Recent content by DrBloke

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_gun" about rail guns says: the U.S. Navy has tested a railgun that accelerates a 3.2 kg (7 pound) projectile to approximately 2.4 kilometres per second (5,400 mph). It also talks about current research to use this technology to launch things into...

Thanks Drakkith.

Thanks AlephZero that helped a lot and saved me a lot of time I might have wasted trying to prove it was.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_triangle#Overall_patterns_and_properties" but that doesn't really answer your question rather than just state it. I think http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/hosted-sites/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibmaths.html#whypascal" does though.

I'm having a discussion about blackbody radiation on one of the other forums. I'm trying to prove that two blackbody emitters combine to act like one blackbody emitter. Unfortunately the algebra is beyond me. What I need to show is the following: I want to show that...

Why can you fire neutrons or alpha particles at the nucleus and see interesting nuclear effects but you can't fire electrons at the nucleus? Or can you? I would guess not, otherwise electrons would collapse into the nucleus in every day life. I've heard that doesn't happen because it would...

Another may of looking at it, but reiterating what the others have said, is as follows: p=mv F=dp/dt (Newton's second law states force equals rate of change of momentum) F=d(mv)/dt =mdv/dt +vdm/dt (equation 1) if the mass is constant then the rate of change of mass, dm/dt=0 so this becomes...

I see that two black bodies acting together would behave like a black body with a temperature between the two, but shouldn't it still behave like a perfect black body emitter at the intermediate temperature? Shouldn't the emission spectrum be the weighted sum of the two individual spectrum? Why...

Indeed, physics says (now, though it hasn't always) that there was a beginning. I think even philosophically a beginning is a necessity: If the universe has been around forever and time is linear, then it would take an infinite amount of time to reach this point, which is not possible, "now"...

Modern steam turbines are quite different from the piston steam engines of James Watt. In modern power stations I believe they work with a thermodynamic efficiency of 80-90%. They do this whilst being relatively easy to maintain and being adaptable to varying amounts of heat energy being...

I completely agree and I hope I'm open minded to new evidence coming my way. I'd be very excited if someone did come along with evidence of something happening before the big bang. Until they do though I've got nothing to believe in that precedes the big bang.

You can ask why and why again, but eventually you have to say "that's just the way it is." You can ask why the big bang happened. It may be the answer is there is no reason for it, that's just the way it is. You might believe that God caused it, but most people who believe in God, if pressed to...

Ozone is located in the lower stratosphere. It absorbs the harmful high frequency UV light. This why the intensity reaching Earth at the low wavelength region is less than expected, although it means the phrase "at top of the atmosphere" is misleading. When ozone absorbs UV it splits into oxygen...

Ok. I think I've got this. For n balls distributed randomly in N bins, the probability of picking a bin at random and finding x balls in it is: C(n-x+N-2, N-2)/C(n+N-1, N-1) which is the same as (n-x+N-2)!(N-1)!n!/[(N-2)!(n-x)!(n+N-1)!] for 50 balls distributed randomly between 20 bins the...

I am part of the way to calculating the numerator but unfortunately here in the uk it's time for bed.