Classical Physics

Perhaps it's simplistic, but.... Why do most objects falling from very high altitides always seem to fall towards Earth at a steep angle? Why not just plop right down from above? This is evident in meteors falling, the doomed space shuttle a decade ago, other objects. Is it the Earth's rotation?

I am considering a DC current I flowing through a conductor. From Ampere's Law, we know this creates a Constant magnetic field circling the conductor. I am trying to reconcile Faraday's Law with the phenomenon described above. I know that Ampere's Law describes the phenomenon, but my reasoning is that it should also not violate Faraday's Law. Using Faraday's Law, to analyse the situation, I came to the conclusion that the magnetic field must change with an for a DC current through the conductor. Could someone please try follow my steps (below) and try show me where I am going wrong. Note there is a mistake in step 3: J = oE not E = oJ, but it does not…

THE SHORTEST DISTANCE BETWEEN TWO POINTS IS A STRAIGHT LINE – OR IS IT? Being men of Science I feel confident that you will be more than pleased to hear of one of my more recent scientific postulations, a postulation that I have submitted to the world's scientific communities. Their response is as yet lacking and I can well imagine that this is due to the fire I have lit under various highbrow Scientific Royal and less ennobled Societies around the world. I daresay that deep mulling and great concern is underway. I thought it only just to lay before you my postulation and allow you to dwell upon it and who knows, should you wish to share this with former and curre…

The quote below is the most succinct description I've found on the net explaining the relationship between spacecraft velocity and performance: "The speed of a rocket is directly affected by 2 factors. The first is mass ratio, which is a ratio the weight of the rocket at lift-off compared to the weight of the rocket at engine shutdown. The second factor is specific impulse, which is the amount of thrust produced from each pound of propellant per second. The higher the mass ratio and the higher the specific impulse, the faster the rocket can go." Mass ratio I understand. Likewise, I can get my head around specific impulse - although I still have to strain it a bit.…

I was having a chat with my friend about classical physics and I got this situation on my mind: imagine that a person are in a car at 200 Km/h and he shoots a gun that throws a bullet with the same speed as the car, the bullet will be flying through the window of the car or will stop where the person are sitting? I know it has something with momentum (I guess).

I have some difficulties to make sense of Entropy. I mean if I inspect a system which is working in changing physical circumstances like increased or decreased temperatur, the system is constantly try to adapt to the new circumstances to maintain equilibrium in the system. The question is why we call the state of equilibrium the maximum entropy (or maximum disorder) when It seems that it is the maximum order in proportion to the physical circumastances we inspect the system in. I mean if I inspect an isolated system as I understood this system will always approach to equilibrium. But why we call this state maximum disorder? In that inspected equilibrium I can predict…

Hey, My interest in Quantum Theory and what it is has recently peeked and I am looking into self teaching myself about it. Of course in order to know about what I am learning I have to know the basics of physics and all that go alongside it. Thing is, I don't know where to start. I am a sophomore in high school so I have yet to actually tap into what I want to learn and as such I ask that you, the people of the forum, supply me with some content to look into which will help me build the basis for learning about Quantum mechanics. Thanks!

Hello, I have been debating a lot of things with a friend of mine recently and one of the things he brought up was about this idea that explosions being contained (by a form of gravity well around the explosion itself molding the explosion, molding it to a certain shape or form, to go into direct detail), and the resulting explosion that is condensed or contained to a smaller size (for example, an explosion on Earth being smaller than the explosion in space due to the less gravitational intake holding the explosion back) is just as destructive as an explosion of equal size, by his words alone. I on the other hand don't see that; since an explosion is always weighed do…

Radio Wave, visible light or even Gamma-ray are just some different wavelength of 'electromagnetic radiation' (right?). So for sample, lets take a 10cm (3.93inch) Concrete wall, Gamma-ray should be able to pass through it because of his small 'size' Visible-light definitively can't pass though it. But why a Radio-wave is able to pass though ? knowing that it's bigger than the visible-light. Thank you in advance for your help.

Simple question to answer I'm sure: As the cold months (hopefully) come to a close, motorcyclists everywhere come out of hibernation to work on their bike, getting ready for riding season. In the meantime, I have been riding my bicycle in order to hone my skills but I noticed something bizarre.... As I countersteer and take the lean to make a proper turn, I have a tendency to lean my body; a normal response for a motorcycle rider. However, I noticed its not necessary. Contemplating why this is, I came up with a couple possible reasons but I'm not sure. - Weight (Bike and person) - Velocity - Gyroscopic Force Anyone wish to shed light on my …

Hey everyone, I'm not a physicist by any stretch but was wondering about this this morning. If an object has a higher density than water, will it sink if there is zero gravity? I'm mostly just curious about the effects of gravity in water.

I believe, as I am lying on my bed being pressed down by gravity , it has to be a true force and not just Space Time Curvature !

