Posts Tagged ‘numerical’
I have been reflecting on my recent failure to realize that the Giant Water Slide Jump was fake (more analysis here). I think the guys that made this video did a really good job on several levels. First, the motion appears to do two important things:
shows constant acceleration in the vertical direction [...]
Every introductory astronomy text and most intro physics texts talk about tides. The usual explanation is something along the lines of:
The moon exerts a gravitational force on the Earth and all the stuff on the Earth. This force decreases with distance (1/r2). Thus the moon pulls greater on [...]
Maybe you have seen this trick. Basically, you hold by supporting it with two fingers from the bottom. You then move your hand around to keep it balanced while the stick is vertical. It is really not as hard as it looks. Also, there are two things that can make your job easier. Use a longer stick, or add an extra mass at the end of the stick.
Basically, the title says it all. Here is a short tutorial on projectile motion calculations with a spreadsheet.
In a previous post, I talked about numerical calculations. The basic idea is to use the momentum principle and the following “recipe”:
Update the position of the particle Update the momentum of the particle Update the force on the particle
Looks great, right? Well, it mostly is great. [...]
Pre Reqs: Kinematics, Momentum Principle
What are “numerical calculations”? Why are they in the “basics”? I will give you really brief answer and then a more detailed answer. Numerical calculations (also called many other things – like computational physics) takes a problem and breaks into a WHOLE bunch of smaller easier problems. [...]
I can’t remember how I found this, but Scratch is a graphical programming language developed at MIT. My kids love this. In order to make sure they don’t know more than I do, I created my own scratch program. I am sure someone from the scratch community will attack it for some [...]
I like computers, really I do. Computational physics is a good thing. However, there is a small problem. The problem is that there seems to be a large number of people out there that treat numerical methods and simulations as something different than theoretical calculations. You can tell who these people [...]