Weird Facts of Physics: 1000s of Tons in a Teaspoon

[zynko]

I was just woundering, what are some of the weirdest facts you heard or read about physics in general?

Weirdest thing i read about was about liquid Helium and how it flows out of its container when lifted but flows back in when set back down. And the other thing is that one teaspoon of matter from a black hole would weigh 1000s of tons on earth, probably because it was compressed in that strong gravitational field.

 

[Math Is Hard]

I heard once that if you took a bottle of water to Mars and poured it out, it would both freeze and boil and the same time!
(don't know if that's 100% true or not, but I found it pretty fascinating).

 

[quasar987]

And the other thing is that one teaspoon of matter from a black hole would weigh 1000s of tons on earth, probably because it was compressed in that strong gravitational field.

Wouldn't that be "neutron star" instead of black hole? Because the black hole is a star infinitely small, you can put an infinity of black holes in a tea spoon. That'd add up to $\infty$ tons on Earth .

I heard once that if you took a bottle of water to Mars and poured it out, it would both freeze and boil and the same time!
(don't know if that's 100% true or not, but I found it pretty fascinating).

If someone could comment on that, that'd be great!

 

[zynko]

Thats bizzare. The only thing i can think of is instead of heat making it boil, a vacuum does it. Maybe as it freezes in the cold temp, the vacuum sucks any gas out of the water (whitch is H and O, and those make up water in the whole).

P.S.

For any teens such as myself out there, that's a good demo if you make a science project concerning Mars. Us a vacuum pump (made with pyrex glass) and place it in a really cold, clear container or somthing. Then pour water in it and quickly put the top on and start pumping out the air. Thanks Math is Hard. (yout going to have to give math is hard his/her credit )

 

[zynko]

wow. $\infty$ black holes in a given space witch has $\infty$ weight. That's more interesting then a teaspoon of neutron star matter.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

One thing that space [lunar] hotel planners have hit upon: On the moon, human powered, winged flight is possible. We could fly like birds in a large, enclosed stadium.

Also, it is possible to run and jump off of at least one of the moons of Mars. You can leap into orbit.

 

[chroot]

Ivan,

You'd have some trouble using winged flight on the moon, which has no atmosphere.

zynko,

While general relativity predicts black holes have a singularity of infinite density inside, the whole story is yet to be concluded. Most likely, whatever theory succeeds general relativity and unifies it with quantum mechanics (string theory, m-theory, loop quantum gravity, etc.) will not predict a singularity. The density of a black hole is certainly very high, but probably not infinite.

- Warren

 

[Ivan Seeking]

"in a large, enclosed stadium."

I checked but I don't seem to have the link. At least one Japanese Hotel chain is looking seriously at the idea of a lunar playground and resort for the extremely wealthy.

 

[mlip]

wow. $\infty$ black holes in a given space witch has $\infty$ weight. That's more interesting then a teaspoon of neutron star matter.

I would think that if you had any black hole matter even in the vicinity of earth, it would suck everything in. If this is at all possible, which I don't think it is.

 

[Nenad]

If a black hole were to weigh an infinity tons, then it would suck in the whole universe in on itself. chroot is right, it is improper to think that infinity is a black holes dencity. The dencity is certanly high, but not infinity.

 

[Nenad]

I would think that if you had any black hole matter even in the vicinity of earth, it would suck everything in. If this is at all possible, which I don't think it is.

it depends on the amount of matter you brought to the earth. If it was a significant chunk on a black hole, it would just form another black hole and suck the Earth and the solar system into it, but if the amount of matter from a black hole were to be brought, and the radius of material did not satisfy the Schwarzschild radius: $$R_s = \frac {2GM}{c^2}$$, then the matter would just act as a dense cellestial body.

 

[Integral]

"in a large, enclosed stadium."

I checked but I don't seem to have the link. At least one Japanese Hotel chain is looking seriously at the idea of a lunar playground and resort for the extremely wealthy.

This is the only reason I can think of for returning to the moon. The possibilities boggle the imagination... Do you suppose that it will ever be know who was the first couple to ingage in low gravity ... , this is a family fourm so I'll let you all fill in the blank.

 

[arildno]

This is the only reason I can think of for returning to the moon. The possibilities boggle the imagination... Do you suppose that it will ever be know who was the first couple to ingage in low gravity ... , this is a family fourm so I'll let you all fill in the blank.

Just for safety reasons, I'd advise them to stick close together..

 

[Ivan Seeking]

There was a husband and wife team that went up on the shuttle. Many winks and nods were reported.


Edit: I must say, about a hundred jokes about the Russians and the space station come to mind, but that wouldn't be nice.

I will only say this, Vodka, song, and 12 months in space.

 

[The Bob]

All the fuel in the world could only sustain the Sun for a few days.
1 cm² of he Sun's surface shines with the birghtness of 232,500 candles.
Saturn would float in water (if there was a large enough bucket).

Don't know how Physics like they are for you but they are fast and at my finger tips.

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[The Bob]

Did some quick searching:

http://www.skygaze.com/content/facts/physics.shtml

and these are just strange:

http://www.naute.com/stories/strange.phtml

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[Metallicbeing]

I find Sonoluminescence kind of strange, but interesting. Ultrasonic vibrations in a liquid at just the right frequency actually makes light. They say that the heat created during cavitation is actually hotter than the surface of the sun.

On another strange note, anyone have comments about the Hutchison Effect?

