Did I detect cosmic rays in the Stratosphere with my camera? |
- Did I detect cosmic rays in the Stratosphere with my camera?
- Does electricity need a high voltage or a high current to continue through a gap in a wire?
- Is there a word (similar to "resolution" in microscopy) that defines the minimum distance between two different colored points that must be attained before the points appear as a single "mixed" color?
- What causes the blur that we see over hot surfaces?
- What's the relationship between a topological dual and an algebraic dual?
- Why do photons behave differently in different frames of reference than classical objects?
- Why were the alpha particles used in testing the atomic structure as proposed by the plum pudding model expected to pass through the sphere of positive charge instead of deflecting off of it due to the electrostatic forces?
- [Physics] How does an "optical tractor beam" work? Specifically, does the current working optical tractor beam only work on transparent/refractive matter?
- Why does nitrogen have valence 5?
- What is an atom's "orientation"?
- Why do "mushroom clouds" form from nuclear explosions? [physics]
- How does an Electron spin if it is 0-dimensional?
- How has the acceptace of quantum mechanics changed in the educational community in recent decades?
- How long does typical Tidal heating last?
- Why does high electrical conductivity generally lead to high thermal conductivity?
- If a acid is a molecule or ion capable of donating a proton, could a atom which decays by proton emission be called a acid?
- Would Newtonian Black Holes be black?
- Relativity/Lorentz contraction/Train-Tunnel-Analogy: What does outside observer see when the train passenger triggers a cutting of the train at both ends?
- Was water to blame for the Malta azure window collapse?
| Did I detect cosmic rays in the Stratosphere with my camera? Posted: 09 Mar 2017 01:56 AM PST Hi guys, last weekend I launched a weather balloon into stratosphere at night. I used the sony a7sII to capture images of the earth and stars. When viewing the footage I noticed that with higher altitude more light flashes hit the camera sensor. Could this be cosmic rays? [link] [comments]  |
| Does electricity need a high voltage or a high current to continue through a gap in a wire? Posted: 09 Mar 2017 04:08 AM PST Say with a 0.5 mm gap would it be possible for me to get electricity consistently jumping across without dealing with a deadly current? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Mar 2017 02:59 PM PST Maybe I am misunderstanding how color mixing works? As a bonus side question: I am somewhat familiar with why objects are different colors, (we see light reflected from objects and don't see light that is absorbed) but this confuses me. For example, Cu2+ absorbs light in the 600nm region of the visible spectrum and the solution appears blue/cyan. But, intuitively, if you take all the other colors not represented by this 600nm region (the colors not absorbed by Cu2+) and mix them up, it wouldn't be blue, so I don't understand how this works. Sorry for the long post, all answers appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| What causes the blur that we see over hot surfaces? Posted: 09 Mar 2017 06:43 AM PST I was wondering what that distortion or blur is that we see above things that get really hot, but have no open flame. [link] [comments]  |
| What's the relationship between a topological dual and an algebraic dual? Posted: 08 Mar 2017 08:19 PM PST I'm interested in infinite dimensional vector spaces as I am trying to learn formal Quantum Mechanics. As I understand it, the Hilbert Space associated with a degree of freedom corresponding to movement along a certain axis is L2 (R), that is the equivalence classes of lebesgue-integrable functions on the real line whose integral is the same. I understand that the use of continuous (or even differentiable) functions to describe states is possible without anything going wrong as the subspace of infinitely differentiable functions of compact support (C) is dense in L2 (R). So I guess that L2 is the completion of C. My questions are: I know that in infinite dimensional vector spaces it is important to distinguish between the algebraic dual (the set of all linear functionals) and the topological dual (consisting only of the continuous ones). Also, L2 is similar to its topological dual via the Reiz representation theorem (I write similar because I think that the relationship between the spaces provided by such theorem is an antilinear transformation and I do not know if there is a regular isomorphism between both spaces). How is the topological dual embedded in the algebraic one (is it in any way in particular)? The question arose because even if there are no free particle eigenstates in L2 (that is, for those who ignore QM, eigenstates of the laplacian operator), plane waves DO fullfill this requirement, and the later being connected (in some way I don't quite understand formally yet) via the Fourier transform to the delta functions, themselves being in the algebraic dual of C. edit: As a bonus, if anyone could shed some light on what is the physical meaning of the states in L2 on which the position operator cannot be defined, I'd appreciate it. [link] [comments]  |
| Why do photons behave differently in different frames of reference than classical objects? Posted: 08 Mar 2017 05:57 PM PST There is an observer A on the sidewalk at night. Person B is in a moving car passing by A with velocity 30 km/h and throws a ball in front (through the open window) with velocity 20 km/h in reference to the car. Ignoring air friction, A will observe the ball moving at 50 km/h. Now B does the same thing but instead of throwing a ball they project light with a flashlight. If observer A measures the speed of the light B emitted, it would be c, just like if a third person C would emit light from the ground. I know this because I've read that light always travels at the same speed through vacuum (remember we are assuming no air friction). But I don't know why. Why do photons always have the same speed in reference to any frame of reference? Why is it not the case with classical objects? What would be the speed observer A measure if the ball was thrown at 250 000 km/s and the car was travelling at 100 000 km/s? Thank you. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Mar 2017 06:20 PM PST Alpha particles are positively charged, so why were they expected to pass completely through the sphere, which was thought to be the source of positive charge before protons were discovered? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Mar 2017 05:01 PM PST I've been looking into "optical tractor beams" and I think I understand the gist of the concept: shoot a pair of lasers at an object—those lasers enter at an angle, but when they exit, they exit straight out, which means they have more momentum than when they entered; and because when they exit they "push off" from the particle, it is pushed toward the source of the beams... Is this a correct interpretation? Do optical tractor beams only work on transparent particles that can refract the light beams, or can it somehow work on objects that are not transparent? Thank you very much for any responses! [link] [comments]  |
