Recent content by gibberingmouther

I think part of the answer is clearly that plate armor only absorbs *some* of the energy from a heavy sword swing so it doesn't get permanently deformed very much by the attack. The idea about the collision duration affecting this might have been partly right. The faster bullet doesn't...

Okay, the consensus appears to be that even old wheelock muskets would penetrate late medieval plate armor. Those might have only 1.5 KJ of energy and the ammunition was round and not in any way pointy. Steel armor got thicker and at the same time covered less of the body until it would need...

I was imagining a strong warrior swinging a sword. A pitcher can throw a ball at 50 m/s. I used that number a few times for punches (30 - 40 m/s is probably better assuming a professional fighter). Unlike a ball which will have the same velocity as the hand when it releases the ball, a sword...

Yeah this is for an RPG. So my understanding is that a bullet would penetrate plate armor (only a few mm thick) while a sword swing even with more KE would not even though both the bullet and the sword have their energy focused into a small area. I assume this has to do with the armor having...

Okay, I'll check it out. In the problem I thought of the source of the electric field as a sheet of charge rather than a line/current. Maybe that's why my answer was wrong. A lesson to take from this could be to make the minimal amount of assumptions when given a problem in a science class.

This problem seems pretty simple but I don't understand how the correct answer is 500,000 smaller than what I calculated. You have an electric field that has a magnitude of 10^6 V/m in the positive z direction. I assumed (though it was not stated) that the cause of this field was a sheet of...

I've had a lot of problems that involve a segment of current carrying wire, for example when you have a square loop of wire. I have a formula for "long" wires that is B = μ0 * I/(2 * π * d). Can I use this for shorter wire segments, and if not, what formula can I use?

I had trouble for awhile, but I think I get it now thanks to an electronics site I found and the hints on Pearson. I just need to do some practice problems so I'm less likely to make mistakes when I take the final exam, because solving these circuits sometimes involves a lot of steps and...

ehild, you said that R34 is not in parallel with R1 but R1 is in parallel with R34? Is that what you meant to say? My understanding was that if two resistors are in parallel, then they are in parallel to each other. Did you mean to say R2 is in parallel with R34?

I'm taking a break from music for a few days because I do that sometimes, and it's like a rule for me, and I usually listen to music when doing my physics homework. I'm realizing I have a little more trouble without that boost I get. But it could also be that what I'm trying to do is hard. I...

Thank you jfizzix. So, that works fine for magic fireballs. I didn't know about the blackbody thing - heard of it, but I've never covered thermodynamics in a physics course yet. Which reminds me, as much as I would like to work on my game manual I have a test in E&M tomorrow! I didn't do...

I finally registered the copyright (or started the process) for my game manual and then I published it on my web site. 239 pages then for the first edition and I've added a few since. I'm not trying to advertise here and it's not a commercial thing anyway (there is no link to my website on my...

My game mechanics are complicated. You can PM me if you want to look at my very long PDF file, but basically telekinesis is one of the weaker abilities in this game verse because a lot of things are resistant to it. Plasma it turns out though is also not very effective when you have energy...

Thank you Tghu, jrmichler, and essenmein! This is all potentially useful information, especially the heat radiation formula. I finished the first draft for my game manual. After that I have made some changes and the biggest one is for the magic section. The heat radiation formula could be...

How much radiant energy is released by a regular TNT explosion? Is radiant heat just emitted from the fireball? Once again, this is for my tabletop game. I found a formula that calculates the temperature of gas in the shockwave front from the overpressure. Would that include radiant energy...