Recent content by Storm Butler

In a few of my books on Complex variables they show how you can look at a complex function as essentially a mapping from what plane to another. Does anyone know if there would be a way to have mathematica plot how a complex function would transform one plane into the other? Thanks for any...

So traveling around a complete loop on the surface of a sphere wouldn't be a geodesic? What would you notice differently physically if you took this path? Also, someone was saying if you look at Newtonian gravity in flat land (dont consider GR) then you get that the force goes as 1/r. how do...

The problem with walking around would be that you might walk around the circumference of a cap of a circle and not end up going along a great circle.

Note: this is not a H.W. problem. I'm just curious about it. Imagine you are a flatlander living on a spherical planet. If you don't have any suns or any other satellites to work with how would you go about finding out what the radius of the planet is? I don't think i know enough...

although if i then multiply this by rho i get 3/10\piMR^{2}...

as i started to type i response i realized my integrand was essentially r^{2}-x. when i should have been r^{2}-x^{2}. So what i should have is r^{4}-r^{4}sin(\vartheta)^{3}cos\phi^{2} If i integrate this then i get 2/5\pi^{2}R^{5}. which looks better.

Homework Statement Calculate the moments of Inertia I_{1}, I_{2}, I_{3} for a homogenous sphere Homework Equations I_{jk}=\intx^{2}_{l}\delta_{ik}-x_{i}x_{k}dV The Attempt at a Solution For I_{x} i set up the equation using the above equation in cartesian coordinates and then i...

I know that the concept of levers "reducing" the amount of force needed to move things was known before Newton. I would even feel safe in saying people understood this before archimedes. Rather i was wondering how to show this in the context of Newton's Physics (i.e. using his axioms). For...

I think i may have explained my hold up incorrectly. Its not that I don't believe the equations work or that i don't realize that the mathematics of physics is just to model physical behavior. Rather I am confused how some one even thought up these expressions. Obviously there are extra terms...

Hello, The concept of torque has always been confusing to me for a few reasons, but i guess it boils down to two things that really seem to bother me: 1.) We all posses an intuitive sense of the fact that pushing on a lever further away from the fulcrum makes the pushing easier. Most of the...

So here's how I worked it out. After everything above, I remembered that since at t=0 the acceleration is a max so it's derivative (the jerk) is 0. Moving on to the next derivative of motion (the snap?) we find the distance traveled is the integral of the jerk or 1/4!x^4. Which is just what we...

My last post I realize now was completely wrong. I just got excited about seeing the 1/2!x^2 term. however it also shows up if you calculate the distance traveled from the acceleration at time t=0. Perhaps this is in the right track? I'm not sure how to go on from here yet though .

I figure we will have to look at the higher terms of the potential because that way we can better approximate the motion. similar to how adding terms of higher power to a taylor expansion sort of bends the line out to curve more closely to the function in question. The potential is U=1/2kx^2 or...

Ive been thinking that one possible way would be looking at a harmonic oscillator. if we have a k constant of 1 and initial conditions, x(0)=1 and x'(0)=0. then we have a solution of x(t)=cos(t). so at time t=0 we have x=1, so we have the beginning of the cos expansion. i don't know how to go...

I was reading feynman's lectures on physics and i came across the 23-2 in volume two where he is talking about a capacitor at high frequencies. He then uses the equations of E and M to come up with an approximation of the electric field between the two plates as the field oscillates at a high...