| Why does nitrogen have valence 5? Posted: 09 Mar 2017 08:13 AM PST Why does nitrogen (or any element in the nitrogen group) have valence 5? It's electron configuration is 2s2 2p3 , which means 2s is filled, and all three 2px, 2py, 2pz can form covalent Pauli pair bonds. The heuristic I learned for understanding why carbon (and those in its group) has valence 4, is because even though its electron configuration is 2s2 2p2 (so it would have a valence of 2), the difference in E between the 2s and 2p levels is so small that the bonding E more than offsets the E required to shift an electron from the 2s to the 2p, so that effectively the configuration is 2s1 2p3 , in which case it clearly has a valence of 4. This heuristic doesn't work anymore for nitrogen, because 2s1 2p4 can't covalently bond 5 electrons, since one of the 2s or 2p states has to be completely filled, whether 2s or 2px or 2py or 2pz. Further, I don't see how it could be energetically favorable to promote one of the 2s or 2p electrons up to the 3s level, which is a much larger jump such that if it were allowed then the valency of all the other elements would be thrown off. What am I missing? [link] [comments]  |
| What is an atom's "orientation"? Posted: 09 Mar 2017 07:45 AM PST IBM recently announced they have successfully stored data on a single atom by manipulating and reading its orientation. I'm hazy on the concept of "orientation"; is it simply the physical direction the atom is facing? [link] [comments]  |
| Why do "mushroom clouds" form from nuclear explosions? [physics] Posted: 08 Mar 2017 01:30 PM PST |
| How does an Electron spin if it is 0-dimensional? Posted: 08 Mar 2017 03:17 PM PST |
| How has the acceptace of quantum mechanics changed in the educational community in recent decades? Posted: 08 Mar 2017 04:54 PM PST I recall my high school physics teacher in the mid 90s regarding it as somewhere between an interesting fairytale and ridiculous pseudoscience. I'm wondering how attitudes have changed since then. Is it at the point where it's being taught in high school and showing up on standardized tests? Edit: I realize now that I've probably been unfair to my old teacher. I don't think he was dismissing quantum mechanics wholesale. He did seem to do a lot of hand-waving regarding certain phenomena like the effects of observation on experiments, electrons mysteriously teleporting to different orbits, etc. It could be that he just didn't want to go down that rabbit hole in class because (a) he didn't believe that either he or experts in the field could provide definitive answers to those questions or (b) it just wasn't part of the curriculum. Which brings me back to my real question here... Unless I'm completely mis-remembering what I learned in high school (it was over 20 years ago), I remember that the lessons were firmly in the realm of Newtonian and Relativistic physics and I'm wondering if and how the focus has changed. [link] [comments]  |
| How long does typical Tidal heating last? Posted: 08 Mar 2017 07:55 PM PST Considering conservation of energy, a moon or a planet cannot be heated through tidal warming forever? Would it fall into the object being orbited because it traded orbital energy for heat. [link] [comments]  |
| Why does high electrical conductivity generally lead to high thermal conductivity? Posted: 08 Mar 2017 09:35 AM PST I recently learned that this is true but I can't quite wrap my head around it. I looked it up a bit but wasn't completely satisfied with the answers. As well, it'd be appreciated if the explanation is kept a bit simpler since I don't know that much :) [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Mar 2017 01:13 PM PST |
| Would Newtonian Black Holes be black? Posted: 08 Mar 2017 09:28 AM PST Recently I've been wondering about black holes and noticed something that I haven't before: while black holes as in bodies, whose escape velocity is greater than the speed of light could exist in Newtonian Mechanics, would they be black? The escape velocity is bigger than that of light's, yes, but light as a massless particle should not be affected by gravity, anyway. Therefore you could see every body, no matter how much its mass had been compressed. Does this mean that the idea of a black hole was only conceived after GR had come to be and then the formula for the most basic Schwarzschild radius was then also derived from Laws of Gravity? It seems to me like the speed of light is hardly a special speed in Newtonian Mechanics, so having an object with such an escape velocity wouldn't be anything special. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 08 Mar 2017 01:14 PM PST There is an analogy to explain Lorentz contraction where a train moves through a tunnel with the same length as the train. There is an observer inside the train and one outside the tunnel. And there are guillotines at the tunnel entrances. I hope the analogy is as well known and understood as I got the impression as I have seen it in many explanations of Lorentz contraction. My question: The train passenger sees the train poking out of the tunnel at both ends at the same point in time. When he triggers both guillotines at this point the train passenger should see both end of the train cut at the same time. What does the outside observer see? Is it even possible for the train passenger to do so? [link] [comments]  |
| Was water to blame for the Malta azure window collapse? Posted: 08 Mar 2017 06:44 PM PST This is an after picture https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C6YpPXrWAAE6ZgF.jpg This is a before picture http://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/Travel/2017/March/azure-window-AP121340746-large.jpg [link] [comments]  |
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