I’m having trouble with the conservation of energy analysis of a rising versus a non-rising airfoil. (The non-rising airfoil is held down in place and prevented from rising.) ---- When an airfoil moves horizontally the surrounding fluid moves more quickly over the top of the airfoil and less quickly under the bottom of the airfoil. This means the downward pressure on the top of the airfoil decreases more and the upward pressure on the bottom of the airfoil decreases less. If the (decreased) upward pressure on the bottom of the airfoil becomes greater than the weight of the airfoil plus the (even greater decreased) downward pressure on the top of the airfo…

This weekend I received an email with the header "Unbelievable". During reading I became more and more surprised. Although I have my master degree in Physics I could not find valid arguments against the manuscript, which is published: Link removed by moderator

Greetings. We and science are stuck with the stupid heritage of 1 day = 24 hours; x 60 = 1440 minutes; x 60 = 86400 seconds. Now translated to Cesium vibrations... Has there been ever an attempt to reform the units, to something like 1 day = 100 'ruoh'; x 100 = 10000 'etunim'; x100 = 1000000 'dnoces' ( just to rename units ) 1 day = 1 million 'dnoces' or 1 Mdnoces (megadnoces) instead; 1 dnoces = 1 microday Or anyhow in the decimal system that would make more sense ? If humans ever populate another planet, will the senseless second be carried there or that own planet rotation as base should be considered ? It would be a total science chaos to choose a different …

Why is the inverse square law exponentiated to the power 2 ? Why not 3, 4, 5 etc ? And why is it universal ? Please explain.

Hi all. Before the second was selected as time unit, before frequencies were measured, there were musical instruments that somehow, musicians brains selected what would a correct tuning of a note was, by ear. Is there some fixed brain perception related to a 'correct' note ? Like if there was no modern Hertz reference ? Is the musical reference scale based in exactly 440.000 Hz (for La / A) or somewhere nearby ? Is that an arbitrary choice ? How was that particular tone chosen ? If by 'magic' we could have a recording of 1000 years ago musicians; would it sound harmonically correct today ? For sure it would had to them. Yes, japanese and others have their ow…

Hello Everyone, What are the most important unsolved problems in classical mecahics (mechanics of rigid-bodies, mechanics of deofrmable bodies, fluid mechanics)

Hey guys, I am (again) a bit confused about a topic in photometry and I hope someone can help me out! I am taking measurements under certain angles to the surface normal of an LED and measure the Luminance L(cd/m^2)=(lm/m^2/sr). To obtain the illuminance I have to integrate over the solid angle. I know from the detector that the measurement angle is 0.2 degrees. The luminance does not change over azimuth so I integrated that out right away and I centered the azimuth at x. lets say I took a measurement under an angle to the surface normal of 50 degrees and I measured L=150 cd/m^2 can someone check the attached calculation and comment if that is right? Thank…

Is it possible the Earth Moon system could capture another moon? Plausibility of a Ceres sized body being captured by the Earth moon system and the possibility of the Earth Moon system capturing a small body say 20 kilometers in size. Is it possible to calculate this mathematically? Is it possible but so unlikely the universe couldn't exist long enough kind of possible or reasonable? Would the body, if captured, orbit the Earth or the moon? Could it orbit the moon? I am full of questions tonight I don't know how to answer.

I have read from an article that said Godzilla, as he is depicted, would not exist in real life because of the strains he'd have on his body from being 350 feet tall (150 in the original 1954 Godzilla). Keeping that in mind, I looked into what the tallest dinosaur ever was, and it was Sauroposeidon at 18.5 meters (60.7 feet). The heaviest dinosaur, however, was Argentinosaurus at 77 tonnes (that's less than 17,000 pounds). So what would be the tallest a giant monster could be in order for it to stand at 300 feet tall without collapsing? How would it be able to stay that way in real life?

I just opened an email from Tesla Motors, can t remember how they have my email address whether it was me asking about the Lamborghini Aventador being converted to Electric which they ignored, or me following him on Twitter which I hardly use... anyway I was reading their specs, sucks... 30 minutes "supercharge" What they need is to miniaturize superconductors for instant charge... Imagine spots on highways like patches that cars drive over, the moment the car is directly over the patch, the supercharger is instantly charged, and the person is billed shown on the HUD of their car. like "78% charge replenished -$20.00" or something like that. The idea o…

Hey, I bet that many of you know Torr, or mm/hg. It is defined as 1/760 of the standard atmospheric pressure. Below is an image of the setup to determine the value. My idea was to simply look for a formula to calculate the height for any fluid, not only Hg. It sounds not that hard, and is in fact pretty easy, BUT... My results are somehow not accurate. [latex]P_{ext}= P_{int} \Leftrightarrow P_{ext} = \frac{m \times g}{\pi \times r^2} \Leftrightarrow P_{ext} = \frac{\rho \times h \times \pi \times r^2 \times g}{\pi \times r^2} \Leftrightarrow P_{ext} = \rho \times h \times g \Leftrightarrow h = \frac{P_{ext}}{\rho \times g}[/latex] (please ingore the <br&g…

I tend to get a little confused sometimes when people start talking about c being constant. I thought that c is said to be constant in a vacuum, allowing it in any other states to go slower. So this led me to believe that c had to be a calculated number since it seems to me that actually finding a vacuum where nothing interacts with the photon might be difficult. Yet people constantly talk of photon, partial interaction as if while interacting the photon is in a vacuum state therefore its speed is c. So is c a calculated speed, or do people have a fuzzy way of viewing vacuum? To remove some possible confusion when I say calculated I mean by measuring a…

As we all know refraction splits while light into its component colors. Within a prism light is reduced in speed from its normal velocity to a lower velocity. Does this velocity differ for different color components of white light ? (VIBGYOR). If so, is this evident in the output of different frequencies from a prism (colors in white light) ?