Recent content by lstellyl

  1. L

    Does a single electron have poles?

    The electron is taken to be a point particle. As a point charge, it has a coulomb potential that emanates radially from it's position... so yes, it will attract any positively charged particle equally from all sides (so long as we are considering positive charges of equal charge) you may...
  2. L

    Books to build physical intuition

    are you an undergraduate? what level of physics have you been through? if you are an undergraduate, i would recommend two sources probably over all else: 1) MIT Open Courseware Video Lectures for Mechanics and Electricity & Magnetism by Professor Walter Lewin...
  3. L

    Confusion with Delta Dirac Function's First Property: Why Does Infinity Equal 1?

    just to add: nicksauce and hallsofivy are indeed correct, and the dirac delta function can often times not be treated the same way as a function (but instead as a distribution). It only makes physical sense when integrated over, and is often used in physics to simplify problems that have the...
  4. L

    Tidying Up Vectors: Correct Representation or Too Mathy for Physics?

    i think you could answer it either way, though I don't think either of those answers is particularly "tidy". why is it you want to use this notation? it seems somewhat superfluous to me for the type of question it seems to be answering. i think the most appropriate answer would depend on...
  5. L

    F(x) = x as a sum of periodic functions?

    this is also a wonderful java applet that shows the effect quite well: http://www.falstad.com/fourier/ i remember when i was first learning about Fourier series... took me a while to be comfortable with the idea of it all
  6. L

    F(x) = x as a sum of periodic functions?

    so I'm going to go ahead and take a guess that your friend was referring to a Fourier series. as arildno has pointed out, this is a sum of an infinite number of periodic functions, not just two. (ie, it would be an infinite sum of sines, each with a different period and amplitude) you can...
  7. L

    How to find the jerk of the acceleration of gravity?

    ok so that step was done using the chain rule. basacally: d/dt f(x) = f'(x)*(dx/dt) I am on my phone on a train right now so I hope that explanation will be sufficient. in our case, f(x)=GM/x^2
  8. L

    How to find the jerk of the acceleration of gravity?

    So you are very close, and the math in your previous post looks correct, but you are making it a bit more complicated than it needs to be. Indeed, in order to solve the differential equation \frac{\mathrm{d}^2x}{\mathrm{d}t^2} = -\frac{GM}{x^2} you will need a bit of help with...
  9. L

    Understanding of the Fermion, Boson difference

    is that true? what about this: http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PRBMDO000072000007075342000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes
  10. L

    How to find the jerk of the acceleration of gravity?

    Precisely. The equation which allows you to do that is Newton's Second Law, ie: F=ma. You will want to treat it as a one dimensional problem (set r=x, a=x''). then you can find an expression (in terms of x,x') for jerk.
  11. L

    Does this situation violate conservation of energy?

    if i understand you correctly, what you are describing is not a physically possible situation... the Earth cannot just disappear... an electric charge cannot just go away... it takes energy to do so (allowing for conservation of energy when the potential energy goes away)
  12. L

    Does this situation violate conservation of energy?

    umm... you can think of the fan as providing a fictitious potential, but what is really going on is the electrical energy of the fan is moving the fan blades... which is then moving the air. the air is pushing the ball and providing a force opposite the momentum of the ball. this is a...
  13. L

    Get the equation catenary using variational method

    so let's think about it this way: if we were to do this: {U^*} = \int_{{x_1}}^{{x_2}} {(\rho gy\sqrt {1 + y{\single-quote^2}} } + \lambda l)dx = \int_{{x_1}}^{{x_2}} {(\rho gy\sqrt {1 + y{single-quote^2}} } + \lambda \int_{{x_1}}^{{x_2}} {\sqrt {1 + y{single-quote^2}} dx} )dx then, all we...
  14. L

    Explaining Time Homogeneous Lagrangian and Hamiltonian Conservation

    well, the typical situation (where your coordinates are somewhat normal (ie, can be related somehow to the cartesian coordinate system in a time independent fashion) then the hamiltonian is the energy of the system. ie, simple harmonic oscillator: L=T-U= 1/2 m x'^2 - 1/2 k x^2 where m is the...
  15. L

    Explaining Time Homogeneous Lagrangian and Hamiltonian Conservation

    if \frac{\partial L}{\partial t}=0 then the hamiltonian is a conserved quantity. So yes. If the lagrangian doesn't explicitly depend on time, H is conserved.
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