Recent content by physicsod

Yuck, so this is a basic diff eq question? Darn, well I guess that's expected for question 25 on the exam. I'll try that out, thanks. :)

Well yeah, I understood that bit. Is there a general way to go from the restoring force to a general SHM equation? EDIT: I just thought of setting the gravitational potential energy (mga) equal to the work done by the buoyancy force, for conservation of mechanical energy. Is this correct?

Homework Statement Find the period of small oscillations of a water pogo, which is a stick of mass m in the shape of a box (a rectangular parallelepiped.) The stick has a length L, a width w and a height h and is bobbing up and down in water of density ρ. Assume that the water pogo is...

Thanks for your help (or lack thereof). I'll upload the video onto YouTube once we're done.

Hello everybody! For a physics project, I'm trying to create an electromagnet exposed to varying current, determined by a sensor. This sensor will measure the distance between a magnet under the electromagnet and the electromagnet itself, and then we'll need to convert this distance to the...

Wait okay, I think I got it. So, instead of involving spherical coordinates, I just let the radius of the sphere be R, and the distance to the infinitesimally thin disk be z, and then the radius of the disk, y, would be sqrt(R^2 - z^2), and so you integrate [(1/2)*(rho)*(pi)*(y^4) dz] since...

Still not sure exactly how to relate R to r. Is it like, r is the distance from the origin of the shell, and R is the radius of the infinitesimally small disk? Can anybody tell me where to go from my mistake above?

@6.283...: Well if you integrate both sides of the original equation, you get m = (4/3)*(pi)*(r^3)*(rho), so the volume part is correct I think... @Dick: Oh, so I treat the first r (let's call the second one R) as a constant in the first line for evaluating the integral? So I just bring out "r"...

Hello! I'm trying to derive the formula for the moment of inertia of a solid sphere, and I keep running into a strange solution. I set up the infinitesimally mass of an infinitesimally thin "shell" of the sphere: dm = 4\rho\pir2 dr And then solved for the moment of inertia: I = \intr2dm =...