks.Each each lepton (and its neutrino) has an antiparticle with opposite charge.
Flavor = I don’t understand flavor. It seems that Each of the leptons, electrons muons and taus, has its own flavor that is carried over into their antipartcles and neutrinos, and this is important because flavor cannot change even when particles change during decay. Is flavor just the classification b/w each level of lepton and its neutrino?
Electron = fundamental particle that has a -1 charge. The smallest lepton, cannot decay into anything smaller. An Electron is created, along with an antineutrino, and emitted from a nucleus during beta decay. On the not so quantum scale, electrons are electricity and use the electromagnetic force make chemical bonds.
Antimatter = the particles that are the material opposites to the particles of matter we deal with. The positron, the antiparticle of the electron, was predicted by Dirac’s equation that linked relativity and quantum theory, and later shown (observed) in a cloud chamber. It is theorized that if antimatter combines with matter there is complete annihilation of both that emits pure energy in the form of gamma photons.
Instability/radioactivity = Some atoms are internally imbalanced and unstable and this causes them to break down, decay, into smaller elements (with enough decay the final elements will actually be stable). During this process, at the moment of decay, radiation — particles and/or energy — is emitted, or shot from the nucleus. The three types of radiation are alpha, beta, and gamma (creative!). In alpha decay, the nucleus fires out a helium atom and decreases in mass that way. In beta decay (the crazy one) the nucleus creates and releases an electron (or positron) paired with an anti/neutrino and dispels that immediately. Gamma decay is the release of high energy (high frequency) gamma photons.

2.
The ugly duckling behavior beta decay included the following: electrons do not belong in the nucleus — quantum theory calculates that the lack of probability makes the confinement virtually impossible; the idea that only the electron was carrying energy from the nucleus defied the conservation of energy law; the spin number of the nucleus before and after the decay implied that two particles had been emitted, not just the electron — just the electron would bring the number from odd to even, or vice verse, but nuclei maintain their oddity or eventy through decay.