Idea Definition and 811 Threads

Hi, I am currently thinking of a topic for my science fair project, and I was thinking about calculating the effect of gravity between two masses. The first mass(most likely lead or some other dense material) will be taped/glued to an bar with minimal mass, such as styrofoam or thin plastic...

I'm a senior in high school, and I plan on going into the field of astrophysics. However, I don't know how to job opportunities are. For as much as I want to be an astrophysicist, I don't know if it's worth it. I need to be able to get a job after college. Does anyone have any advice or...

(I would've put this in the homework section except it didn't follow the template.. :P I'm really sorry) For a Science Fair project I want to make a portable energy source with solar panels. I'm thinking of making a cube of panels with the deep cycle battery within the cube. Then to make it...

I'm very confuse about the idea of applying Newton's law of forces and torques on rolling body. The book shows that you can separate the situation in rolling into pure transition and pure rotation. However, what I don't get is, for the calculation of Newton's 2nd law of forces on pure...

On this webpage http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath241/kmath241.htm" are these words of Maxwell: "The only practicable method of determining directly the relative velocity of the aether with respect to the solar system is to compare the values of the velocity of light deduced from the...

Hi, I am not a math person. I am terrible at math and have made it to college feeling like I have missed out on something great. Not only have I made it to college, but I am what liberal arts students consider "retired from math". I have completed the math credit I need to fulfill my major...

(Let me start by saying this: I am not good at math, nor have I ever been. What I want to do is simply an experiment and nothing more.) First off, I just had this crazy idea to teach myself Calculus out of seemingly nowhere. The question I have is, what tools and resources do I need. And...

Homework Statement please suggest me an idea for doing project in mechanical engineering Homework Equations The Attempt at a Solution

Homework Statement Driving along a crowded freeway, you notice that it takes a time t to go from one mile marker to the next. When you increase your speed by 7.0 mi/h, the time to go one mile decreases by 12 s. What was your original speed? Homework Equations D = VT The Attempt at a...

I need to know this before I truly make the final decision. When I was a child I was fascinated by the concept of immortality and living forever and how time-travel can make it all happen and so i decided set on studying theoretical physics since time-bending is part of it. Now when I look at...

A Standord Solar Research Post about a new Solar Membrane Panel, flexible for a wide variety of uses, (clothing rechargers anyone?), offered that the panel design includes deposition of Carbon atoms extracted from Methane. My concept went to extracting Carbon Atoms from Carbon Dioxide and...

I have been researching DIY gas turbines lately, and I have concluded that I want to make one. :smile: My only issue is that all amateur designs I have seen use turbochargers. I would like to see an axial, multi-stage compressor/turbine design. Obviously this would require one to fabricate the...

I'm a first year PhD ME student and I'm thinking about applying for an internship at a national lab next summer. Are interns typically treated well at labs, as in they do somewhat meaningful work and research? I'm not looking for some kind of REU experience but something that would actually...

I have before theoretized about the idea if matter with a negative mass could theoretically exist, and what it's properties would be, acc. to the standard theories (GR). In fact you could argue for two kinds of models for this hypothetical negative mass matter, namely: model-1: anti-symetric...

Okay, you know how the maximum entropy can only stay the same or increase given time. I am talking about entropy in the sense of heat (Thermodynamics) where its measured as the amount of joules that actually do work. What if energy with maximum energy is converted into matter and then converted...

Hi, I'm trying to design a solution to the problem of finding golf balls in the rough. I've had a few thoughts so far: - Image processing to detect white objects in a predominantly green environment - UV light emitter and detector to take advantage of fluoresence of the whitening coating of...

A very odd question... But never-the-less I need some help w/ my personal QM studies. I'm just a lowly freshman here at UCSB and suddenly discovered an urge to study quantum mechanics. My roommate is a top-notch Physics grad working on his PhD, and he helps me with problem solving; but his...

Hey everyone. I'm getting ready to start college in a few months, and I've started to get a little worried about what I'm going to major in. Right now, I've been thinking of doing a physics/math double major, as they're both complementary and easy to pull off (there's a lot of overlap for degree...

I have observed that the animals and birds have a kind of idea that humans' face (and eyes) is a primary front to observe the world around them. If one has his back toward the bird, then the bird won't feel that uncomfortable. But when you stare at an animal or bird, it becomes shy or afraid and...

A month ago or so, an idea popped into my head. Here it is in a nutshell: If you send a space device or ship in an orbit that takes it to do gravity assists over and over again to increase its velocity to generate lots of kinetic energy. If you do that, how much kinetic energy would be created...

Since 7, I always have a weird idea in mind As light can be in any colors, then why not black Later at 15, I understand that black = absence of (visible) light (photons) but would it be cool if we have a lamp that shines darkness? I once have discussed this idea with my physics teacher...

Homework Statement (a) A thin, taut string tied at both ends and oscillating in its third harmonic has its shape described by the equation y(x,t) = 5.60cm (sin[(0.0340 rad/cm)x]sin[(50.0 rad/s)t]), where the origin is at the left end of the string, the x-axis is along the string and the...

i'm about 1.5-2 years away from graduation and I'm thinking about what i might build for my senior project. i was thinking of a pneumatic vehicle of some sort, maybe a go cart or motorcycle, which uses modified pneumatic wrenches as motors. some of these wrenches seem to make a decent amount...

Hi all Q : Secretariat ran the Kentucky Derby with times for the quarter mile of 25.2 s , 24.0 s , 23.8 s , and 23.0 s . (A) Find his average speed during each quarter-mile segment . (B) Assming that Secretariat's instaneous speed at the finish line was the same as the average...

