QHST Physics: September 2006

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

hey Pythagoras, ever hear of trigonometry?

While we patiently wait for the publication of the Exact height of QHST to complete this week's physics lab, take a few moments to brush up on the simple trigonometry needed to calculate the height given the angle you measured and the distance to the base of the building.

Basically, as your reference table shows you, it boils down to this:

and please, make sure your calculator is giving you degrees and not radians

Monday, September 18, 2006

What's the Vector, Victor?

Kinematics is the science of describing the motion of objects using words, diagrams, numbers, graphs, and equations.

Vector vs. Scalar
As we will learn in class, we deal with the things of kinematics (like Vectors all the time without realizing it.

We started in class this morning with what we will come to know as the difference between distance and displacement.

Moores Law: Foiled again!

In 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented.

The graph of that, seen here, shows an exponential increase in the "clock speed" of processors.

Moore's Law as held true until the last few years, when it seemed the end was in sight and we would reach the limit of how small and how fast we could make microprocessors.

Today's NY Times reported on a recent breakthrough that would put everything back on track, as we get down to processing on the atomic level.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Its about TIME

SO what, really, is time? It's not the units which we use to measure time, or even the arbitrary values we place on time for our selfish earthly needs - hours, days or seconds are all part of a nifty method we came up with to relate it to how long it takes for the earth to revolve about its axis.

It turns out that the definition that physicists are happy with is that time is a dimension. The Fourth dimension, in fact, following length, width, and height. We'll be using it in a lot of formulas, but first we'll be graphing it...

Of course there are other definitions of time...

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Graphs take time, but at least the paper is free

To supplement our classroom activities, here's a couple of links about graphing, including a really helpful section from the "Physics Companion", which provides a plug-in Plug-ins Graphical Analysis (GA) and an interactive graph activity for position and velocity at the Physics Classroom.

For practice and assignments, you can buy graph paper or you can visit a site that lets you print your own as you need it, or even install a free program that lets you print out music manuscript paper, guitar tablature, "polar" paper and more.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Fundamental Units: Who are these people?

The mysterious international conspiracy to get us all onto a single standard for all measurable units (the dreaded System Internationale) is governed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The Fundamental or base units are:
Base Quantity (unit)
Length (meter)
Mass (kilogram)
Time (second)
Electric current (Ampere)
Thermodynamic temperature (Kelvin)
Amount of substance (mole)
Luminous intensity (candela)

The NIST website provides further information about Fundamental Unit symbols, definitions, origins, prefixes, rules of usage (this is an important one for how your work will be evaluated) and derived units (with examples).