Beyond the Inclined Plane: Websites that explain and apply physics.
Internet teaching tools and classroom examples of everyday physics from biology, geology,
homes, and factories. Links to video clips, applets, and animations that help teach physics in the classroom.
1 Collections of general physics topics
3 Time, Distance, Speed, Acceleration, and One-Dimensional Motion
4 Two- and Three-Dimensional Motion
7 Impulse, Momentum, and Collisions
8.1 Teaching and learning tools
8.2 Freshman physics is all that is needed to model any system
8.3 Energy in humans and other species
8.5 Energy in our vehicles, homes, factories, and civilization
9 Torque, Rotation, and Rotational Motion
11 The Gravitational Force and Satellite Motion
12 Waves and Periodic and Vibrational Motion
Chapter 13 Properties of Materials
Chapter 14 Pressure and the Properties of Fluids
Chapter 16 Temperature and Thermal Expansion
Chapter 17 Heat and Heat Transfer
Chapter 18 Kinetic Theory, Equations of State, and Phase Changes
Chapter 19 Heat Energy and Work and The First Law of Thermodynamics
Chapter 20 Heat Engines and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
Chapter 21 Molecular Properties of Matter
23 Static Electricity, the Electric Force and Coulomb’s Law
Chapter 25 Electrical Potential and Voltage
Chapter 28 Electrical Current, Resistance, and Ohm’s Law
Chapter 29 Direct-Current Circuits
Chapter 31 Magnetic Fields and Forces on Wires and Currents
Chapter 32 Induction and Induced Fields
Chapter 33 Magnetic Properties of Matter
Chapter 34 Alternating Currents
Chapter 35 Electromagnetic Waves and Light
Chapter 36 Interference, Diffraction, and Polarization
Chapter 37 Lenses and Mirrors, Refraction and Reflection
Chapter 38 Color and human vision
Chapter 39 Optical effects seen in the atmosphere
Chapter 41 Atoms and Molecules
Chapter 43 Elementary Particles
Chapter 45 Biographies and History of Science
Chapter 48 Geology, earth science,
Chapter 49 Biology and biophysics
Chapter 50 Science and Society Issues
Ask any physicist on the planet and he or she will tell you that the universe is full of amazing phenomena and that everything in the universe is physics. Since the universe is filled with physical phenomena, we have endless topics to serve as classroom examples. If we discuss its heating, charging, rate of fall, radioactive decay, relativistic motion, and magnetic and current carrying properties and such, then the inclined plane could serve as the only needed example in the classroom. But we physics teachers would be better off if instead, we take the advice of the marketers and use a baby in each and every example of physical phenomena, including its heating and cooling, thermal expansion, and index of refraction and such. People like babies. Simply having a baby in a picture makes people happy. Students would be happier in their physics course if every page discussed the physics of a baby or at least contained a picture of a baby. The most popular physics course of all would be the physics of babies.
It has been learned that enrollment increases in physics courses when a department offers a variety of courses meant to attract a variety of students seeking to satisfy their general-ed requirement in science. Possible courses include the physics of sports, the physics of music, and a course in each of such things as automobiles, tractors, everyday machines, Einstein, physics and philosophy, physics and religion, physics of the body for nursing students, and so on.
What is science?
Science consists of facts and understandings obtained from repeatable experiments. Each repeatable aspect of nature can be the basis of a medicine or machine. If an experiment is not repeatable then it can not be scientifically studied and will not be the basis of a medicine or machine, see the Skeptical Enquirer magazine at www.csicop.org/si/.
The following websites have more information about science, scientists, and research. Meet several scientists at www.askascientist.org/meet-scientist. Visit www.hhmi.org/becoming to see interviews with several scientists each describing scientists and the ingredients for scientific success. The Exploratorium has interviews with science team members at http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/cern/people/. You might like to visit the Royal Society at www.royalsoc.ac.uk and the Association for the Advancement of Society at www.aaas.org . Also visit the Research Channel at www.researchchannel.org and NAAS at http://www.scienceonline.org/.
What can be done with science?
The following websites have some of the most amazing results from scientific studies.
By carefully observing the Earth, physical scientists learn much about our world and its interrelated cycles, as seen in NASA’s music video Pulse of the Planet. Showing this video is a good way to start any science class.
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a002300/a002395/
The NASA-IMAX film The Dream is Alive inspires students to study science.
NASA’s Beyond Einstein program has a video explanation of astronomical research.
http://universe.nasa.gov/resources/dvd/be.mpg
FreeScienceLectures has a video clip of Feynman explaining the beauty of a flower.
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=669501
The San Diego Supercomputer Center and The American Museum of Natural History Hayden Planetarium have made the video Volume Visualization of the Orion Nebula that takes one on a flight through the Orion Nebula, passing newly forming solar systems along the way.
http://vis.sdsc.edu/research/orion.html
NASA’s supernova animation depicts all of physics in one natural phenomenon.
http://t2www.nasa.r3h.net/centers/goddard/mpg/69478main_classic_supernova.mpg
NASA has a climate image of the week.
Science news for the classroom.
Frank Potter has a collection of science and math links,
or
www.sciencegems.com/physical.html
Why study physics?
What is light? We see the stuff as if it is something real but if we cannot hold it in our hand can it be real? How fast does it move? Why can you see through glass but not wood? What are the differences between water, glass, wood, iron, electricity, and air? Aren't they all made of atoms and molecules? What happens to wood when it burns? Where does it go? Is it still wood? What is sound, and how fast does it move? What's the difference between music and noise? What is an echo? When a whistling train or police car passes you, why does the whistle's tone change from high to low? How do you hear, see, smell, taste, and feel? Why do different things smell, taste, sound, appear, and feel different? Why is it so hard to force a ball to stay completely under water? Why do balloons float? When you spin a glass of water why does the center of the water move downward and its edges upward? How does a lever work? When you drive your car and turn a corner, why does all that stuff slide toward the side of the dash? How did that stuff know you had turned around the corner? What is the difference between ice, water, and steam? When you stretch a rubber-band and release it, what makes it snap back? Why doesn't a bent wire snap back into place? If you bend a wire back and forth it gets hot and breaks. Why? How does a magnet attract things? What is gravity? Does it pull in one direction or does it pull sideways, too? Is gravity the same thing as magnetism? How are mountains formed? Why does the Moon go around the Earth? Why don't we fall off the Earth? Why doesn't the Earth's atmosphere leak off into space? How big is the Earth? Where do clouds and the Sun go at night? Where do the stars go during the day? What are stars? Where has the Moon gone when we can't see it? Why does the Moon's shape change from night to night? Why are the Sun and Moon larger while they are rising and sitting? Do the Moon, Sun, clouds, and stars follow you as you walk down the street? Where does the sky end? Is it taller than it is wide? What is electricity? How is it different from magnetism and gravity? How does a gun make a bullet move? How do binoculars make things appear to be larger? Why does a pencil appear to bend when you put it into a glass of water? Is it bent? When you spill water on your shirt why does the shirt then appear darker? If the "darkness" is in the water, then why isn't a glass of water dark? When you slam on the brakes why do you fly forwards? Why doesn't the dust blow off your car when you drive down the highway at the posted speed limit? Why doesn't the dust blow off your home cooling fan? (Those things are always full of dust.) How does a drinking straw work? What in the world is a fire flame, and why does it rise? Why is the sky blue, and why does it turn red at sunset? What is lightning? What is thunder? Does one cause the other? What causes tornadoes and hurricanes? Why do the ice skaters spin faster when they pull their arms inward? What is heat and just how is it different from cold? What are the coldest and hottest temperatures that exist? Does hot flow toward cold or does cold flow toward hot? How does heat get into things? How does a coat keep you warm? How does sweating cool you off? When you place clothes in the dryer, where does the water go? When water boils, where do the bubbles come from? What is a cloud? Why are some clouds bright while others are dark? Why does that little patch of winter ice always form in the car window? How does the glass of ice-water get wet on the outside? What keeps a car window from frosting over when you park under a carport? How do geysers like "Old-Faithful" work? When you hold a spoon in the stream of a water faucet, sheets of water shoot out. What does this have to do with Space Shuttle engines? What is the difference between green and blue? The hairs of a paintbrush spread out when placed underwater but cling together when taken out of the water. Why? What is a rainbow? Why do camera lenses appear blue? Why does the doorknob sometimes give you that electric shock? What determines the color of an object? What are the Moon and the Sun? What are those funny little points of light in the nighttime sky? The Omni magazine has asked "If you place a lightbulb in the middle of a mirror-lined room and then turn off the light, why doesn't the room stay bright?" Why does a mirror reverse right and left but not up and down? Jearl Walker gives hundreds of examples of physics in everyday phenomena in his book The Flying circus of Physics. For example, hot water running into the sink doesn't splash as much as cold water and it sounds different. Why? Water falling out of a slightly-on faucet narrows as it falls? Why?
1 Collections of general physics topics
For teaching tips, see
http://teaching.berkeley.edu/compendium/
http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/teachtip.htm
Movies and computer simulations bring the equations of physics to life. MIT has developed its Technology Enabled Active Learning, using visualizations in teaching physics interactively in freshman courses. They describe the approach as follows: “We combine desktop experiments with visualizations of those experiments to make the unseen seen.” Our pedagogy utilizes the following elements: 1. Collaborative learning--students work in groups of 3, with 9 students sitting at a round table and discussing electromagnetic phenomena. 2. Networked laptaps, one for each group of 3, with data acquisition links to desktop experiments that students perform and analyze. 3. Media-rich software for multimedia visualization, delivered via class laptops and the Web. 4. Extensive course notes with links to the visualizations. 5. Assessment showing learning gains a factor of 2 higher than traditional instruction.”
http://web.mit.edu/8.02t/www/802TEAL3D/teal_tour.htm
Edward F. Redish of the University of Maryland has an online textbook Teaching Physics With the Physics Suite that discusses techniques for teaching physics.
http://www2.physics.umd.edu/~redish/Book/
The Lab Archive has experiments to do in the lab course.
Search the multimedia library of the National Science Foundation.
http://www.nsf.gov/news/mmg/mmg_search.cfm
Wikibooks has a textbook of high school physics that you can create.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/High_school_physics
Physical Review Focus explains selected journal articles to students,
and it includes numerous graphics.
The Yahoo search engine includes an option to find video files.
You might like to use Google’s image search.
The Alta-Vista search engine will find video files.
The Exploratorium demonstrates and explains many phenomena.
The DMOZ open directory project lists websites.
http://dmoz.org/Science/Physics/
C.R. Nave of Georgia State University has developed the HyperPhysics website that contains thousands of topics and links and is visited by millions of people every year.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hph.html
Larry Gladney at the University of Pennsylvania has an online textbook of physics,
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/mathphys/java/Contents.html
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/textbook/
http://www.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/phys151/lectures/
and numerous animations that explain physics.
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/mathphys/animations_collection.html
Stuart Hutton of Lyon College has many Physics Simulations.
http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/shutton/simulationmovies/
Dr. Finkenthal of Palomar College has an on-line Physics course and solves many problems from the textbook by Tipler.
http://science.palomar.edu/physics/Physics230/index.html
The Physics Force group from the University of Minnesota performs their Physics Circus Demonstrations of motion, waves, and pressure. This group is referred to below as “The Physics Force team.”
http://groups.physics.umn.edu/pforce/pcircus.html
Wake Forest University has numerous video clips that demonstrate physics,
http://www.wfu.edu/physics/demolabs/demos/avimov/bychptr/bychptr.htm
www.wfu.edu/Academic-departments/Physics/demolabs/demos/avimov/bychptr/chptr1_motion.html
and links to the PIRA Webring.
http://www.wfu.edu/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/cablem/wr-list.cgi
The North Carolina State University (NCSU) Physics DemoRoom has numerous video clips.
http://demoroom.physics.ncsu.edu/movies.html
Harvard University has a list of classroom demonstrations.
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~scdiroff/lds/demotoc.html
T. Henderson of Glenbrook High has developed the online Physics Classroom to explain and illustrate physics, NextSet
www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/phys/Class/1DKin/1DKinTOC.html
http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/phys/shwave/index.html
and the Minds On Physics Internet Modules
http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/phys/mop/index.html
The Multimedia Physics Studio of The Physics Classroom has many animations.
www.physicsclassroom.com/mmedia/index.html
Many explanatory animations are shown at ActivePhysics On-line to accompany University Physics by Young and Freeman.
http://wps.aw.com/aw_young_physics_11
Paul Fastad’s website has numerous applets explaining waves, acoustics, signal processing, static electricity and magnetism, electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, linear algebra, vector calculus, thermodynamics, and differential equations.
http://www.falstad.com/mathphysics.html
Michael Fowler and his students–Jacquie Hui Wan Ching, Heather Welch, Michael Timmins, and Aris Stylianopoulos–at the University of Virginia have made several flash animations that illustrate motion, collisions, and atoms.
http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/more_stuff/Applets/home.html
The Harry S. Truman College has links to sites that illustrate various aspects of physics.
http://faculty.ccc.edu/tr-scimath/physics.htm
Science Hobbyist.
The edge of science.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~reginald/
Donald Simanek discusses what science is not,
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/home.htm
and some myths and mysteries of science.
