Recent content by billslugg

You have gotten the same answers I got. I think you may have it!

Radic, excellent explanation! I see no errors.

The Earth's magnetic field generation system is driven by heat generation in the core and the spinning of the Earth on its axis. There is molten, conductive material trapped between the solid core and the solid crust. As plumes of it rise they experience Coriolis force and move...

The component of viscosity induced head losses due to wall friction is zero. The layer of fluid touching the wall is at zero velocity. There is no wall friction. All losses are caused by shear in the fluid. What wall roughness does is generate eddies in the fluid thus increasing the work needed.

Quartz is a good reflector but not as good as metals. The incident EM wave will move positive charges bonded to the lattice. Since their effective masses are very large, dut to being locked in a lattice, their recoil velocity and distance is really small. It is essentially recoiless. Very...

Yes, a metal has a very large number of unbound electrons which are available for collision with a photon. There are also many bound electrons. Thermal considerations determine the ratios. Any charge will be moved by an EM wave. On non dipole atomic structures, the two charges cancel out and no...

You must look at the molecular or atomic structure of the reflective material. The atom or molecule will have a dipole moment. That is, one end will be slightly more negative and the other end will be slightly more positive. The incident EM wave operates on the dipole by moving it. As it returns...

You must define "destablilize". If you mean "precess" then any amount of force, no matter how small, applied anywhere but in line with the spin axis, will cause the gyroscope to begin precessing.

Common examples of plasma include neon signs, candle flames, spark discharges. A lit cigarette, stood up vertically in a microwave oven, will form large balls of plasma.

For a ring of charge, when up close, the available charge would be producing an electric field in an ever growing series of nested cylinders. The area of the cylinders growing by the equation 2*r*pi.The drop off in field strength would thus be linear. As the ring receeds in the distance, it...

There is a 500,000 volt potential behind that very long arc. The switch you see opening here is "disconnect". It is normally opened only with no power to it. It has no arc quenching devices. In this case, a substation breaker probably failed in the closed position and they were forced to use...

Yes, the velocity of the air will gradually decrease as the pressure in the bottle gradually decreases. Since the interior of the bottle is large and the flow within the bottle is small, the pressure inside the bottle will be the same everywhere. The density in the bottle is actually greater...

The general equation relating pressure to velocity of a gas is P=V^2/2g where pressure is in feet of the fluid under consideration, V is in feet per second and g is 32 feet per second squared. For example, suppose you put 10 psi into the bottle, what would the velocity of the air flow coming out...

Have a look at the water flying out of the suction roll (breast roll) into the downcomer. The direction of travel will be tangent to the breast roll surface at the trailing suction box edge. Once the water passes over the trailing lip of the vacuum box, the water will travel in a straight line...

The hoop stress equation relates the tension in a curved member to the radius of curvature and internal pressure. Pressure = Tension/radius Suppose you have a plastic wall that can withstand an ultimate tension in a one inch wide strip of say 100 pounds. If the large bottle had a diameter of 6...