Recent content by Burningmace

We did this experiment a few years ago, I'm just wondering if there was any feasible way to do it in a school lab. The science equipment in colleges is pretty poor. The highest voltage that we could generate with standard equipment would be about 50V. Even if I had an extremely accurate...

I think you misunderstood. We were meant to do this experiment with school level lab equipment. Furthermore the variable was heat, not humidity.

A battery works with a chemical reaction, performing what is basically the opposite of electrolysis. Salts and metals react to produce ions. The electrons flow freely between each "half cell" of the battery. When there is no circuit, the electrons have nowhere to go and don't pass between the...

There are two solutions to this. 1) The Electronic Solution You can use a SPDT relay (Single Pole, Double Throw or "two-way switch" relay) to short the motor by having the relay switch between the +ve rail and the other contact of the motor. I've attached a schematic of the circuit. 2)...

Aerodynamics is about the flow of air around an object. Imagine you drop 50 golf balls onto a big sheet of paper. Most will hit the paper. If you turn that paper so that the balls fall towards the edge of the paper (instead of the front of it) it is likely that none will hit it. It's all to do...

Back when I was doing A-Level physics we were given a coursework assignment that seemed rather ridiculous, which I've been thinking about recently. We were charged with measuring the electrical resistance of a standard household brick at different temperatures, using only equipment we could find...

Firstly, electrons don't operate with usual Newtonian mechanics. But even if they did, you have to think about how momentum works. Momentum is mass multiplied by velocity (p=mv). If you have an electron moving at 1000m/s, it still only has a mass of about 9.1x10^-31 kg, so its momentum is only...

I sort of understand, but it still makes no sense. What defines these points? As light travels in a vacuum, it can't be atoms.I'm trying to think of it from the photon's point of view. As far as I can see, the difference between an opaque and a translucent material is that an opaque material has...

To get truly empty space there must be no particles at all - no electrons, no neutrons, no photons, no leptons, no quarks, nothing at all. Each particle has energy, therefore it has mass. However, you cannot truly have empty space with no energy. I'm not hugely clued on this, but it is my...

If you put backspin on a ball, you are making the ball's velocity relative to the surface positive and the angular velocity relative to the surface negative. Friction slows both the velocity and angular velocity. When the angular velocity becomes zero due to deceleration from friction, a change...

Hehe. Still though, anyone got an answer for me?

Black grey and white are not *technically* colours. Human perception of the colour black is due to no (or a relatively very low number of) photons reaching the eye from an area of material. White is not technically a colour - it is actually a composition of photons with wavelengths equally...

I don't understand. Refraction doesn't minimise the total time to traverse the material, because that would mean that if I put two pieces of 5x10x50cm plastic with different refractive indices next to each other and shined a laser through it at 20 degrees off the surface, it should always...

A few years ago when I was doing my Physics A-Level, me and a few others took part in a competition in which we had to perform a short play that educated a group of non-scientists about a something to do with physics. We chose refraction and showed how a laser bent in a fish tank at different...