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/scimyths/scimyths.htm
Is there antigravity or any overlooked relation between gravity and electromagnetism? See
http://www.zamandayolculuk.com/cetinbal/biefeldbrowneffect.htm
and
http://www.rexresearch.com/gravitor/gravitor.htm
The Naked Scientists Internet Science Radio Show.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/Shows/Archive.htm
B.Surendranath Reddy has numerous applets.
http://www.surendranath.org/Applets.html
VisionLearning has a set of Flash animations illustrating the Bohr model of the atom, fusion, energy, Galileo’s experiment at the Tower of Pisa, convection within the Earth, and other chemical and biological phenomena.
http://www.visionlearning.com/library/animations.php
The National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, Taiwan has many applets collected into their Virtual Physics Laboratory.
http://www.phy.ntnu.edu.tw/ntnujava/
Jim Brubaker of the Friends Select School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has a collection of physics videos (register at the root).
http://65.106.156.80/Resources/Video.htm
The Hong Kong International School has a collection of videos.
http://dragonnet.hkis.edu.hk/hs/science/physics/video/dir.php
Jeff Phillips at the Loyola Marymount University has a website of physics links.
http://myweb.lmu.edu/jphillips/101_s03/misc.html
A. John Mallinckrodt of Cal Poly Pomona has many Interactive Physics™ animations from MSC.Working Knowledge™.
http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm/ip.html
R. Hays Cummins of Miami University has a searchable database of links.
http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/html/index.html
The physics department at the University of Minnesota has video clips of numerous demonstrations.
http://groups.physics.umn.edu/demo/
The physics department at the Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, the Corner Brook campus, of Memorial University of Newfoundland has numerous physlets.
www.swgc.mun.ca/physics/physlets.html
The Doane College physics department has numerous video clips.
www.doane.edu/Dept_Pages/PHY/PhysicsVideoLibrary/videolibrary.html
The physics department at the University of North Carolina has numerous video clips.
http://courses.ncssm.edu/physics/video.htm
Daniel A. Russell of the applied physics department at Kettering University has numerous animations on his Science-Web-awarded site, see www.science-web-award.com.
www.gmi.edu/%7Edrussell/Demos.html
The Database of Physlets and other Science Applets.
ThePhysicsFront.org from the American Association of Physics Teachers, see www.aapt.org, has conceptual teaching aids.
www.compadre.org/precollege/search/gridFilter.cfm?courseType=1
The Exploratorium has Experiments to try using objects available at home.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/snacksbysubject.html
The National Science Digital Library is the Nation's FREE online library for education and research in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
Physics Education Technology project at the University of Colorado creates and tests interactive simulations of physical phenomena and supporting resources.
www.colorado.edu/physics/phet/web-pages/index.html
The University of Colorado has the Physics-2000 Interactive Demos.
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/index.pl
Richard Vawter of Western Washington University has many Interactive-Physics Simulations,
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~vawter/PhysicsNet/IPDemos/SimsMain.html
and Quicktime movies.
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~vawter/PhysicsNet/QTMovies/QT-Mech-Main.html
Students like to see what can be done with first-year physics. The following four websites have animations of systems explained by freshman physics but covered in second-year physics courses.
1) Jack Ord has numerous Java applets of systems and he includes the source code.
http://www.kw.igs.net/~jackord/j6.html#p1d
2) Erik Neumann has many Java animations.
3) Maciej Matyka has many physics simulations.
http://panoramix.ift.uni.wroc.pl/~maq/eng/index.php
4) The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center has many animations.
http://www.psc.edu/research/graphics/storms/
Rami Arieli of Weizmann University has "The Laser Adventure" Java Applets List that includes laser, reflection, and refraction applets.
http://perg.phys.ksu.edu/vqm/laserweb/Java/Javaliste.htm
Glenn A Carlson of St Charles Community College has many video clips of physical systems.
http://www.stchas.edu/faculty/gcarlson/physics/demos.htm
Doug Craigen at http://www.dctech.com/physics/animations.php recommends Mathematica animations of quantum mechanics by Stephanie Staley and Chris H. Greene at the University of Colorado.
http://condon.colorado.edu/~chg/Physics3220/Animations.html
The Exploratorium links to physics sites.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/learning_studio/cool/physics.html
The Astronomical Society of the Pacific has a list of websites that contain resources for teaching astronomy.
http://www.astrosociety.org/education/resources/resources.html
Andrew Fraknoi of Foothill College and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific has a list of websites.
http://www.astrosociety.org/education/resources/educsites.html
Siltec has Computer Animations of Physical Processes.
http://physics.nad.ru/start.htm
Tony DiMAuro of San Diego State University has a collection of links.
http://tonydude.net/NaturalScience100/natsci100.html
Josh Deutsch of the University of California at Santa Cruz has an online ebook for his introductory physics course,
http://physics.ucsc.edu/~josh/6A/book/index.html
and he also has a collection of mechanics applets.
http://physics.ucsc.edu/~josh/6A/javamechanics/index.html
Bala Maheswaran of Northeastern University in Boston has a collection of animations.
http://www.dac.neu.edu/physics/b.maheswaran/phy1121/data/anim.htm
North Harris College in Houston has a list of sources of science animations.
http://science.nhmccd.edu/biol/animatio.htm
Greb Bothun of the University of Oregon maintains the Electronic Universe of science.
Keith Warren of North Caroline State University links to 7500 online physics demonstrations.
http://www.physics.ncsu.edu/pira/demosite.html
Robin Jordan of Florida Atlantic University is developing online lab experiments,
http://physics.fau.edu/Research/Education/education.html
numerous explanatory notes and animations,
http://courses.science.fau.edu/%7Erjordan/phy2044/rev_notes.htm
and has online audio tapes of his lectures for first semester,
http://courses.science.fau.edu/%7Erjordan/phy2043/home.htm
and second semester physics.
http://courses.science.fau.edu/%7Erjordan/phy2044/rev_notes.htm
The Physics Department of the University of California, Davis has developed the ElectroCard tutorial of electricity and magnetism.
http://maxwell.ucdavis.edu/~electro/
George and Marcia Rieke of the University of Arizona have many animations, gifs, and videos.
http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSci102/movies/
The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center has many animations.
http://www.psc.edu/research/graphics/storms/
Phil Fraundorf discusses numerous topics.
http://newton.umsl.edu/~philf/index.html
Oswego City School District has video clips for physics tests.
http://regentsprep.org/Regents/physics/physics.cfm
Visit the Cavendish Science Organization.
http://www.cavendishscience.org/
David G. Alciatore of Colorado State University - Fort Collins has numerous videos.
http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~dga/high_speed_video/index.html
The WebPhysics project by Wolfgang Christian and Gregor Novak has many physlets.
http://webphysics.davidson.edu
and
http://webphysics.davidson.edu/physlet_resources/
The PIRA organization aids physics teachers with demonstration and laboratory information,
http://www.wfu.edu/physics/pira/
see for example,
http://www.wfu.edu/physics/pira/pira200/Mechanics.html
Syracuse University Physics Department has created many Educational Modules & Simulations.
http://www.phy.syr.edu/courses/modsim.html
Bala Maheswaran of Northeastern University links to several videos and animations.
http://www.dac.neu.edu/physics/b.maheswaran/phy1121/
NASA and JPL have introuductory tutorials explaining various aspects of flight,
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/index.html
and the basics of space flight.
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/
The Physics Question of the Week by the University of Maryland Department of Physics.
http://www.physics.umd.edu/lecdem/outreach/QOTW/active/questions.htm
David MacKay’s has comments about these questions and has categorized them.
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/teaching/dynamics/umdcomments.html
Dr Universe answers questions.
http://www.wsu.edu/DrUniverse/
The Open Directory Project is a volunteer-edited directory of the Web.
http://dmoz.org/Science/Physics/
Liverpool John Moores University has many videos.
http://www.astro.livjm.ac.uk/courses/one/IMAGES/
Pui K. Lam of the University of Hawaii has class lectures and animations for an introductory physics course.
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~plam/ph272A.2004/Lecture_Notes/
The Green and White school has class lectures and animations for an introductory physics course.
http://www.greenandwhite.net/~chbut/kinematics.htm
PlanetPhysics is a virtual community which aims to help make physics knowledge more accessible. PlanetPhysics's content is created collaboratively: the main feature is the physics encyclopedia with entries written and reviewed by members.
zaq12wsx here
The Physics and Astronomy Animations Project of Penn State - Schuylkill explains numerous aspects of nature, see
http://phys23p.sl.psu.edu/CWIS/SPT--Home.php
and
http://phys23p.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/PA.html
Phillip R. Dukes of the University of Texas at Brownsville has numerous applets, simulations, and virtual experiments,
http://pdukes.phys.utb.edu/PhysApplets/appmenu.htm
and Dukes links to a catalog of recently published Science News articles that are online.
http://www.phschool.com/science/science_news/index.html
MIT has a collection of animations and applets, see
http://web.mit.edu/jbelcher/www/anim.html
and
http://web.mit.edu/8.02t/www/802TEAL3D/teal_tour.htm
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has several educational modules,
http://links.math.rpi.edu/index.html
and electricity and magnetism links.
http://links.math.rpi.edu/webhtml/EMindex.html
Use the University of Colorado’s spider to search through the University Physics Lecture Demonstration Websites of over 50 schools.
http://physicslearning.colorado.edu:9999/vestris/QuerySp.html
Alan Scott of the University of Wisconsin-Stout has a collection of animations.
http://physics.uwstout.edu/staff/scott/animate.html
Mainland School in Daytona Beach, Florida has on-line lab experiments.
http://dev.physicslab.org/TOC.aspx
Nori Mari has many Java animations.
http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~norimari/science/JavaApp/e-JavaP.html
Scott Schneider of Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan has many physlets.
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/
Paul Nylander has numerous animations of physical systems, including billiards.
http://www.bugman123.com/Physics/Physics.html
The Web Lecture Archive Project contains 300 video lectures.
http://webcast.cern.ch/Projects/WebLectureArchive/
L. Stanley Durkin of Ohio State has many links.
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~durkin/phys132/
Physikshow from the Universität Bonn contains video clips of numerous demonstrations.
http://www.physikshow.uni-bonn.de/
and
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=physikshow+bonn&search=Search
MIT has a collection of video demonstrations.
http://web.mit.edu/6.013_book/www/Video.html
The Institute of Physics has resources for teaching high school physics.
The UCLA Physics Department has descriptions and video of classroom demonstrations.
http://www.physics.ucla.edu/demoweb/demomanual/table_of_contents.html
Des Penny of Southern Utah University has numerous applets for first,
http://www.suu.edu/faculty/penny/Phsc2210/Physlets/PhysletsForWeb/Semester1/menu_semester1.html
and second semester physics.
http://www.suu.edu/faculty/penny/Phsc2210/Physlets/PhysletsForWeb/Semester2/menu_semester2.html
Penny recommends the has numerous applets of Anne J. Cox at Eckerd College.
Mr. Richert of Hazelwood has links to numerous applets.
http://www.hazelwood.k12.mo.us/~grichert/sciweb/applets.html
Erik Max Francis has a collection of links,
http://www.alcyone.com/max/index.html
and a list of physical phenomena.
http://www.alcyone.com/max/physics/laws/a.html
The Demonstration Database of the Department of Applied Physics of the Delft University of Technology.
Documentary Educational Resources
http://www.der.org/films/index-by-title.html
The Department of Physics at the University of California Berkeley has a collection of physics links for Electromagnetic waves, physical optics, relativity and quantum physics.
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~phy7c/key.html
Video analysis shareware is available can be used to study motion. NextCollection xxx
http://www.physicstoolkit.com/
Mats Selen of the University of Illinois has the Wise Guy Clips.
http://web.hep.uiuc.edu/home/MATS/wg2005.html
E. Etkina, A Van Heuvelen, D. Brookes have a Physics Teaching Technology Resource that includes numerous videos of physical phenomena.
http://paer.rutgers.edu/PT3/index.php
The previous website is a member of the PIRA Webring that aids physics teachers with demonstration and laboratory information. The PIRA Ring includes Saint Mary's University, Halifax, N.S., Canada,
http://www.ap.stmarys.ca/demos/navigation/navigation_frames.html
and Walter F. Smith of Haverford University,
http://www.haverford.edu/physics-astro/songs/
and Java Applets on Physics by Walter Fendt.
http://www.walter-fendt.de/ph14e/
or
http://www.walter-fendt.de/ph11e/
and
http://www.shep.net/resources/curricular/physics/java/physengl/physengl.htm
Dolores Gende has a collection of educational links,
http://apphysicsb.homestead.com/vls.html
including the Physics Web,
http://physicsweb.org/resources/Education/
and Interactive Physics and Math with Java by Sergey Kiselev and Tanya Yanovsky-Kiselev,
http://www.physics.uoguelph.ca/applets/Intro_physics/kisalev/
and Judson Wagner’s Physics Animations,
http://www.members.aol.com/judsonewagner/
and Physics Java Applets by C. K. Ng,
http://www.ngsir.netfirms.com/englishVersion.htm
and Physlets from Davidson College,
http://physics.bu.edu/~duffy/classroom.html
and the online accompaniments to the standard freshman texts.
http://sciphys.homestead.com/index2.html
The Video Encyclopedia of Physics is a collection of classroom videos.
