Infinite MPG

quantumaniac:

Physics Test Win

quantumaniac:

You are the result of 4 billion years of evolutionary success. 

quantumaniac:

Goodsell Observatory, Carleton College MN

quantumaniac:

The Cartoon Laws of Physics

Law I

Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation.

Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per second per second takes over.

Law II

Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter intervenes suddenly.

Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely. Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the stooge’s surcease.

Law III

Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter.

Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the speciality of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole. The threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction.

Law IV

The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken.

Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt to capture it inevitably unsuccessful.

Law V

All principles of gravity are negated by fear.

Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a shock to propel them directly away from the earth’s surface. A spooky noise or an adversary’s signature sound will induce motion upward, usually to the cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of a flagpole. The feet of a character who is running or the wheels of a speeding auto need never touch the ground, especially when in flight.

Law VI

As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once.

This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights, in which a character’s head may be glimpsed emerging from the cloud of altercation at several places simultaneously. This effect is common as well among bodies that are spinning or being throttled.

A wacky character has the option of self-replication only at manic high speeds and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocity required.

Law VII

Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot.

This trompe l’oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but at least it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall’s surface to trick an opponent will be unable to pursue him into this theoretical space.

The painter is flattened against the wall when he attempts to follow into the painting. This is ultimately a problem of art, not of science.

Law VIII

Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent.

Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, or solidify.

Corollary:

A cat will assume the shape of its container.

Law IX

Everything falls faster than an anvil.

Law X

For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance.

This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of watching it happen to a duck instead.

Law Amendment A

A sharp object will always propel a character upward.

When poked (usually in the buttocks) with a sharp object (usually a pin), a character will defy gravity by shooting straight up, with great velocity.

Law Amendment B

The laws of object permanence are nullified for “cool” characters.

Characters who are intended to be “cool” can make previously nonexistent objects appear from behind their backs at will. For instance, the Road Runner can materialize signs to express himself without speaking.

Law Amendment C

Explosive weapons cannot cause fatal injuries.

They merely turn characters temporarily black and smokey.

Law Amendment D

Gravity is transmitted by slow-moving waves of large wavelengths.

Their operation can be wittnessed by observing the behavior of a canine suspended over a large vertical drop. Its feet will begin to fall first, causing its legs to stretch. As the wave reaches its torso, that part will begin to fall, causing the neck to strech. As the head begins to fall, tension is released and the canine will resume its regular proportions until such time as it strikes the ground.

Law Amendment E

Dynamite is spontaneously generated in “C-spaces” (spaces in which cartoon laws hold).

The process is analogous to steady-state theories of the universe which postulated that the tensions involved in maintaining a space would cause the creation of hydrogen from nothing. Dynamite quanta are quite large (stick sized) and unstable (lit). Such quanta are attracted to psychic forces generated by feelings of distress in “cool” characters (see Amendment B, which may be a special case of this law), who are able to use said quanta to their advantage. One may imagine C-spaces where all matter and energy result from primal masses of dynamite exploding. A big bang indeed.

quantumaniac:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Quote

quantumaniac:

Isaac Newton Fun Facts

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was without a doubt one of the most important scientists of all time, if not the most important. Here are some fun facts about ol’ Ike: 

• Newton became a professor of mathematics at only 26.
• Newton practiced Alchemy. 
• Newton was elected as a member of parliment. His membership lasted only a year.
• Newton earned the title of Warden of the Royal Mint.
• Newton oversaw the recoinage of the whole country.
• Newton was knighted because of his political activites.
• He was named after his father who died three months before Isaac was born.
• Isaac was born early. He was so small he could have put him in a quart jug.
• Isaac’s father could hardly write his name.
• Isaac was one of the worst in his class until a bully at school kicked him. Isaac challenged him to a fight even though he was smaller. He won. That wasn’t enough for him, he decided to be better than the bully at school as well.
• Isaac liked to draw, his room was even colored on the ceilings and walls.
• Newton was born on Christmas.

“That wasn’t enough. He decided to be better at school too.”

quantumaniac:

The Hair of Geniuses

Hehe new computer set up ^-^

Windows 7 Professional on the Left, Windows 8 Consumer Preview on the right. Synergy set up between the both :D

I’m still in the view that Windows 8 sucks, but I’m starting to get used to it. Review may be up when I get used to it.

quantumaniac:

Muons

In continuation with these fun little posts about particles, we direct our sights to the muon! It derives its name from the Greek letter mu (μ), which is used to symbolically represent it. The muon is an elementary particle that is really, really similar to the electron - with an equal negative charge to the electron and a spin of ½. It is classified as a lepton, which is a group of particles that is home to the electron, the tau, and neutrinos. As is the case with leptons, the muon cannot be broken down any further - it is fundamental. 

As experiments have shown, the muon is unstable - possessing a mean lifetime of only about 2.2 µs (microseconds). All muons decay into three particles, an electron and two different types of neutrinos. The muon has a corresponding antiparticle as well - the antimuon (also known as the positive muon). Like all antiparticles, the antimuon the same mass and spin as its counterpart, but an opposite charge. 

Muons have a mass of 105.7 MeV/c^2, which is approximately 200 times the mass of an electron. Since the interactions are very similar, a muon can basically be thought of as a much heavier sister of the electron. Due to their mass, muons do not accelerate as sharply in electromagnetic fields and do not emit as much deceleration radiation, which allows them to penetrate far more deeply into matter than electrons. 

P.S: Do you like the picture? Get awesome plush particles from the Particle Zoo! 

quantumaniac:

Gravitons

All of the fundamental forces, such as electromagnetism and the strong / weak nuclear forces, are mediated by particles known as gauge bosons. For example, the electromagnetic force is mediated by a gauge boson known as the photon, and as I posted yesterday, the strong nuclear force is mediated by the gluon. Well, as its name would suggest - the graviton is a hypothetical particle that mediates the force of gravity. 

Although it is still hypothetical, a good deal of properties have been proposed that the graviton must possess. Since the gravitational force has unlimited range, the graviton must be massless - and it must also be known as a spin 2 boson. Gravitons have been suggested because of the wild success of quantum field theory - all of the other fundamental forces are mediated by gauge bosons, so the graviton was created to fit in suit. 

Creating experiments to actually detect individual gravitons would be extremely difficult due to the immensely small cross section for the interactions that gravitons would have with matter. For example, a detector with the mass of the planet Jupiter, operating at 100% efficiency placed in close orbit around a neutron star would only expect to observe one graviton every 10 years. However, experiments are underway to detect gravitational waves, which may be understood as coherent states of many gravitons. 

P.S: Do you like the picture? Get awesome plush particles from the Particle Zoo! 

quantumaniac:

Dark Matter, Antimatter and Doesn’t Matter