Recent content by bobthenormal

I have long held the belief, from when I used to do more programming, that one day the more general education classes (I would include most 2nd and 3rd year university courses in physics, math, and engineering) could be taught through a combination of interactive programs (mostly to organize and...

Not to pester, but just to help a bit (I used to tutor English to ESL students), the topic of your post uses "much" incorrectly. Just recalling it off hand (there may be special cases I am not thinking of), it should be attached to a noun not an adjective, as in "much money," "much food," "much...

I would not call you "weird," in a positive or negative sense. By the meaning of "care," you are just like everyone. Everyone has trouble being motivated by things they do not care about. The fact that money does not motivate you only says something about you, and there are many people who have...

I agree with the lesson you learned at MIT, I learned a similar lesson at my school. However, I'm sure you've noticed that many people see those arrogant famous/rich people and they still don't learn that those people are human too. I went to a talk one time and the speaker was asked "How much...

Double major or at least minor and take extra classes, for undergraduate work, and for graduate work go with whatever interests you at the time and you see being sustainable in the future (the second part is the difficult one). You have to make the call on "how safe" to play it based on your...

I agree also. Even if you get the professor to admit fault, he/she may hate you and grade you with bias from then on. It's not okay, and in a perfect system people who cannot admit their faults (or make too many mistakes) should be brought to justice, but this is not a perfect world. This...

Well, it turns out the problem IS more complicated than the usual circuit theory suggests. Luckily, a professor was able to point me in the right direction, and with a little sleuthing I found a great explanation. The reason it doesn't make much sense is that the phasor form assumes a...

I was asking for a more in-depth answer, and this isn't circuits, it's general physics. I don't think it's a "rabbit hole" to ask for the mechanism that results in induction. I KNOW the formula works and that it is an integral solution (because Maxwell's equation contains a flux derivative) but...

Again, I'm not trying to solve the equations. I know the equations. I can give you the "right answer." What is PHYSICALLY happening that causes the phases to be SHIFTED the way they are, is my question. It doesn't line up with what I expect to physically happen.

Heh, yes I'm familiar with Calculus... derive and integrate away if you think it can help to explain it in an intuitive way. (No offense but I'm skeptical, anyone that has jumped to the math to explain it so far has had no intuitive grasp of what it means. But do try, and I hope I'm wrong.)

I don't think it makes much sense to try to say that "space" is conserved. Assuming "space" is distance, and it is measured in meters, the "amount" of space in the universe, one could argue, is a function of how much energy there is in the universe (because of general relativity, more energy =...

I'm not sure if this is correct, but I was reading your question and picturing this reflection, and I think I have an easy way to explain what (I think) would happen... the reflection would actually be really symmetric! Say you have a point source, S, and it emits a spherical wavefront. That...

Hello, I am having some difficulty that I thought some of you might be able to help with. In the LRC circuit models, the phasor method is used to find the instantaneous values of various properties. I've been having a lot of trouble picturing how this theory actually works in reality. I...

Just a minor request/suggestion I had: If possible (and understandably it is often not), I think posters should cite all information to a published source. Even though the information may be well known and ubiquitous in physics textbooks, if each person provides where they personally...

It may be hard to intuitively imagine that the top string AND the bottom string are providing the centripetal force, but you have basically proven it to yourself now. Look at the tension T you found, the total force is 22.6N but the force in the y or vertical direction is only mg, so where is...