Wolfgang Christian and Gregor Novak from Davidson College have information about creating physics applets.
http://webphysics.davidson.edu/Applets/Applets.html
The Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching, see www.merlot.org/Home.po, lists hundreds of physics websites of collections and animations.
http://www.merlot.org/artifact/BrowseArtifacts.po?discipline=Physics&firsttime=true
The physics department of the University of Oregon has numerous applets.
The Harry S. Truman College lists numerous websites containing applets and simulations.
http://faculty.ccc.edu/tr-scimath/physics.htm
http://faculty.ccc.edu/tr-scimath/intro.htm#EP
The Vienna University of Technology, Austria has a library of online material.
www.ub.tuwien.ac.at/englweb/resource.htm
Wikibooks, is a collection of open-content textbooks that anyone can edit.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
Wikibooks includes physics textbooks that might help our students.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Physics
Search the NASA website for specific topics,
www.nasa.gov/lb/centers/goddard/multimedia/index.html
or for multimedia.
Students considering a career in science can use the information given at the Sloan Career Cornerstone Center.
The Roger Bacon High School has a collection of physics videos.
www.rogerbacon.org/~jgutzwiller/
The University of California at Berkeley has many video clips.
http://www.mip.berkeley.edu/physics/interest.html
Raman Pfaff of the University of New Haven has several animations.
http://physci.kennesaw.edu/javamirror/explrsci/dswmedia/index.htm
Michael R. Gallis and Dr. Ping Wang of Penn State University has many simulations and animations.
http://rt210.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/Phys_anim.htm
See Donald Simanek's Physics Toys, Tricks and Teasers, The Frugal Physicist's Demo Collection.
www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/scenario/toytrick.htm
Thanks to Donald Simanek for his Ideal Scientific Equipment Company.
www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/ideal/ideal.htm
The operation of the human body involves much physics. Richard J. Ingebretsen’s The Physics of the Human Body discuses the forces on muscles, a PV diagram for the breathing process, the heart, hearing, and medical imaging and treatment.
www.physics3110.org/images/body_manu.pdf
Physics Web has a list of online textbooks,
http://physicsweb.org/resources/Education/Electronic_textbooks/
and interactive experiments for students to run online.
http://physicsweb.org/resources/Education/Interactive_experiments/
Richard Fitzpatrick of University of Texas at Austin has an online textbook of mechanics, including worked examples.
http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/301/lectures/
The book Numerical Recipes can be downloaded.
Download computer code from the GNU Scientific Library.
http://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/
The Museum of Retro-Technology has a collection of unusual machinery.
www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/museum.htm
The MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories maintains the Semiconductor Subway providing links to semiconductor and microsystems information, including fabrication facilities, research activities, and standards work.
http://mtlweb.mit.edu/semisubway/semisubway.html
See also, the Laboratories Subway with links to U.S. Micro/Nanofabrication Research Facilities.
http://mtlweb.mit.edu/semisubway/fabs_subway.html
Henry Greenside of Duke University has Physics Challenge questions.
http://www.phy.duke.edu/~hsg/physics-challenges/challenges.html
Newtonian Physics by Benjamin Crowell is available online.
http://www.faqs.org/docs/Newtonian/
Benjamin Crowell has online textbooks of physics and astronomy,
http://www.lightandmatter.com/
xxxx in the middle of http://cablespeed.com/~exit60/phyweb.html at hackensck hs
including a glossary of physics terms.
http://www.lightandmatter.com/area1glossary.shtml
Patrick H. Canan's book A Beginner's Guide to Classical Physics has numerous worked problems and is available online.
http://www.csd509j.net/chs/departments/science/physics/main.html
Download online books from the Online Books Page of the University of Pennsylvania.
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/
The World Lecture Hall of the University of Texas at Austin has a list of physics textbooks that are available online.
http://web.austin.utexas.edu/wlh/results.cfm?from=browse&count=1&DescriptorId=66
For a diverse collection of problems, see Physics for Everyone by Barbara Whitten.
http://www.coloradocollege.edu/Dept/PC/RepresentativePhy/Pages/home.htm
Professor Tai-Kai Ng of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has on line lectures and Mechanical Universe video.
http://physics.ust.hk/genphys/physicsworld.htm
Dennis F. Houk of West Shore Community College has an on-line physics course
http://www.westshore.edu/personal/dfhouk/onlinephysics/interactive_physics_material.htm
that includes many animations.
http://www.westshore.edu/personal/dfhouk/physicsweb/physcimov.html
Joseph E. Finck has an online edition of Physics for athletes and other serious students.
http://www.phy.cmich.edu/people/andy/Physics110/Book/Phy110.htm
Learn Physics Today is an online physics tutorial developed by Keiji Oenoki, Kazushi Oenoki, Hector Judez, Hyun Ku Cho, and John Lakatos at Colegio Franklin D. Roosevelt in Lima, Peru.
http://library.advanced.org/10796/index.html
Martin John Baker summarizes the physics of computer games.
http://www.euclideanspace.com/physics/
David J. Raymond of New Mexico Tech has an online textbook that covers physics in the more interesting order that begins with modern physics and ends with classical physics.
http://physics.nmt.edu/~raymond/classes/ph13xbook/node1.html
Richard Fitzpatrick of the University of Texas at Austin has an online textbook of physics.
http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/301/lectures/lectures.html
The Ohio state University Physics Department has an online textbook for their Energy and Technology course.
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~p670/Wi04/woeb.php
The M. Casco Learning Center has textbooks of physics that are available online.
Bill Baird of the College of Charleston has online lecture notes for physics and astronomy.
http://www.bme.unc.edu/~bbaird/
http://elm.bme.unc.edu/~bbaird/
David J. Raymond of New Mexico Tech has an onlinebook A Radically Modern Approach to Introductory Physics.
http://physics.nmt.edu/~raymond/classes/ph13xbook/bookc.html
Koç University has placed online much of their classroom material for a set of physics courses.
http://home.ku.edu.tr/~aserpenguzel/courses.htm
The Physics Department of the University of Arkansas has online course summaries,
http://www.uark.edu/depts/physinfo/up1/chapter.htm
and individual chapters.
http://www.uark.edu/depts/physinfo/up1/chap3.pdf
Randy Kobes and Gabor Kunstatter of the University of Winnipeg present lecture notes and textbooks of physics,
http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/physics/
modern technology,
http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/mod_tech/node1.html
and other courses.
Glenn Elert and students have written The Chaos Hypertextbook,
http://hypertextbook.com/chaos/
and are writing a physics textbook.
http://hypertextbook.com/physics/
Richard Fitzpatrick at UT Austin has online lecture notes for many courses.
http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching.html
The Department of Computer Science, Mathematics & Physics, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados has online lecture notes.
http://scitec.uwichill.edu.bb/cmp/online/online.htm
Richard Fitzpatrick of the University of Texas at Austin has lectures for several courses.
Thomas M. Christensen of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs has an online lectures for his course Physics in Everyday Life.
http://www.uccs.edu/~tchriste/courses/PES100/100lectures/index.html
Selman Hershfield of the University of Florida has an online introductory physics course.
http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~phy3054/
The Net Advance of Physics: Annotated Physics Encyclopædia.
http://web.mit.edu/redingtn/www/netadv/ii.html
Find an online textbook or lecture.
http://web.austin.utexas.edu/wlh/#Physics
Ibiblio.org has online science textbooks.
http://www.ibiblio.org/collection/collection.php?primary=7
The Institute of Physics has a list of electronic textbooks.
http://physicsweb.org/resources/Education/Electronic_textbooks/
Distance Learning and Education Services has several online textbooks. NextTextbook xxx
http://www.distancelearning-tz.org/news.htm
www.softpedia.com has freeware and shareware software downloads.
For Macs, see http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Math-Scientific/index23.shtml
Joseph Becker of San Jose State University has an online physics textbook.
http://www.physics.sjsu.edu/becker/physics51/index.htm
The Physics Department of the College of Saint Benedict - Saint John's University has an online textbook of quantum mechanics, and they recommend the next three links.
http://www.physics.csbsju.edu/QM/Index.html
J.J. Binney has an online textbook of advanced classical mechanics.
http://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/user/JamesBinney/cmech.pdf
James Nearing of the University of Miami has an online textbook of mathematical physics.
http://www.physics.miami.edu/~nearing/mathmethods/
Here is a list of online textbooks for mathematics and physics.
http://us.geocities.com/alex_stef/mylist.html
and science.
http://www.techbooksforfree.com/science.shtml
such as Calculus-Based Physics by Jeffrey W. Schnick.
http://www.anselm.edu/internet/physics/cbphysics/index.html
Structure and interpretation of classical mechanics by Gerald Jay Sussman and Jack Wisdom
with Meinhard E. Mayer.
Newtonian Physics by Ben Crowell.
http://www.andamooka.org/reader.pl?section=newtphys
Textbook Revolution has free, online textbooks,
http://textbookrevolution.org/
including physics texts.
http://textbookrevolution.org/Textbooks/Physics.html
Joseph W. Howard of Salisbury University placed his physics lectures online.
http://faculty.salisbury.edu/~jwhoward/Physics121/html/lec.htm
Louis A. Blomfield has an online collection of everyday examples of physics taken from his book How Everything Works: Making Physics out of the Ordinary.
http://rabi.phys.virginia.edu/HTW/complete.html
The Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Georgia, Athens has an online collection of answers to Ask the Physicist! questions from the public.
http://www.physast.uga.edu/ask_phys_q&a_old.html
The Department of Physics at Central Michigan University has a list of physics demonstrations.
http://frances.phy.cmich.edu/phy_demo/phy_demo.htm
Harvard University Natural Science Lecture Demonstrations.
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~scdiroff/lds/main.html
Glenn Elert’s students measured various physical quantities and place them in the Physics Factbook website.
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/index-topics.shtml
Glenn recommends another website of measurements by R.L. Childers and his students at the University of South Carolina.
http://solomon.physics.sc.edu/%7Etedeschi/midway/analysis.html
The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee has an online table of physical constants.
http://www.sewanee.edu/physics/QUANTUM_MECHANICS/PHYSICAL-CONSTANTSCOLOR.html
They recommend the on-line book Physics Formulary by J. C. A. Wevers.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~johanw/physics.pdf
NIST has a table of physical constants,
http://physics.nist.gov/PhysRefData/contents.html
and mathematical functions.
Maurice Barnhill of the University of Delaware has a table of the units of common physical qunatities.
http://www.udel.edu/mvb/units.html
An interactive periodic table is online at
or
Phil Fraundorf of the University of Missouri - St. Louis discusses alternative versions of the periodic table.
http://newton.umsl.edu/infophys/lsp.html
Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has A Dictionary of Units of Measurement.
http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/index.html
Abramowitz and Stegun's Handbook of Mathematical Functions (with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables), which was published by the National Bureau of Standards in 1964, is becoming available on the web.
The PHYS-L mailing list.
http://physicsed.buffalostate.edu/phys-l/
The College Of Chemistry at UC-Berkeley has conversion factors.
http://chemistry.berkeley.edu/links/weights/equivalences.html
MIT OpenCourseWare includes a video physics course by Walter Lewin.
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-01Physics-IFall1999/CourseHome/index.htm
Good and bad science.
http://www.plasma-art.com/goodbadsci.html
The Fermilab has some discussions about the science and the scientific method.
http://ed.fnal.gov/symposium/archive.html
The Environmental Protection Agency has an extensive list of abbreviations and acronyms.
http://www.epa.gov/glossary/aaad.html
Public domain clipart.
F. Muller of Alfred University lists several year’s worth of questions asked by elementary school students.
http://physci.alfred.edu/muller/FormerPhysWorld/index.html
Ibiblio.org has the Greek Alphabet.
http://www.ibiblio.org/koine/greek/lessons/alphabet.html
Many scientific labs and zoos and such have webcams. You might also like to check the webcams placed at the north pole,
www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np.html
the south pole,
www.cmdl.noaa.gov/obop/spo/livecamera.html
Old Faithful,
http://www.nps.gov/archive/yell/oldfaithfulcam.htm
or a shark aquarium.
http://waquarium.otted.hawaii.edu/coralcam/index.html
For animal webcams, visit
www.nationalgeographic.com/channel/crittercam
and
www.birds.cornell.edu/birdhouse2/nestboxcam
and
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/WebCams
and
chend
Physics Education Technology project at the University of Colorado has an applet that explains vector components and vector addition.
