Recent content by 97313

Today was our first lesson in our high school's accelerated calculus class. The class is our school's most second most difficult math (behind multivariable calc), and prepares you for the AP BC calc exam, but material not present on the BC test is covered in class. It is really a college level...

So, I understand that a heat pump to move heat from cold to hot requires some sort of energy to be added to the system. What happens to this energy? Is it just added to the output heat? I believe it must be, but I am not sure.

Even though the 'poke' is 'travelling' faster than light, as long as the stick is traveling slower than light, you're okay. If you had a million billion trillion km long stick that you pushed 1mm in 1/100th of a second, nothing would actually be going faster than light. The same idea applies...

It is worth noting that the coulomb model of friction is not a true representation of how things behave. The coefficient of friction between two surfaces can actually change depending on the pressure involved, which can change the interactions between the surface of the materials. The pressure...

For thermodynamic processes, you do get out what you get in, but often times, what you get out is in the form of heat, that cannot be 100% efficiently converted back to energy. It depends on the process, and the temperature.

Here's how I think of it: When work is done, the guy must leave the wall in a different way than he has found it, otherwise he has done nothing. When he leaves, the wall is still exactly the same as when he found it. If you worked at McDonald's and cleaned the same 1 sq foot section of the...

I've got a few things I want to make sure I have right about refrigerators. When the fridge operates, it removes heat from inside, and moves it to the outside. The outside of the fridge is warm. This is one source of heat from the fridge. Unfortunately, this process is not 100% efficient, so...