Dot Physics

In my previous post on launching a pumpkin (punkin chunkin) I essentially just looked at what happens to the pumpkin after it is launched. How fast would you have to shoot it to go 1 mile? The answer seems to be around 1000 mph and they are currently shooting them around 600 mph.

The [...]

Last night I saw the newest episode of MythBusters. One of the myths they revisited was the exploding water heater. Well, it turns out that I had an analysis of this first explosion, but I didn’t move it over when I switched software. So, here it is.

In case you never saw the [...]

Not really. Here are the details (and some data) for the Millikan Oil Drop Experiment without the oil drop that I talked about previously (originally from The Physics Teacher – lucky you, it was a featured article so it should still be available (pdf)).

The basic idea that Lowell McCann and Earl Blodgett from U [...]

I know I saw this demo somewhere. Maybe it was at an AAPT conference a few years ago. I have always wanted to build this, but never got around to it. Until now. Here is the demo (it is easy, you should make one too)

So, how does this work? I think [...]

Sometimes it is difficult to come up with new labs. Ideally, a lab should show use some of the basic physics principles as well as have something the students can measure. What to do with circular motion? I don’t know how I forgot this, but here is a lab I used to [...]

The last time I looked at this projectile motion lab, I was confused. My different methods for measuring the launch speed of the ball were not even close to being consistent. So, I am bringing out the big guns – video. I made a video of the ball shot both horizontally off [...]

I put together this short presentation on fake videos for a class. What the heck, I will also put it online so that maybe some other people can use it. So, here it is. I have it in many forms. First, a video of me going through the talk. Then [...]

The other myth the MythBusters looked at last week was the phrase “knock your socks off” (along with the dropping and shooting a bullet myth). But before that, let me complain.

Maybe it is just me, but I totally cringe when these guys use the word ‘force’. Force probably isn’t the best term to [...]

If you didn’t catch the latest MythBusters (yeah! new episodes), they did something straight from the physics textbooks. Just about every text has this example of shooting a bullet horizontally and dropping a bullet from the same height. The idea is that they should hit the ground at the same time. No [...]

Many textbooks are pumped up about Newton’s 3 laws of motion. For me, not so much. First, (as many other’s point out) these are really Newton’s ideas about force. Second, the first law is pretty much a special case of the second law. Here are the first two laws (in my [...]