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phet/web-pages/simulations-base.html
Fu-Kwun Hwang from the National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, Taiwan has several applets collected in the Virtual Physics Laboratory, including the addition of vectors,
http://www.phy.ntnu.edu.tw/ntnujava/viewtopic.php?t=68
and the relative motion of river, boat, and bank.
http://www.phy.ntnu.edu.tw/ntnujava/index.php?topic=140
Julio Gea-Banacloche from the University of Arkansas, in Fayetteville has an applet showing how to graphically add two vectors.
http://comp.uark.edu/~jgeabana/java/VectorCalc.html
A GPS system locates a person on the surface of the Earth by finding the intersection of spherical envelopes surrounding each of three orbiting satellites. GPS devices are now in cell phones, cars, commercial trucks, and golf carts–because golfers need to know how far it is to the snack bar. No doubt we will soon use them to locate hiding spouses and lost pets and children.
http://nasa.ibiblio.org/video/NASASciFiles/NASASF-TheTechnicalKnockout/qt/NASASF-HowDoesGPSWork.mov
Garmin International Inc suggests we send our students on a “Vector Scavenger Hunt” using a GPS device. Students will also add vectors graphically.
http://homepage.mac.com/cbakken/physlab/plab99/labs/sgann/vector_scavenger_hunt.htm
Displacement vectors are added while you combine the numerous straight-line segments that take you from your home to the classroom, which is also at a different elevation than your home.
While adding velocity vectors, pilots of small airplanes prefer to take off into the wind to attain the needed relative speed. NASA explains that to attain flight, the Wright Flyer needed a 35 mph wind over its wing.
http://wright.nasa.gov/airplane/move.html
Relative to the boat, this water skier undergoes an oscillatory motion like a pendulum. Calculate projectile parameters when the skier goes over the jump.
http://www.iwsf.com/Worlds03/jump2.rm
Velocity vectors are added when a person walks down the aisle of a moving bus or airplane.
The Glenbrook school explains vectors and vector addition.
http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/GBSSCI/PHYS/Class/vectors/u3l1b.html
The Glenbrook school has an animation of the motion that results from the vector sum of groundspeed plus airspeed,
http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/GBSSCI/PHYS/mmedia/vectors/plane.html
and a boat moving in a river current,
http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/GBSSCI/PHYS/mmedia/vectors/rb.html
and a boat crossing a moving river.
http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/phys/shwave/rboat.html
Relative to the center of the galaxy, what is the vector sum of velocities for a person walking along the surface of the Earth that is orbiting the sun which is orbiting the center of the galaxy while moving with the expanding universe?
From the point of view of a person driving in the automobile, the UFO seen here is sometimes moving and sometimes not.
http://www.pathfindersystems.com/psi/past_contracts/vtags/media/2003_psi/airplane_shots.avi
The Georgia Tech BORG Lab tracks motion and models the social behavior of animals.
http://borg.cc.gatech.edu/biotracking/results/beedancetracking2.mpg
The student will wait with held-breath for a few more semesters before writing quantum mechanics in the language of vectors. The components of the vectors give probabilities for measuring specific values of momentum and such. Jack Sarfatti has written a non-technical account in A Semi-Pop Non Mathematical Tutorial on Hilbert Space in Quantum Mechanics.
http://www.qedcorp.com/pcr/pcr/hilberts.html
The Physics Department at Pennsylvania State University -Schuylkill has animations of vector addition and resolution.
http://rt210.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/vectors/indexer_vectors.html
Paul Fastad has an applet that shows the vector dot product.
http://www.falstad.com/dotproduct/
Phillip R. Dukes of the University of Texas at Brownsville has an applet that explains vector addition.
http://pdukes.phys.utb.edu/PhysApplets/VectorAddition/vectoradd.htm
chend
3 Time, Distance, Speed, Acceleration, and One-Dimensional Motion
Time-lapse photography helps us understand time and our restricted viewpoint of time. The Montgomery Knolls Elementary School in Silver Spring, MD made a movie showing the life stages of a butterfly.
http://www.mcps.k12.md.us/schools/knollses/Second%20Grade/gr/trick.mpeg
Order-of-magnitude estimates of times, lengths, masses, speeds, accelerations, forces, and energies for various objects.
http://myweb.lmu.edu/jphillips/101_s03/orders.html
Zoom through the universe with
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy4m9qa-ILA&feature=related
Zoom out through the universe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBsOeLcUARw
Zoom into the quarks.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8591320199115133990&ei=pE5dSJ_UKpKc4gKJrYzcAQ&hl=en
The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida takes you on a visual tour through the powers of ten, from an image of Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth, down to the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/index.html
NASA’s Capital Zoom video takes you on a visual journey through a few powers of ten as it zooms from satellite down to street level.
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a002100/a002133/
The NASA Worldwind website lets you zoom from satellite altitude down to any location on the Earth.
http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/
Zoom up through powers of ten.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBsOeLcUARw
The Interactive Nano-Visualization in Science and Engineering Education (IN-VSEE) project discusses size and scale.
http://invsee.asu.edu/Modules/size&scale/unit4/unit4.htm
NASA calculates the number of stars in the universe and the number of molecules in a cubic inch of water.
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_Thinking/stars_and_drops.htm
For photos and information about high-speed photography using your standard video camera, visit www.hiviz.com. This site was developed by Loren Winters of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham, NC.
Zack Booth Simpson from the Marcotte Lab at the University of Texas at Austin has a video of interactive art involving motion, see www.mine-control.com/sand.html.
Kinetic-art.org promotes sculpture whose components are set in motion by internal drivers or by external forces.
ActivePhysics On-line has many animations explaining motion. Have students run these and then write paragraphs about them that include numerical examples..
http://wps.aw.com/aw_young_physics_11/0,8076,898588-content,00.html#Describing%20Motion
Have students run the Phet Moving Man simulation and then write a paragraph explaining what it does, what the have learned from it, and how it helps them understand this physical phenomenon. What else might be added to it and how could it be improved? Send the feedback to the creators.
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phet/web-pages/simulations-base.html
There is a PBS NOVA documentary that presents the biography of Galileo.
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/galileo/
The University of Virginia website has a translation of Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning Two New Sciences (1632).
http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/tns_draft/index.html
The University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law has an on-line version of Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632).
www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/dialogue.html
Galileo Galilei’s Notes On Motion are available on-line at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence, Italy.
www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Galileo_Prototype/MAIN.HTM
The New York Times rates Galileo’s Experiments in Top Ten of All Time (as seen at www.visionlearning.com)
http://physics.nad.ru/Physics/English/top_ref.htm#angl
http://physics.nad.ru/Physics/English/top_ref.htm#pisa
Richard Vawter of Western Washington University lists some typical values of acceleration.
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~vawter/PhysicsNet/Topics/Kinematics/AccelerationValues.html
The University of California at San Diego have a movie clip of Hewitt’s equally spaced and quadratically spaced, noise-making bolts.
http://physics.ucsd.edu/was-sdphul/labs/demos/movies/fallingweights.mov
John Bentley explains train braking and gives a numerical example. He says that the air pressure signal that brakes each car takes several seconds to travel the length of mile-long train. While braking, the wheels do not stop spinning.
http://www.tarorigin.com/art/Jbentley/
Airplane Flight Data Recorders or Black Boxes are built to withstand 3400 g accelerations. One test involves going from a speed of 270 knots to zero while traversing a distance of 0.45 meters.
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Flight_data_recorder
Glenn Elert’s students measured their own acceleration while sneezing, coughing, and plopping into chairs, from the Physics Factbook.
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2005/accelerometer.shtml
Glenn recommends another website of measurements by R.L. Childers and his students at the University of South Carolina.
http://solomon.physics.sc.edu/%7Etedeschi/midway/analysis.html
S-shaped Nasa aircraft used in zero-g training flights.
FreeScienceLectures has a video clip of Stephen Hawking taking a zero-g flight.
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=642546
Timothy S. Bailey’s interview with Colonel Stapp: A One-Track Mind.
http://www.af.mil/news/airman/0498/sled.htm
In the 1940s and 50s, Colonel Stapp conducted rocket-powered sled experiments to determine the effects of acceleration on people–usually himself. The sled moved along two miles of railroad track that ran right into lake water, which was used to quickly stop the sled. Other experiments used numerous brakes to stop the sled. On one run, the sled reached a speed of 632 mph in five seconds and was later stopped in 1.25 seconds, subjecting Stapp to an acceleration of 21 g. This run is described in the White Sands Missile Range photo “Sonic Wind & Col. John Stapp” at http://www.wsmr.army.mil/pao/HistoricPhotos/mispho.htm#. A video clip is available on the Hong Kong International School website at http://dragonnet.hkis.edu.hk/hs/science/physics/video/John Stapp decceleration.rm. On page 44 of The Sciences, An Integrated Approach (James Trefil and Robert M. Hazen, 2004, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), Trefil describes his experience of g-forces as being similar to having multiple persons sitting on you all at once. See High Acceleration and the Human Body by Martin Voshell.
http://csel.eng.ohio-state.edu/voshell/gforce.pdf
How did Stapp describe his decelerating experience? "On entry into the waterbrakes, vision became a shimmering salmon, followed by a sensation in the eyes somewhat like the extraction of a molar without an anaesthetic. I was left with two black eyes, which lasted the usual length of time, but vision returned in about eight and a half minutes. There was no fuzziness of vision or sensations of retinal spasms as had been experienced following a run at Edwards in which a retinal haemorrhage occurred. Aside from congestion of the passages and blocking of paranasal sinuses, hoarseness and occasional coughing from congestion of the larynx and the usual burning from strap abrasions, there was only a feeling of relief and elation in completing the run and in knowing that vision was unimpaired."
http://www.escapevelocities.com/deceleration/pressrelease.html
Stapp demonstrated that not much harm occurs to people when decelerated at 25 gs. This is the non-deadly deceleration experienced by seat-belted persons during car crashes. Un-belted persons are hurt or killed because they suffer twice this deceleration as their bodies collide with the dash board of the car. Every physics student should learn this. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration notes that about 40,000 people die every year in six million U.S. car accidents. (Would that occur if people rode inside spherical, metal enclosures equipped with race-car style seatbelts?)
http://nhtsa.gov/people/Crash/LCOD/index.htm
A report by Rajesh Subramamian describes road dangers for the year 2002.
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/NCSA/RNotes/2005/809831.pdf
The NHTSA conducts automobile safety research.
www.nhtsa.dot.gov and http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/
Many cars are now equipped with event data recorders. The evolution and use of these devices is reviewed in Utilizing Data From Automotive Event Recorders by Joe T. Correia, et. al. Their report includes crash acceleration plots.
Surprisingly, school buses do not have seat belts. Here is part of the debate, including measured accelerations of belted and un-belted crash-test dummies.
www.ncsbs.org/rebuttals_canadian.htm
The LifeMOD™ Biomechanics Modeler can be used to model head and body forces during crashes. The website includes an animated person along with plots of force and acceleration (click on “# Interrogating the Results”).
http://www.lifemodeler.com/LM_Manual/T_crash.htm
The NOVA episode Escape: Because Accidents Happen: Car Crash concerned automobile safety.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2605car.html
It takes the Shuttle 50 seconds to reach a speed of 750 mph, 1 minute 47 seconds to reach a speed of 2600 mph, and 8.5 minutes to reach 17,000 mph. What is its acceleration?
http://www.nasa.gov/mp4/151590main_121_launch_fixed_vodcast.mp4
How does this acceleration feel?
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/feedback/expert/answer/crew/sts-108/tani03.wav
(From http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/feedback/expert/answer/crew/sts-108/ )
Richard Vawter of Western Washington University plots distance, sped, and acceleration in an animation of a falling object.
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~vawter/PhysicsNet/QTMovies/Gravity/RockDropMain.html
Many athletes are concerned about acceleration and may use the Valsalva Acceleration Technique as described in Phil Campbell’s article Acceleration Techniques and Speed Development in Issue 15 of the Successful Coaching Newsletter.
www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/articles/scni15a7.htm
Discuss the article Affects of Speed and Acceleration on Car Gas Mileage by the Southwest Region University Transportation Center.
http://tti.tamu.edu/inside/hdv/ama/its_data/dmi_fuel.stm
Irschick DJ and Jayne BC of the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cincinnati have written Speed and acceleration of lizards on inclines.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9405318&dopt=Citation
Larry Gladney at the University of Pennsylvania has an animation that shows the tangent along a varying curve.
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/textbook/movies/dealdat2.avi
NASA is looking into ways to accelerate materials at 10,000 m/s2 using electromagnetic mass drivers.
www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/spaceres/III-1.html
NASA is looking into ways to accelerate spacecraft using magnetic levitation tracks. One experimental system accelerates a 10-pound mass from a speed of 0 to 57 mph while traversing 22 feet of track. See
http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/News/2000/News-MagLev.asp
or
http://nix.larc.nasa.gov/info;jsessionid=sakq9hl0gkh6?id=MSFC-0100741&orgid=11
or
http://nix.larc.nasa.gov/info;jsessionid=sakq9hl0gkh6?id=MSFC-9906959&orgid=11
We might accelerate spaceships using antimatter, fusion power, or ion propulsion.
http://science.msfc.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/prop06apr99_1a.htm
Adam Summer wrote Spore Launchers, Ferns and fungi that explosively reproduce in the December 2005–January 2006 edition of the Natural History Magazine, see www.naturalhistorymag.com. He says that an internal pressure of five-atmospheres builds inside a plant and then accelerates spores at up to 870,000 g. In one event, spores attain a speed of 80 miles per hour by the end of a one-quarter-inch path. What is its acceleration?