I just finished my sophomore year majoring in EE at a top 5 school. I want to get a phd involving systems modeling, probably EE signals/controls, maybe others as well. I need help deciding between 4 routes: 1) take my time and stick with EE. Problem is that I only like signals and really hate...

I’d like to be a nuclear engineer. I live in South Carolina and I’ve been accepted into Clemson for chemical engineering and also NC State for nuclear. I hear a lot of people have gotten their bachelors in something else and then get their masters in nuclear. Since I plan on getting a...

This really is just an idea, but I want to hear what you think.

Hello ! I'm just a passionate reader of popular physics books. Often I'm in trouble understanding concepts and ideas. hopefully this time someone here will help me... I'm reading atm "From certainty to uncertainty", the book of David Peat. He mentions in the first chapter about 2 clouds that...

I have a concept for an airfoil that might be capable of providing vertical take-off and hovering (as well as forward or backward flight), but I need feedback to see if this would be feasible from an engineering / aeronautical standpoint. Bernoulli's Principle is classically demonstrated by...

So I got to thinking...it might be better for me to delay graduation by a year..or maybe just a semester. But I need advice on this issue (and others) from a lot of different people, and I figured this is one of the places I should ask. I just finished sophomore year and I feel like I'm not...

When talking about classical probabilities, like whether the ball is in one of two boxes, with 1/2 probability for the ball to be under either box, we see that the probability and the ball are two separate things. The probability is just based on how much you knowledge you have about the ball...

Is it?

I was reading about Spinoza on wiki and wondering what others think. Is the idea of pantheism or whatever it's called, that God-Nature is the same thing, really all that incompatible with the anthropomorphic idea of God as a being? I tend to take Karl Jung's route to understanding God/divinity...

i am working on a project of 450t eot crane project for final year. want detail on hoists and motor used for hoist. how i choose it?

for some reason i can't explain i am horrible with words... so if this is the worst composition of the English language devised by man, please forgive me. ps, be glad i have a spell check >_> late one night i was out on the balcony and something occurred to me. particle accelerators could be...

So through my life i have been through very unusual events... dayshavoo, preminitions, control of dreams (lucid dreams), and other nitches not understood by science yet. i believe iv made a way for EVERYONE to be satisfied with what ever they "BELIEVE". First you have to ask the question that...

Hey guys, just found this site and i am currently in need of help to find a good capstone project. I am currently a senior in high school and this capstone course is 12 weeks long. After high school i want to go to collage for electrical engineering so that is what i want to do with my capstone...

I once ran into a nobel-winning astronomer at a conference and suggested to him putting small internet-controlled telescopes for free (and fully supported) on a the roof of any household that wanted one. The telescopes would be controlled by "The Project" from a central server, and the "owner"...

There are a couple of products on the market which allow you to attach an external desktop gpu to the laptop and then use an external monitor and play games using the the desktop gpu instead of the weaker gpu in the laptop. It's a great idea but it means that you must carry an external...

http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2010/03/an_invitation_to_higher_gauge.html#c032039

I saw the following expt: Two metal plates of zinc, one charged + the other charged - with a pendulum coated in Aluminium foil between the plates. When the plates were too close, sparks arose between the pendulum and the plates. Is this due to the escape of charges. If not, then what are...

What is the basic idea behind lattice theory or computer-based QFT calculations? For example, take a scalar field, and the functional path integral: W[J(x)]=\int [d\phi(x)]e^{i\int \mathcal L \mbox{ }d^4x+i\int J(x)\phi(x)d^4x} W[J] is the starting point for all types of...

When are harmonics obtained? Consider an open pipe. Take a vibrating tuning fork and place it above the pipe. Then what harmonic is obtained for the stationary wave? Is the fundamental or the second or what? I am asking if the harmonic is a matter of probability. Thank You.

Hi I have a nonlinear equation for diffusion of multiphase fluids in porous media, and it is like 1/2(Laplacian(P^2)+d(p)/dy=d(p)/dt I couldn't find any analytical or semianalytical solution for this equation, do you have any idea?

I am just out of high school and ready to go off to college. I want to go to UCSB for theoretical physics or more precisely String Theory but I first would like to know if string theory is a realistic career, if UCSB is the best college to go for this field, and how much one would make starting...

To resolve Gibbs paradox, Gibbs himself came up the idea to treat particles as indistinguishable. Since by then QM hadn't been discovered, how did Gibbs argue that particles indistinguishable? In any classical sense, particles should be distinguishable, if Gibbs did it only to resolve the...

My calculus book says sometimes derivatives can be regarded as the ratio of differentials, and sometimes they can't. Apparently, there's a similar rule for integrals. When can I think of derivatives and integrals as operations with differentials? And when can't I?

Write formation reactions at 1 atmosphere pressure and 25°C for each of the following substnaces: Mercury (I) chloride solid Nitroethane (CH3CH2NO2) liquid I have absolutely no idea how to do this. If anyone can help show or explain to me how to solve this, I'd appreciate it

What causes H20 molecules to rise through evaporation or boiling? My theory is the H20 molecule is separated from other H20 molecules through the introduction of heat or perhaps air flow. Then the electrical charge of the H20 molecule is attracted to the electrical charge of another atom or...

I was intrigued when I read about this and the many success stories that he's had with his patients. Is this a valuable yet underused medical treatment in your opinion? Dr. Charles Grob - Psychedelic Researcher