Recent content by brainpushups

See Post #2 for the link to the entire lecture series. It is on the character of physical law for a lay-audience. So many great clips that its just worth watching all of them.

There is a series of lectures that Feyman gave at Cornell which you may be interested in. The second lecture in the series is specifically about the relationship between math and physics. They are all worth a watch. https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/messenger.html

Not sure if this will confuse things, but perhaps approach the problem using the principle of virtual work? Was that taught as part of the course?

Of course! Now I'm feeling dense...

Wait a minute...for the work done by the buoyant force should I be considering the displacement of the center of buoyancy and not the surface itself? That would take care of the factor of 2.

Thanks. I think I accounted for that in my potential energy approach, though I ignored it in my above example. To double check I calculated the total work again, this time including the area of the vessel. In the limit of a large cross sectional area for the vessel the factor of 2 persists...

For fun I was trying to use energy considerations to determine the depth to which a solid object will sink in a fluid to reach equilibrium. The first approach that I tried was just to consider the change in potential energy of the block and the fluid as the block is lowered some unknown...

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/learn Seemed apropos.

Ah. Thank you for the correction. I was just hastily looking at what I had starred in my library without thinking about what the piece was. Hm. I thought that at least some of Webern's compositions were considered serial. According to wikipedia, most stuff after Op. 16 is. Admittedly...

How about Edgard Varese? All his pieces are probably 'esoteric.' Try Ionization or Hyperprism. Tried Serialism? Pretty esoteric. How about Anton Webern's Op. 5. Maybe something more recent. Sonic Youth? The album SYR 6 is cool. Not sure exactly what you mean by 'specialized.'

By "the values" do you mean the values of the uncertainty? That is up to you. I expect them to be similar, and perhaps the same, but that doesn't have to be the case. For example, when you measure 0.50 meters and try to drop the object from that height did you do something like support the...

This is likely the intention: You need to estimate the uncertainty in height with a reasonable judgement call. How close do you think you were to each precise height you were supposed to drop the object from? I bet you were more careful than 0.1 meter for each height! Use a ruler to help you...

You may find this book a worthwhile read. It is written at the undergraduate level. Historical approaches to solving your exact problem are developed throughout the chapters.

What about installing an automatic waterer (or several)?

I remember doing this a long time ago in school and being frustrated by it. Turned out that we did it correctly but we couldn't see it by looking at it directly - we had to use peripheral vision. You could try that, or try taking a long exposure photograph if possible.