Sandia National Labs has accelerated a small plate from zero to 76,000 mph in less than a second. This is an acceleration of 10 billion gs.
www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-06/dnl-zfo060605.php
The Earthlife website lists the speeds of various mammals.
www.earthlife.net/mammals/locomotion.html
Mr. Lawson’s physics class at Kenton Ridge High School in Springfield, OH made free fall measurements by dropping objects from the rooftop.
www.northeastern.k12.oh.us/KR/krmath/images/Physics%20Videos%20and%20Pictures/roofphysics.mov
Plot speed and acceleration from the following two video clips.
www.audiounlimited.biz/movie/acceleration.mpg
http://undergroundrace.turboblog.fr/voiture/files/Acceleration.MPG
Here is a video clip showing the acceleration of a SmartCar, which gets 70 mpg in a non-hybrid.
http://www.smartsrus.com/images/evil-twin_z-cars/DSCF0243.AVI
Mark Verboom connected a computer to his car’s electronics and recorded the speed of the car through time. Plot his measurements.
www.verboom.net/projects/mb/obd/index.html
Michael Fowler from the UVa Physics Department describes Galileo’s Acceleration experiment.
http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/gal_accn96.htm
The NCSU Physics Department has a video clip showing Galileo’s pair of unequally slanted inclined planes.
http://demoroom.physics.ncsu.edu/multimedia/video/1M40.30.1.MOV
Stuart Hutton of Lyon College has an animation of Galileo’s Pisa experiment.
http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/shutton/simulationmovies/gallileo/SpookyGallileo-01.wmv
The Cosmology Research Group, UCB Physics Department, and Emery USD explain how to measure distances on a map of your home town and then use stopwatches and speedometers to measure speed and acceleration as one travels selected paths in town
http://cosmology.berkeley.edu/Education/Emeryville/Part1.html
While working with Teachers Experiencing Antarctica and the Arctic, Karina Leppik measures the acceleration due to gravity at the Amundson-Scott South Pole Station.
http://adelie.harvard.edu/ed/Activities/MeasuringGravity.html
While on the surface of the moon, NASA astronauts dropped a feather and a hammer at the same time to verify Galileo’s earlier experiments.
http://lava.larc.nasa.gov/MOVIES/LARGE/LV-1998-00046.mov
The Wake Forest University physics departments has a video showing that dropped and horizontally thrown objects hit the ground simultaneously.
http://www.wfu.edu/physics/demolabs/demos/avimov/mechanics/simultaneous_fall/gravity.mpg
T. Henderson, Glenbrook High, The Physics Classroom explains and illustrates motion and has some practice exercises.
www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/phys/Class/1DKin/1DKinTOC.html
The BBC’s educational website uses graphs to explain speed and acceleration.
www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/physics/forces/speedvelocityaccelerationfhrev1.shtml
Michael R. Gallis and Dr. Ping Wang of Penn State University have animations of x, v, and a graphs,
http://phys23p.sl.psu.edu/simulations/physlets/motion_cspSimulation_dsp.html
and they show the graphical evaluation of a function and its first and second derivatives.
http://phys23p.sl.psu.edu/simulations/physlets/csp7_pcSimulation.html
Amusement Park Physics, Annenberg/CPB. Riding a roller coaster is a good way to experience speed and acceleration.
www.learner.org/exhibits/parkphysics
The non-constant acceleration of dragsters by the Colbert Racing Team.
http://earth.usc.edu/~scolbert/Drag.htm
Garrett Brown describes a machine that monitors the acceleration of an elderly person to detect falls in his article An Accelerometer Based Fall Detector: Development, Experimentation, and Analysis.
http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~eklund/projects/Reports/GarrettFinalPaper.pdf
While sitting or jumping down, a person experiences 5 to 10 g accelerations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceleration_due_to_gravity
Space shuttles accelerate at a rate of 3 gs for eight minutes to reach a speed of 14,000 m/s. What does that acceleration feel like? Trefil would say it feels like three persons sitting on you for eight minutes.
Some car drivers accelerate at 3 mph per second, while others prefer 8 mph per second.
The EPA vehicle fuel economy tests assume that drivers will not accelerate at more than 3.3 mph per second, but some drivers accelerate at 8.4 mph per second. Measure your own acceleration.
Ride along with Andy Green as he accelerates a car to Mach 1. Measure the elapsed time and record the speeds he calls out, and then plot them on a graph. From M.S.Cramer’s collection at Virginia Tech.
www.galleryoffluidmechanics.com/ss_cars/sscar_4.htm.
Jay A. Nelson of Towson University describes the measured acceleration of fish through time in A Laser-beam Detection System for Measuring Burst Swimming Performance of Fish.
www.towson.edu/~nelson/loco/swimcham.html
AH Smith describes life for chickens growing and living under permanent conditions of 2.5g in his report Physiological changes associated with long-term increases in acceleration. The bones, heart, and muscles of the chickens were a few times stronger than normal.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11977293&dopt=Abstract
Jack Ord has a Java applet for calculating the motion of dropped objects when air resistance is included. He gives the terminal velocities of baseballs, tennis balls, and metal spheres.
http://www.kw.igs.net/~jackord/bp/f3.html
George Nash explains that animation involves much physics.
http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/211_fall2002.web.dir/George_Nash/03principles.htm
Kenneth R. Koehler of Raymond Walters College explains that the fall of a person can be represented with dozens of variables but one is often sufficient,
http://www.rwc.uc.edu/koehler/biophys.2ed/kinematics.html
and he explains how to calculate by hand the approximate value of ratios, square roots, and cosines and such.
http://www.rwc.uc.edu/koehler/biophys.2ed/arithmetic.html
Physics Education Technology project at the University of Colorado has a simulation that explains the position, speed, and acceleration of a moving man,
http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/movingman/movingman.jnlp
Erik Max Francis has an extensive table of lengths and sizes.
http://www.alcyone.com/max/physics/orders/metre.html
Runevision describes computer algorithms for animating motion,
http://runevision.com/3d/anims/
including walking aliens,
http://runevision.com/3d/anims/ws_alstop.mpg
and ripples on water.
http://runevision.com/3d/anims/ripples.mpg
Scott Schneider of Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan has physlets that has the student measure speed,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/constvel1.shtml
or acceleration,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/constaccel1d.shtml
compares position, velocity, and acceleration,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/kinvec0.shtml
animates motion and its graph,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/kinem01.shtml
animates and graphs free fall motion,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/proj1d01.shtml
animates and plots the police car catching the speeder,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/police1a.shtml
and again with user-set parameters.
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/police3.shtml
Determine the slope in the price of oranges (click the box to see the graph).
http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet;jsessionid=f0307ddb6f22h$3F$3E$
Phillip R. Dukes of the University of Texas at Brownsville has animations that compare the distance and displacement of a moved object,
http://pdukes.phys.utb.edu/PhysApplets/displacement/DDis.html
and compare the motion of three toy cars moving with zero, positive, and negative acceleration,
http://pdukes.phys.utb.edu/PhysApplets/VELandACC/TabbedVELandACC.html
and converts units.
http://pdukes.phys.utb.edu/PhysApplets/unitConverter/index.html
chend
4 Two- and Three-Dimensional Motion
Performance art often involves motion in many dimensions.
Akiyoshi Kitaoka from the Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan demonstrates that sometimes motion is just an illusion.
www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html
Have students run the Phet Projectile Motion, Lunar Lander, and the 2D-Motion simulations and then write paragraphs explaining what the simulations do, what they have learned from it, and how it helps them understand this physical phenomenon.
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phet/web-pages/simulations-base.html
Analyze the 300 km high trajectory of the matter ejected from a volcano on Saturn’s moon Io.
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast04oct99_1.htm
Analyze the trajectory of an animal, person, football, skier, skateboarder, motorcycle, bike, skateboarder, monster truck, or of a thrown or kicked football, basketball, or baseball. Estimate heights and lengths of objects and then estimate trajectory parameters x, y, v, t, and maximum height and such. For example, search the web at http://video.search.yahoo.com or www.google.com for videos involving “long jumper.”
Larry Gladney at the University of Pennsylvania has a video of a space shuttle launch.
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/textbook/movies/sts89.avi
L. Gladney of the University of Penn teaches the course “Mechanics for the Health Sciences” and discusses the work, power, and trajectory of a jumping flea.
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/phys1/lectures/lecture8/phys_lecture_8_pg3_1.html
He includes an animation of the jumping flea.
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/textbook/movies/final_flea.avi
Here is another video of a jumping insect.
http://www.jdp.co.uk/content/movies/AnimalGames_FleaJump.mov
The LON-CAPA organization has an applet showing projectile motion.
http://lectureonline.cl.msu.edu/~mmp/kap3/cd060.htm
The Glenbrook school shows that the x and y motions of a projectile are independent of each other.
http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/phys/mmedia/vectors/hlp.html
The University of Oregon Physics has applets that explain mechanics.
http://jersey.uoregon.edu/vlab/
For example, the monkey in the tree problem including wind and friction.
http://jersey.uoregon.edu/newCannon/nc1.html
Fu-Kwun Hwang from the National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, Taiwan has an applet that shows the result when the “monkey” in the tree and the hunter on the ground are both armed, aim directly at each other, and fire simultaneously.
http://www.phy.ntnu.edu.tw/ntnujava/index.php?topic=144
See Alan Shepard hit a golf ball on the air-frictionless moon in the Open Video Project’s clip
“Golfing on the Moon.”
www.open-video.org/details.php?videoid=4897
The Newton site has an animation showing the velocity components of a projectile.
http://newton.burney.ws/physics/videos/2DMotionHelp.mov
Goalfinder has an animation of projectile motion.
http://www.goalfinder.com/Downloads/ProjectileMotion.swf
Michael Fowler at the University of Virginia has an animation illustrating projectile motion with and without air friction.
http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/more_stuff/Applets/ProjectileMotion/jarapplet.html
The physics department of the University of Oregon illustrates projectile motion with and without air friction.
http://jersey.uoregon.edu/newCannon/nc1.html
M.Reedyk of Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada has a video demonstrating the “Monkey in the tree” problem.
http://www.physics.brocku.ca/courses/movies/Walker/VER_000B.MOV
The Physics Force group from the University of Minnesota demonstrates that a ball launched straight up from a moving vehicle will later land in the vehicle,
http://groups.physics.umn.edu/pforce/Howitzer.mov
and drop a team member from a tree in a live demonstration of the “Monkey in the tree” problem,
http://www.physics.umn.edu/outreach/pforce/gravitysmall.mov
and show that a ball thrown horizontally takes the same time to fall as one simply dropped,
http://www.physics.umn.edu/outreach/pforce/Balldrop.mov
and demonstrate that the top of a falling tree falls with an acceleration greater than g.
http://www.physics.umn.edu/outreach/pforce/Fasterg.mov
NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory website shows Ocean Surface Speed Visualizations at www.gfdl.noaa.gov/products/vis/gallery/oceans/speed.html.
Jim Mischel has a video clip of a human canonball.
http://www.mischel.com/diary/2003/06/canon.avi
The physics department of Gallaudet University have videos of Trebuchet construction and testing.
http://physics.gallaudet.edu/pix/phy1072004/2004-10-28/treba03.mov
Arkive.org has movies of leaping dolphins. Use the body dimensions given in their website to estimate the initial speed, height, and range for the motion.
Here is a primate.
http://www.arkive.org/species/GES/mammals/Indri_indri/Indri_indri_06.html?movietype=rpMed
Another primate.
A jumping rat.
Jumping spiders.
William Devenport, Rakesh Kapania, Kamal Rojiani, and Kusum Singh of Virginia Tech have a set of Java Applets that display projectile trajectories with and without air friction.
In a two-dimensional trajectory, one might want to know the distance to the horizon. Steve Sque of the University of Exeter explains, graphs, and calculates this distance for entered values.
http://newton.ex.ac.uk/research/qsystems/people/sque/physics/horizon/
Kopernecus.com uses MatLab to calculate trajectories with air friction.
http://www.kopernekus.com/physics/3dprojectile.asp
Jim Stewart of Western Washington University has a film of a trebuchet throwing a projectile.
http://www.physics.wwu.edu/jstewart/pix/Trebuchet03.mov
The report Modelling Behavior in a School of Fish by Fast Synthetic Distributed Vision by Adriano Rinaldi, Alessio Malizia, and Rick Parent includes animations of the motion of bird or fish groups who use rules that enable them to move as a single unit.
http://web.tiscali.it/maya_tutorial/
The SIGGRAPH that includes their results also has reports involving motion in computer animations and cartoons.
http://www.siggraph.org/s2006/main.php?f=conference&p=posters&s=1
Paul E. Johnson of the University of Kansas at Lawrence has a ballet animation with musical accompaniment.
http://pj.freefaculty.org/Swarm/MySwarmCode/Dancer/Dance.mov
Yisheng Chen of Ohio State University uses motion-capture and equation-based models to animate a dancer.
www.cse.ohio-state.edu/%7echenyis/course/CIS788.14H/ballet.avi
The Physics Department at Pennsylvania State University -Schuylkill has animations mechanics.
http://rt210.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/mech/indexer_mech.html
Physics Education Technology project at the University of Colorado has simulations that explain Projectile Motion,
http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/projectilemotion/projectile.swf
2-D motion,
http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/motion2d/motion2d.jnlp
and a lunar landing.
http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/lunarLander/lunarlander.swf
Noriyoshi has an applet that lets you land a spaceship on the moon,
http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~norimari/science/JavaApp/e-moon/emoon.html
or dock with a space station.
http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~norimari/science/JavaApp/e-docking/edock.html
Scott Schneider of Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan has physlets that compare the motion of three projectiles having equal y-motion but differing x-motion,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/proj2d00.shtml
compares three projectiles with different starting conditions,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/proj2d01.shtml
boat on river relative velocities,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/boatriver1.shtml
and again with set velocity.