 

[chroot]

Did some quick searching:

http://www.skygaze.com/content/facts/physics.shtml

I'd be careful with that one, The Bob:

According to the Theory of Relativity, the mass of an object increases with its velocity. In nonscientific terms, this means that things get bigger as they move faster. The process has been demonstrated in laboratories. In several experiments, objects accelerated to 86 percent of the speed of light have doubled in weight. The theory also postulates the rather incomprehensible notion that given enough speed, an object will become as large as the universe itself.

:uhh: Looks like the author should have taken my "Misconceptions of Relativity" quiz.

- Warren

 

[Gonzolo]

I've never seen someone confuse mass, weight and volume so much.

 

[Math Is Hard]

I am totally confused now, but it doesn't matter, because I was totally confused before! :rofl:

 

[Ivan Seeking]

On another strange note, anyone have comments about the Hutchison Effect?

Yes, complete nonsense.
http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Thinktank/8863/HEffect1.html

Outrageous claims + not reproducible + lots of Tesla coils = fraud.

 

[Gokul43201]

A pipe 2 feet in diameter will allow four times more fluid to pass through it than a pipe 1 foot in diameter-the Volume of a pipe varies as the square of its diameter.

How does this qualify as an "Interesting Fact" ? The first statament is quite poorly worded, and by the normal interpretation (that it is referring to flow rates), would be incorrect. The second one is obvious to anyone in high-school, and has nothing to do with Physics/Chemistry.

 

[kurious]

A thing I find interesting is that up to half the water in the ocean might come from comets (Robert Kunzig - "Mapping the Deep").

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Here is an interesting fact that caused me no end of grief: The resonant frequency of the wiring in buildings tends to be about 100 KHZ.

 

[Gokul43201]

Here is an interesting fact that caused me no end of grief: The resonant frequency of the wiring in buildings tends to be about 100 KHZ.

That can't be true ! Are you certain about this ??

 

[zynko]

Is there such thing as a Hutchison Effect? Cause i am planning to build a tesla coil and i want to get this straight. Did that guy exagerate or is there somthing real to it or is the Hutchison Effect totally different from what that essay said?

Your right Gonzolo, that was the only paragraph i have ever read with such missuse of the words mass, volume, and weight. That guy has to be on Dimethyltriptamine or somthing.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

That can't be true ! Are you certain about this ??

I have it on very good authority. I learned this while taking a class on industrial harmonic distortion [in the power lines] that was given by an expert in the field.

Edit: At one time I had designed a PWM circuit with an ~101 KHz switching frequency. I can tell you that my observations are completely consistent with the afore mentioned claim. It seemed that any radiated energy at all produced an inordinate amount of resonance in the surroundings. I later realized that I was doing this with only fraction of the energy radiated, as compared to other switching circuits running at ~20KHz.

EDIT: I assume for the same reasons that cause your surprise, I never suspected or realized the real problem until I took the harmonics class years later. The up side was that I did learn a lot about snubber circuits as a result of the resonance issues. :yuck: Really I didn't have any latitude to change the switching frequency but when I think of all the trouble this caused...I don't know if I should laugh or cry.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Is there such thing as a Hutchison Effect? Cause i am planning to build a tesla coil and i want to get this straight. Did that guy exagerate or is there somthing real to it or is the Hutchison Effect totally different from what that essay said?

It is complete nonsense. No one has ever reproduced his results. Nor can he reproduce them in front of credible witnesses.

 

[Galileo]

What I find mind-boggling and unable to grasp is the extreme smallness of atoms and the extreme vastness of the universe. I work with these concepts and numbers all the time, but it's hard to get a feel for it.
Take a glass of water. It has about $3\times 10^{25}$ molecules. I can hardly grasp the vastness of this number. If this glass of water were mixed throughout all the oceans of the world, then a glass of water, drawn anywhere on earth, would contain many molecules that were contained in the first glass.

 

[The Bob]

I'd be careful with that one, The Bob

It was a quick search.

The Bob (2004 ©)

 

[daveed]

J.J. thompson got a nobel prize for proving the electron a particle, and then his son wins one for proving it a wave
wierd coincidence

 

[what_are_electrons]

Try dropping a round magnet down through a square piece of aluminum tubing. You can watch it slowly, and I do mean slowly, go round and round as it goes down and down. For a two foot length it takes 8-10 seconds to drop from the top to the bottom.

 

[plover]

I heard once that if you took a bottle of water to Mars and poured it out, it would both freeze and boil and the same time!
(don't know if that's 100% true or not, but I found it pretty fascinating).

I'm not sure whether it's precisely true either, but it's very superficially plausible. Boiling temperature depends on pressure and the Martian atmosphere is extremely thin and thus has very low pressure. Freezing temperature also depends on pressure, but, at least in the range between the atmospheric pressures of Earth and Mars, I think it is usually (always?) a very small change compared to boiling temperature. IIRC, temperatures on Mars never reach the 0 C, though I think they do reach -20 C or so (somebody correct me here if I'm way off). One of the Martian polar ice caps is supposed to be mostly dry (CO₂) ice.

Anyway, in order to figure out what would really happen to water on Mars you'd have to know the temperature and pressure, what the equilibrium state of water is under those conditions, and some probably basic stuff about vapor pressure and such (that I haven't thought about recently enough to remember exactly how it works ).

 

[Alkatran]

Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

That just made me laugh, because if you looked at it from the other side it would be rotating counter-clockwise. In fact, come to think of it, are there any planets not rotating in the same direction they go around the sun? (As in, the sun would never set, the north or south of the planet faces the sun)

 

[selfAdjoint]

You laughed too soon. Direction of rotation in the solar system is always stated relative to one side, which can be established by reference to the stars, specifically Polaris. This selected side is called "above".