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/boatriver2.shtml
Phillip R. Dukes of the University of Texas at Brownsville has an animation showing velocity and acceleration vectors for an object in projectile motion.
http://pdukes.phys.utb.edu/PhysApplets/ProjectileMotion/Projectile.html
chend
Edward Hellen of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro has chaotic circuits.
http://www.uncg.edu/phy/hellen/
Fergus Ray Murray has several interactive applets that illustrate fractals and mathematical curves.
http://fergusmurray.members.beeb.net/interact.htm
The Dynamical Systems and Technology Project at Boston University has several Java applets that teach about chaos and fractals.
http://math.bu.edu/DYSYS/dysys.html
gone
www.para.cas.cz/~hubicka/Xaos/
Georgia Tech has several chaos movies, including a double pendulum, wing vibrations, a color-changing chemical oscillator, water wheels, and musical variations from a chaotic mapping.
www.physics.gatech.edu/academics/Classes/4267/movies/
The math department of the Stony Brook State University of New York has a collection of chaos videos, including two video zooms within the Mandelbrot set. The two videos–fractal1.mpg and fractal2.mpg–were made by the University of East Anglia. They recommend the next two sites.
www.math.sunysb.edu/CDproject/OvUM/cool-links/movies.html
David E. Joyce at Clark University has many displays involving chaos and fractals, which are also art.
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/pix/pix.html
Jean-Francois Colonna of Ecole Polytechnique has hundreds of artistic fractal images and animations.
Strange & Complex, The Chaos Hypertextbook™ © 1995-2005 by Glenn Elert. (The links lead to a zillion sites).
http://hypertextbook.com/chaos/
The textbook An experimental approach to nonlinear dynamics and chaos by Nicholas B. Tufillaro, Jeremiah Reilly, and Tyler Abbott (1992) is available online.
http://cnls.lanl.gov/~nbt/Book/node1.html
Clint Sprott of the University of Wisconsin - Madison has an online textbook of chaos.
http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/lectures/cktchaos/
NMAZCA has Fractal art.
http://www.nmazca.com/fractalism/
The University of California Berkeley College of Chemistry Demonstrations Laboratory include images of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky (B-Z) chaotic oscillation
http://www.cchem.berkeley.edu/demolab/images/BZ01.jpg
MyPhysicsLab has computer code and simulations for a double pendulum.
http://www.myphysicslab.com/dbl_pendulum.html
Micael Hart of the University of Surrey has a double pendulum program and solution.
http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/explore/michaelspages/Double.htm
The UCLA Physics Department has a video of a chaotic double pendulum,
http://www.physics.ucla.edu/demoweb/demomanual/mechanics/first_day_demos/chaos.html
and a rotating saddle trap.
http://www.physics.ucla.edu/demoweb/demomanual/mechanics/nonlinear_mechanics/paul_trap.html
Ibiblio has online text and plots at
http://www.ibiblio.org/e-notes/Chaos/contents.htm
and (by Evgeny Demidov)
http://www.ibiblio.org/e-notes/
Paul Nylander animates the double pendulum.
http://www.bugman123.com/Physics/DoublePendulum.m1v
The Center for Polymer Studies of Boston University has several simulations including Forest Fires and Percolation, Fractal Coastlines, Diffusion Limited Aggregation, Random Walk, and a Monte Carlo Estimation of Pi.
http://argento.bu.edu/java/?CFID=15084003&CFTOKEN=48215814
Franz-Josef Elmer of the University of Basel has chaotic pendulum applets.
http://monet.physik.unibas.ch/~elmer/pendulum/lab.htm
Michael Cross of Caltech has online lecture notes from his course in Chaos,
http://www.cmp.caltech.edu/~mcc/Chaos_Course/index.html
has applets for maps,
http://www.cmp.caltech.edu/~mcc/Chaos_Course/Demonstrations.html
coupled quadratic maps,
http://www.cmp.caltech.edu/~mcc/STChaos/QuadMap.html
the Lorenz equations,
http://www.cmp.caltech.edu/~mcc/chaos_new/Lorenz.html
and a simulation of the Chua circuit.
http://www.cmp.caltech.edu/~mcc/chaos_new/Chua.html
chend
While playing Bugs Bunny cartoons in the physics lab, you might refer to the Cartoon Laws of Physics.
http://funnies.paco.to/cartoon.html
The Greek myth of Sisyphus involves the force and work of rocks moving along inclined planes.
http://stripe.colorado.edu/~morristo/sisyphus.html
Eric H. Lee , et., al, of the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics group at the Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign explains that we exert forces by stretching muscles composed of the protein titin, which is a 30,000 amino acid long filament.
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/telethonin/
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/smd_imd/titin/titin-pull-graph.mov
Michael D. Mann’s online textbook The Nervous System In Action explains the actions of muscles. He is at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
http://www.unmc.edu/Physiology/Mann/mann14.html
Have students run the Phet, Mechanics: simulations Ramp and also Forces in 1 Dimension and then write paragraphs explaining what the simulations do, what they have learned from it, and how it helps them understand this physical phenomenon.
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phet/web-pages/simulations-base.html
Gerry Smith of Oregon State University developed a lab experiment to measure the force against the ground as a person jumps and lands.
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/exss323/Force_Lab/indexa.htm
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/exss323/Force_Lab/JUMP.MOV
Robert Full of UC-Berkeley measures the force under each foot of walking insects.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2002/09/rfull/locomotion.html
The University of Minnesota has a video clip of two cars traveling on equally-steep inclined planes except that one path also crosses a valley.
http://groups.physics.umn.edu/demo/mechanics/1D1520.html
http://groups.physics.umn.edu/demo/mechanics/movies/1D1520.mov
NASA astronaut demonstrates the normal force that a circular track exerts on a looping car.
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Video/car.mpg
The University of Pennsylvania shows what happens to a looping car when the normal force is removed.
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/textbook/movies/track-b.avi
The Physics Force group from the University of Minnesota demonstrate equal and opposite forces in people-riding bumper cars,
http://www.physics.umn.edu/outreach/pforce/bumper2.mov
and show the inertia of a projectile shot straight up from a moving car,
http://www.physics.umn.edu/outreach/pforce/Howitzer.mov
and show the inertia of a log having a nail driven into it,
http://www.physics.umn.edu/outreach/pforce/Nailhead.mov
and demonstrate the bed of nails,
http://groups.physics.umn.edu/pforce/Bedonails.mov
and demonstrate the relationship between rocket propulsion and friendship.
http://groups.physics.umn.edu/pforce/Humanrocket.mov
Elaine Walker shows the vector sum of 40 forces occurring as dogs pull a sled.
http://mars-frontier.org/7_20_03/IqaluitSledDogs2.mov
The Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre film shows that an Inuvialuit dog team is the vector sum of a half-dozen forces pulling on a sled.
http://pwnhc.learnnet.nt.ca/inuvialuit/placenames/video/dogsled.ram
V.L. Plano Clark, M. W. Plano Clark, C.J. Moore, R.G. Fuller, and C.R. Lang from the University of Nebraska compare car stopping forces for seatbelts and air bags.
http://physics.unl.edu/~rpeg/Labs/Alg-Lab2.pdf
Bryan A. Luther of Concordia College gives several examples of string tension,
http://www.cord.edu/dept/physics/p128/lecture99_13.html
and various force problems and free-body diagrams.
http://www.cord.edu/dept/physics/p128/lecture99_14.html
The Hockaday School has a video clip showing how your apparent weight changes while riding in a helicopter.
http://home.hockaday.org/HockadayNet/academic/physics/einstuniv/VideoClips/Helicopter.mov
Mr. Schlangen of the Lake Superior School District in Two Harbors, MN has a video clip demonstrating the inertia of cooked and un-cooked eggs (FC 2.71).
www.isd381.k12.mn.us/THHS/schlangen/InertiaEgg1.mpg
Mr. Schlangen also demonstrates a Hewitt Inertia Hat.
www.isd381.k12.mn.us/THHS/schlangen/NewtonsLaws2.mpg
And Mr. Schlangen explosively propels a plastic bottle, with and without the assistance of a brick.
www.isd381.k12.mn.us/THHS/schlangen/NewtonsLaws3.mpg
Mr. Fix of the Zenith Academy has a video clip illustrating the inertia of items–including cubes, coins, water-filled beakers, books, and eggs–having the ground pulled out from under them.
www.rocklin.k12.ca.us/staff/dfix/zenith/handouts/egg_inertia.mov
Everyday examples of inertia. Drop an object within a moving car, train, boat, or plane. The object falls straight to the floor. For example, flipping a coin while riding in an airplane at 600 mph (1,000 km/h) does not result in the coin smashing into the back of the plane at high speed. While driving down the highway, tossed coins and passenger flies do not smash into the back window and then land in the road behind the car.
This NASA video clip shows that space-walking astronauts are not left behind when they step out of their spaceship.
www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Video/shut.mpg
This NASA clip shows the inertia of astronauts while rockets accelerate their spaceship.
www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Video/thrust.mpg
NASA has many video clips showing the inertia of objects traveling within space shuttles.
www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Video/
This Open Video Project video clip by NASA explains how space travelers and roller coaster riders experience g-forces and weightlessness.
www.open-video.org/details.php?videoid=6412
Jay Groh has a roller coaster simulation.
http://www.jaygroh.com/files/zdtvrcpromo.mpg
The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics has video clips several mechanical systems,
http://courses.ncssm.edu/physics/video.htm
including looping cars.
http://courses.ncssm.edu/physics/video/loop.htm
Yutaka Sumino has a video clip of a drop of oil looping around a water-filled glass.
http://www.chem.scphys.kyoto-u.ac.jp/nonnonWWW/sumino/oilwater/rotation.mpg
Patrick H. Canan's book A Beginner's Guide to Classical Physics included numerous problems involving forces.
http://www.csd509j.net/chs/departments/science/physics/data/chaps/ch05.html
Newton’s laws of motion and the conservation of momentum, energy, mass, and charge are all that is needed to make computer models of systems ranging from fluid flow past airplanes to beating hearts. The volume comprising the modeled system is dividing into small cubes containing the material of the system and then Newton’s laws and the conservation laws are applied to each individual cube and to its neighbors. Each cube affects its neighbors. For example, suppose fifty people stand side-by-side but one-step apart while holding out-stretched hands. If one man in the middle tugs on the hand of the neighbor to his right, he necessarily tugs also on the neighbor to his left and this tug will propagate down the line from neighbor to neighbor. Two- or three-dimensional systems are modeled using a grid of interacting neighbors, as shown in this NCHC model of a car hitting a wall.
www.nchc.org.tw/en/htdocs/core_technology/application_research_develop/visualization/vr_video_play.php?video_title=Car%20Impact&file_name=car.mpg (Click ‘Results’.)
Here is the NCHC neighbor-grid for a model of an airplane.
A. Parsons shows the mesh used to animate a person or animal.
http://a.parsons.edu/~nol/demoreel2005/reel_2005_web_medium.mov
After calculating the pressure, temperature, and speed and such of each cube within the grid, those physical parameters can be visualized using color scales–for example, blue might represent a value between eight and nine while green represents a value between seven and eight. Here is colored grid of the NCHC model of a tanker.
The math department of the Hamburg University has many animations of vehicle motion.
http://www.math.uni-hamburg.de/home/gerdts/movies.htm
For example,
www.math.uni-hamburg.de/home/gerdts/FILME/BMW_640x480_kurs1_SCHLEUDERN2.mpg
(Biomechanics) The article About the Mechanics of Shoulder Stability, by the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Sports Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle has several movies showing the forces on knees and shoulders.
Nano-World explains friction.
http://www.nano-world.org/Events/beyond_einstein/en/frictionmodule/content
Georgia Tech has images of the atomic interactions that create friction.
http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/scivis/research/atom/atom.html
Dr. Finkenthal of Palomar College discusses friction and solves a few sample problems from the textbook by Tipler.
http://science.palomar.edu/physics/Physics230/Tutor/Tutor11.html
In their report Relationship between Winter Road Surface Conditions and Vehicular Motions
Measured by GPS-Equipped Probe Vehicles, Takashi Nakatsuji and Akira Kawamura of Hokkaido University use GPS-equipped taxis to measure tire friction throughout town.
http://www.ltrc.lsu.edu/TRB_82/TRB2003-000757.pdf
Harvey JT, et. al., of the University of Ballarat in Victoria, Australia won an Ignoble Prize, see www.improbable.com, for their research An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces.
Larry Strawhorn calculates that worn brake lining reduces its frictional braking force by 22%.
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/testing/brakes/1993BrakeLiningResRpt/pages/AppA.htm
A brake manufacturer plots the coefficient of friction versus temperature for a racing-style brake pad.
http://www.satisfiedbrakes.com/motorsports/products/gs4.html
The manufacturer MAN gives some formulas involved in car racing and towing.
http://manted.mn.man.de/manted/aufbaurichtlinien/pdf/calculations_gb.pdf
James Ringlein and Mark O. Robbins explain how to teach about friction in their article Beyond Amontons- Tools to Enrich the Teaching of Friction from 2003..
http://www.pha.jhu.edu/groups/mrsec/friction/Ringlein.pdf
FAA and NASA measure airport runway friction under various circumstances.
http://oea.larc.nasa.gov/trailblazer/SP-4216/chapter8/ch8-3.html
Dag Anders Moldestad discusses efforts to reduce friction on skis, canoes, and kayaks, and other boats. He says that one-third of the energy used in by civilization does work against friction.
http://folk.ntnu.no/dagam/personlig_presentasjon/personlig_info.html
http://www.autosock.com/default.aspx?did=9050517&title=Friction
A Wikipedia photo of foam cushions helps illustrate the molecular basis of friction.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image%3AIncommensurabilit%C3%A9_2.jpg
yyy
Richard Vawter of Western Washington University has an animation explaining friction,
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~vawter/PhysicsNet/QTMovies/Dynamics/FrictionOnBlockMain.html
and for an object pressed against a wall,
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~vawter/PhysicsNet/QTMovies/Dynamics/BlockOnWallMain.html
and lists some values of friction coefficients.
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~vawter/PhysicsNet/Topics/Dynamics/CoefficientsFriction.html
Brown University explains much about friction.
http://www.engin.brown.edu/courses/en3/Notes/Statics/friction/friction.htm
Jim Stewart of Western Washington University asks second-graders to explain friction.
http://newton.physics.wwu.edu/jstewart/scied390/movies/Friction_experiment.mov
Friction in biological systems occurs as bones, lungs, and hearts move past adjacent materials. This is the field of biotribology. Research is conducted at the University of Aveiro.
http://www.mec.ua.pt/machining/Biotribology_Mactrib.htm
Dan Boye of Davidson College explains stick-slip motion.
http://webphysics.davidson.edu/faculty/dmb/PY430/Friction/stick-slip.html
Heidi Hereth of the University of New South Wales has an animation of the stick-slip motion resulting from a violin bow scraped across a string.
http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/Bows.html
Cislunar Aerospace, Inc. explains the propulsion of an octopus, jellyfish, clam, seal, turtle, and sea-lion.
http://wings.avkids.com/Book/Animals/instructor/marine-01.html
Larry Gladney at the University of Pennsylvania has an animation that shows an elevator with a counterweight,
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/textbook/movies/1hw38.avi
and a complex Atwood device.
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/textbook/movies/1hw39.avi
To demonstrate the Coriolis force, the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have filmed the trajectory of a ball tossed on a rotating platform.
www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~kushnir/MPA-ENVP/Climate/lectures/gen_circ/coriolis.mpg
Which is part of their online guide.
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/fw/crls.rxml
Marko Horbatsch of York University in Toronto, Ontario has a video clip showing the Coriolis effect on a pendulum above a rotating platform.
http://www.yorku.ca/marko/PHYS2010/Clips/Coriolis.MPG
David M. Harrison of the University of Toronto Physics Department shows the forces on a leg while a person is standing or limping. He recommends R.K. Hobbie’s Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology (Wiley, 1978, ISBN 0-471-03212-3), where more biological systems can be found.
http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/HipForces/HipForces.html
Each of two Pratt & Whitney JT8D-7 airplane engine provides 14,000 lbs thrust to accelerate a 727 aircraft (model year 1967) having a gross take-off weight of 97,800 lbs.
http://oea.larc.nasa.gov/trailblazer/SP-4216/specs.html
The math department of the Hamburg University has an animation of a chain hanging from a moving car.
http://www.math.uni-hamburg.de/home/gerdts/FILME/CHAIN_REAL.mpg
Raman Pfaff of the University of New Haven has an animation of pendulum motion on other planets.
http://physci.kennesaw.edu/javamirror/explrsci/dswmedia/harmonic.htm
The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee shows how the x and y components of string tension vary in a swinging pendulum.
http://www.sewanee.edu/physics/PENDULUM.htm
http://www.sewanee.edu/physics/PendulumMovie1.mov
Todd Busse of Wenatchee High School has a video explanation of the forces on a pendulum.
Michael Hart discusses spinning tops and the standard pendulum systems,
http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/explore/michaelspages/Netscape_Index.htm
for example, the spherical pendulum.
http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/explore/michaelspages/Spherical.htm
Michael R. Gallis and Dr. Ping Wang of Penn State University have animations of a conical pendulum,
http://rt210.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/mech/conical_pendulum_pretty.avi
and the forces on a banked airplane,
http://rt210.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/mech/bank_flight.avi
and the forces on a maneuvering airplane.
http://rt210.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/mech/flight_3D.avi
In the article Free-Body Diagrams Revisted (The Physics Teacher, 37, Oct 1999), Glenn A Carlson of St Charles Community College shows several systems that can be used to practice making free body diagrams in 1D and 2D systems,
http://www.stchas.edu/faculty/gcarlson/physics/docs/FreeBodyDiagrams/FBD_LinearMotion.pdf
http://www.stchas.edu/faculty/gcarlson/physics/docs/FreeBodyDiagrams/FBD_LinearMotionSolutions.pdf
and in centripetal problems.
http://www.stchas.edu/faculty/gcarlson/physics/docs/FreeBodyDiagrams/FBD_CircularMotion.pdf
http://www.stchas.edu/faculty/gcarlson/physics/docs/FreeBodyDiagrams/FBD_CircularMotionSolutions.pdf
E. Etkina, A Van Heuvelen, D. Brookes have a video showing how the tension in a pendulum string varies while the pendulum is swinging,
http://paer.rutgers.edu/PT3/experiment.php?topicid=5&exptid=59
and they create a “centripetal force” by frequently hammering a bowling ball such that it moves in a circle,
http://paer.rutgers.edu/PT3/experiment.php?topicid=5&exptid=56
and use a rope to pull a skater into circular motion,
http://paer.rutgers.edu/PT3/experiment.php?topicid=5&exptid=39
and demonstrate the path of an object released from centripetal motion,
http://paer.rutgers.edu/PT3/experiment.php?topicid=5&exptid=57
and show two hand-holding skaters in orbit around each other,
http://paer.rutgers.edu/PT3/experiment.php?topicid=5&exptid=58
Richard Vawter of Western Washington University shows the complicated motions of the masses in a double pendulum.
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~vawter/PhysicsNet/QTMovies/Kinematic/ComplexMotionMain.html
The HyperPhysics website explains centripetal force,
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/cf.html
and give values for the coefficient of friction on icy surfaces.
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/GennaAbleman.shtml
Richard Fitzpatrick of University of Texas at Austin has a worked example of two strings tied at an angle to two masses held together by a third string.
http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/301/lectures/node51.html
Mr. Kuhlman shows that acceleration points in the direction of the force applied to a spool of thread.
The Illinois Institute of Technology lists some unusual motions for the class to discuss.
http://www.iit.edu/~smart/acadyear/miscmech.htm
Ivy Hall students ride hovercraft that cancels gravity with air force.
http://www.ivyhall.district96.k12.il.us/ivyweb/science/grfx/hover.mov
A. John Mallinckrodt of Cal Poly Pomona has an animation of two masses connected by a spring.
http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm/ip/drvnsho.mov
Stephen Heppell has many simulations about Newtonian Mechanics.
http://rubble.heppell.net:16080/simulations/newton_home.htm
The graphics Department at the University of Illinois - UC demonstrate what can be done with mesh models.
http://graphics.cs.uiuc.edu/~kho/sketching_mesh_deformations.mov
In developing a liver surgery simulator, the force with which a liver resists indentation by a probe is measured versus the indentation distance. Work by Jaydev P Desai of Drexel University.
http://prism.mem.drexel.edu/desai/MIS.htm
Lynette A. Jones and her students in the BioInstrumentation Lab at MIT have written the article Human Sensitivity and Sensory Illusions. The touch threshold for a person is the minimum force per unit area that can be perceived. As we grasp and begin lifting an object, the force with which we grasp that object depends on a quick determination of its weight, its compressibility, and of how slippery is its surface. The maximum grasping force is also measured. Robots have to be designed to perform the same task.
http://bioinstrumentation.mit.edu/jones/pages/Actual/mealani/Sensitivity.html
Dave McShaffrey of Marietta College discusses the forces involved in the movement of creatures large and small.
http://www.marietta.edu/~mcshaffd/aquatic/sextant/loco.htm
In his article Locomotion on the Water Surface, Robert B. Suter of Vassar College describes the propulsive forces of spiders walking on water. He includes a plot of speed versus mass.
http://faculty.vassar.edu/suter/1websites/sutersite/Locomotion/index.htm
Walter Fendt has an applet that explains centripetal forces on a carousel,
http://www.walter-fendt.de/ph14e/carousel.htm
explains uniform circular motion.
http://www.walter-fendt.de/ph14e/circmotion.htm
has an animation of projectile motion and vectors,
http://www.walter-fendt.de/ph14e/projectile.htm
animates Newton’s Cradle,
http://www.walter-fendt.de/ph14e/ncradle.htm
and has an animation of one mass pulled along the table while tied by a pulley to a falling mass.
http://www.walter-fendt.de/ph14e/n2law.htm
The Physics Department of Sir Wilfred Grenfell College animates Newton's Second Law in a pulley and two-mass system,
http://www.swgc.mun.ca/physics/physlets/newton2_cart.html
and for at mass moving down a frictional incline with other mass hanging over a pulley:
http://www.swgc.mun.ca/physics/physlets/friction.html
The Department of Physics of the University of Guelph has a force diagram tutorial.
http://www.physics.uoguelph.ca/tutorials/fbd/FBD.htm
Physics Education Technology project at the University of Colorado has simulations that explain Masses & Springs,
http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/massspringlab/MassSpringLab2.swf
the inclined plane,
http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/theramp/theramp.jnlp
and force.
http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/force1d/force1d.jnlp
Franz-Josef Elmer of the University of Basel has a stick-slip and friction applet. (Geologists sometimes use this as a model of earthquake occurences.)
http://monet.physik.unibas.ch/~elmer/flab/
Fu-Kwun Hwang from the National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, Taiwan has an applet that lets you stack bricks in an arching manner.
http://www.phy.ntnu.edu.tw/ntnujava/index.php?topic=10.0
Attach a balloon to a straw, pass a wall-tied string through the straw, and then let the air exhaust from the balloon to propel it along the string.
http://www.efluids.com/efluids/gallery_exp/exp_pages/Balloon.jsp
Chris Laurel simulates a system of particles which repel each other at close distances and attract each other when they're far away. You can click on a particle and drag it around with an 'elastic' line or add repulsive particles.
http://www.shatters.net/~claurel/java/particle/index.html
and
http://www.shatters.net/~claurel/java/fluid/index.html
Paul Nylander describes how to model a cloth as a 2D system of springs and masses.
http://freespace.virgin.net/hugo.elias/models/m_cloth.htm
Scott Schneider of Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan has physlets that show the forces on a pushed sled,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/force_sled1.shtml
a mass hanging from two angled cables,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/hanging_mass1.shtml
a bee on an inclined plane,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/incline1.shtml
the spring force,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/spring.shtml
sled with unrevealed friction,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/force_sled2.shtml
sled with adjustable friction,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/force_sled3.shtml
mass on top of other mass being pulled,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/fric1.shtml
and a mass sliding into friction patch.
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/fricpatch1.shtml
The Society of Physics Students at Chico State University exhaust a fire extinguisher to propel a tricycle,
http://www.phys.csuchico.edu/sps/activities/rocket_trike.html
and drop pumpkins from a rooftop.
http://www.phys.csuchico.edu/sps/activities/pumpkin_drop.html
Phillip R. Dukes of the University of Texas at Brownsville has applets that explain Force Diagrams and Newton's Second Law,
http://pdukes.phys.utb.edu/PhysApplets/forcediagram/forcediagram.htm
Newton's Third Law,
http://pdukes.phys.utb.edu/PhysApplets/Newtons3rdLaw/newtons3rd.html
period versus length of a simple pendulum,
http://pdukes.phys.utb.edu/PhysApplets/pendulum/Pendulum.htm
showing the displacement, velocity, and acceleration of a mass on a spring,
http://pdukes.phys.utb.edu/PhysApplets/springWave/springWave.html
and the damped motion of a mass on a spring when the mass, spring constant, or damping is varied.
http://pdukes.phys.utb.edu/PhysApplets/MassOnSpring/MassOnSpring.htm
The Physics and Astronomy Animations Project of Penn State - Schuylkill explains the forces within a system of two masses tied by a string,
http://phys23p.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/mech/free_body.avi
and the components of weight for a mass on an inclined plane.
http://phys23p.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/mech/weight_normal_ramp.avi
Estimate the force and trajectory of these catapult systems.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy0gb16apZQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YVSXRETml4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqNl1PgAb_c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8cIM2QQLyc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GPJ6E161OA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt_7NCcx5iA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPW4yiQpKKQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp3wf8Fe3Hg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuC6jeKjTdg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIMh_PjKV6o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQyWc-RDNb8
chend
7 Impulse, Momentum, and Collisions
J. S. Havinga of Havinga Software, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, (email: j.havinga@havingasoftware.nl phone: +31 24 3501783) has animated a car shattering a wall (FC 2.5) at various speeds.
http://www.havingasoftware.nl/software/ThreeDimSim/ex2/breakthru.htm
Drew Dolgert and Michael Fowler at the University of Virginia has made a flash animation that illustrates two-dimensional collisions.
http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/more_stuff/Applets/Collision/jarapplet.html
The Physics Force group from the University of Minnesota demonstrate equal and opposite forces in people-riding bumper cars,
http://www.physics.umn.edu/outreach/pforce/bumper2.mov
and stop a 50-mph egg without breaking it.
http://www.physics.umn.edu/outreach/pforce/Eggplatesheet.mov
In their report High-Speed Passenger Train Crashworthiness and Occupant Survivability, J. W. Simons and S. W. Kirkpatrick calculate forces and impulses during train crashes.
http://www.arasvo.com/papers_staff/IJC98_HSR.pdf
Goalfinder has an animation of the elastic collisions in a series of pendulums.
http://www.goalfinder.com/Downloads/Elastic%20collision_1.swf
Raman Pfaff of the University of New Haven has an animation of colliding pucks that can be magnetized.
http://physci.kennesaw.edu/javamirror/explrsci/dswmedia/2dcollis.htm
The Computer Sciences Department at Cornell University model collisions among billiard balls.
http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/Courses/cs417-land/SECTIONS/dynamics.billards.mpg
Stuart Hutton of Lyon College has an animation of an inelastic collision
Michael J. Holst from UCSD and collaborators have developed a finite element software package called MC,
http://scicomp.ucsd.edu/%7emholst/physics/sc.html
and have a video of the collision of playing cats that can be analyzed by our students.
http://scicomp.ucsd.edu/%7emholst/personal/video/cat_figh.avi
Wake Forest University has several video clips that demonstrate collisions in a Newton’s Cradle and demonstrate the effect of tossing an object back and forth between tow persons on skates.
http://www.wfu.edu/physics/demolabs/demos/avimov/bychptr/chptr3_energy.htm
The Harvard faculty explains how to break boards with a fast karate chop.
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~scdiroff/lds/NewtonianMechanics/KarateBlow/KarateBlow.html
Dennis F. Houk of West Shore Community College has an animation of a pendulum bouncing off the wall of its freely moving support,
http://www.westshore.edu/personal/dfhouk/webmovies/pendcart.mov
and animations of one- and two-dimensional elastic or inelastic collisions.
http://www.westshore.edu/personal/dfhouk/physicsweb/physcimov.html
In a Wake Forest University video, two persons on roller blades toss a pillow back and force between them. Each person gains momentum with each toss and catch of the pillow,
http://www.wfu.edu/physics/demolabs/demos/avimov/mechanics/roller_blade_momentum/rollerblades.MPG
and they have many other videos of linear and angular momentum.
http://www.wfu.edu/physics/demolabs/demos/avimov/bychptr/chptr3_energy.htm
West Bonner Schools in Priest River, Idaho has a simulation of a Newton’s Cradle.
http://www.sd83.k12.id.us/newtons_cradle.swf
Mr Mahanakorn demonstrates the bed of nails and hammer blow.
http://www.mut.ac.th/~physics/PhysicsMagic/nails.htm
David G. Alciatore of Colorado State University - Fort Collins has numerous videos.
http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~dga/high_speed_video/index.html
Here is a video of crash test dummies in a collision.
http://www.archive.org/stream/crashdummies1/crashdum2.rm
try
http://www.ncac.gwu.edu/research/anim/Taurus_to_Taurus_Airbags_Dummies_Seatbelts.mpeg
A new finite element model of the 2001 Ford Taurus is now available for download from the FHWA/NHTSA National Crash Analysis Center.
NASA simulates a high speed collision meant to breakup an asteroid that is approaching Earth.
http://nix.larc.nasa.gov/info;jsessionid=sakq9hl0gkh6?id=SVS000558&orgid=6
Gram, Clark, Hegemier, Seible measure impulse and acceleration of building components subjected to blasts.
http://www.mts.com/stellent/groups/public/documents/library/dev_002722.pdf
Scott Schneider of Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan has physlets that show a two-dimensional Center of Mass,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/centermass.shtml
linear momentum in an exploding mass,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/momenta1.shtml
linear momentum in an exploding mass with given initial kinetic energy,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/momenta2e.shtml
elastic linear collisions,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/momenta3.shtml
inelastic linear collisions,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/momenta3c.shtml
and the Center of Mass technique for Elastic/inelastic 2-body collisions.
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/momenta4.shtml
Phillip R. Dukes of the University of Texas at Brownsville has an applet that shows collisions.
http://pdukes.phys.utb.edu/PhysApplets/collisions/Collisions.html
chend
There are many forms of energy, but the total energy of the universe is constant and has the same value of about 1068 Joules that it did at the moment of the Big Bang. (The energy of the Big Bang is given in the table at www.phy.syr.edu/courses/modules/ENERGY/ENERGY_POLICY/tables.html by Gianfranco Vidali of Syracuse University.) By the way, the energy of your body was there at the Big Bang.
Since energy is about all there is to the universe, it is worth a day of class time to explain the big picture of energy. The Sun converts energy stored as mass into motion, heat, and light energy. Sunlight spreads out in all directions. The Earth receives two-billionths of the Sun’s light, and of this received energy, 23% evaporates water to drive the Earth’s water cycle, 1% drives the winds, and 0.023% powers photosynthesis and all life on Earth. Plants are stored sun-energy. Some animals eat the resulting plants while other animals eat the animals that eat the plants. The plant and animal foods we eat provides the energy needed to breathe, walk, think, love, learn, enjoy, and talk. Fossil fuels result from buried plant and animal remains. The electrical energy used in our homes and factories is converted fossil fuel, water, and wind energy, all of which are stored sun-energy. In addition to these energy sources, nuclear powered electrical generating plants convert energy that had been stored as mass. Our civilization runs off all this energy. Each home today uses about one thousand times the energy used in a home just two centuries ago. When people successfully harness fusion power, the power available to each home will soon be 1,000 times as much as we have today. With megawatts of power available to each home, machines can combine carbon and hydrogen and such to make edible organic chemicals and even change “lead into gold.” With such power available to civilization, will anyone work in a factory? What will life be like?
8.1 Teaching and learning tools
Our civilization today runs on about 10 trillion watts. Gianfranco Vidali of Syracuse University has table of the energy and power of various processes, the energy content of various fuels, fuel consumption rates of electrical generating plants, and the worldwide consumption of power.
www.phy.syr.edu/courses/modules/ENERGY/ENERGY_POLICY/tables.html
Kinetic energy results from applying a force through a distance, which is mechanical work. You feel this force in your hand when you accelerate a ball to throw it. While throwing, you apply the force of your hand through a distance of about one arm length. Try it.
W = Fd = (ma)(d) but d = ½at2 so we have W = ½ m(at)2 = ½ mv2 since v=at.
The mechanical work done is equal to the change in kinetic energy. This means that motion is another way to store energy. Kinetic energy is the energy of motion. The motion of a spinning mass is similarly stored energy.
Here is a video clip of Sony’s QRIO robot throwing a ball.
www.sony.net/SonyInfo/QRIO/videoclip/ram/02-44-QR109.ram
You also feel that you are applying a force through a distance when doing pull-ups and pushups and when standing up. We all agree that this work takes energy.
Einstein showed that mass is yet another way to store energy. The William S. Hart Union High School District website has an audio clip of Einstein explaining his equation.
www.csun.edu/~gsl05670/619%20class%20projects/audio_files/einstein_speaks.mp3
Gary L. Gray of the Pennsylvania State University calculates the motion of a pendulum that has an elastic string.
www.esm.psu.edu/courses/emch112h/projects/elastic-pendulum/images/elastic-pendulum.mov
NASA information and video of a pendulum while in motion on the surface of the moon.
www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a14/a14pendulum.html
NASA calculates the energy of an asteroid colliding with Earth.
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_Thinking/asteroid_hit.htm
Waterwheels convert gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy. The Old Sturbridge Village has animations of various water wheels and mills. Visit www.osv.org and click education, for teachers, classroom materials, and then mills and waterpower.
http://www.osv.org/education/WaterPower
See Eric's History of Perpetual Motion and Free Energy Machines.
Eric recommends Donald Simanek's Museum of Unworkable Devices.
www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/unwork.htm
Kevin T. Kilty discusses perpetual motion machines.
Richard Clegg warns that should you invent a perpetual motion machine, “you would be torn apart by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists."
www.richardclegg.org/htdocs/perpetual/perpetual.html
Sam Hokin animates the exchange of kinetic and potential energy in a swinging pendulum.
http://www.bsharp.org/physics/stuff/swings.html
Wake Forest University has a video clip of a lab-room roller coaster.
http://www.wfu.edu/physics/demolabs/demos/avimov/mechanics/rollercoaster/rollercoaster.MPG
In their article Teaching and Learning Physics with Interactive Video, Dean A. Zollman of Kansas State University and Robert G. Fuller of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have video clips of a pole vaulter and of a crash test dummy colliding with an airbag.
http://perg.phys.ksu.edu/dvi/pt/intvideo.html
Steven M. Nesbit of Lafayette College has an article Work and Power Analysis of the Golf Swing.
http://www.tulane.edu/~sbc2003/pdfdocs/0397.PDF
Larry Gladney at the University of Pennsylvania has an animation that shows a bouncing ball with energy loss,
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/textbook/movies/bounce.avi
and incomplete circular tracks that demonstrate inertia.
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/textbook/movies/track-e.avi
Dr. Finkenthal of Palomar College explains derivitives,
http://science.palomar.edu/physics/Physics230/Tutor/Tutor03.html
and the relation between differential and integral calculus and explains the work done by a variable force.
http://science.palomar.edu/physics/Physics230/Tutor/Tutor13.html
A rocking plate as an example of an energy well.
http://www.cavendishscience.org/energy-flash/domino.swf
Physics Education Technology project at the University of Colorado has simulations that explain Masses & Springs,
http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/massspringlab/MassSpringLab2.swf
the inclined plane,
http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/theramp/theramp.jnlp
and Energy Skate Park.
http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/energyconservation/energyconservation.jnlp
Des Penny of Southern Utah University discusses non-uniform circular motion.
http://www.suu.edu/faculty/penny/KeysPaper/KeysPaper.pdf
Noriyoshi plots kinetic and potential energy portions in a spring system.
http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~norimari/science/JavaApp/energy1/e-energy1.html
Metin Sezgin of the Syracuse University Physics Department has an applet that shows the force and energy in a spring.
http://www.phy.syr.edu/courses/mra/Mar97/spring/osc36.html
The Center for Polymer Studies at Boston University shows the potential energy function for interacting molecules.
http://polymer.bu.edu/java/java/intermol/index.html
8.2 Freshman physics is all that is needed to model any system
Newton’s laws of motion and the conservation of momentum, energy, mass, and charge are all that is needed to make computer models of systems ranging from fluid flow past airplanes to beating hearts. The volume comprising the modeled system is dividing into small cubes containing the material of the system and then Newton’s laws and the conservation laws are applied to each individual cube and to its neighbors. Each cube affects its neighbors. For example, suppose fifty people stand side-by-side but one-step apart while holding out-stretched hands. If one man in the middle tugs on the hand of the neighbor to his right, he necessarily tugs also on the neighbor to his left and this tug will propagate down the line from neighbor to neighbor. Two- or three-dimensional systems are modeled using a grid of neighbors, as shown in this NCHC model of a car hitting a wall.
www.nchc.org.tw/en/htdocs/core_technology/application_research_develop/visualization/vr_video_play.php?video_title=Car%20Impact&file_name=car.mpg (Click ‘Results’.)
Here is the NCHC neighbor-grid for a model of an airplane.
After calculating the pressure, temperature, and speed and such of each cube within the grid, those physical parameters can be visualized using color scales–for example, blue might represent a value between eight and nine while green represents a value between seven and eight. Here is colored grid of the NCHC model of a tanker.
Force and the conservation laws are applied to systems of thousands of particles in the same way that we apply them to systems of two particles in freshman courses. For example, the motion of 10,000 gravitationally interacting masses is calculated this way. Given the mass and initial position and momentum of each particle, one can calculate the net force on each particle, let each of them move in that direction for a time-increment, and then repeat the vector sums for many time increments to generate trajectories. Computers sometimes can do this more quickly than we do.
In the computer modeling of a system, the system is covered with an x-y-z grid of cubes having a small size (the sufficiently “small” size is found by halving test sizes until the computed trajectories stops changing). Newton’s laws and the conservation of momentum, energy, mass, and charge are applied to the volumes and surfaces of each cube and then the results are graphically displayed. After computer programming becomes the fourth (mis-spelled) ‘r’ in grade school “reading, riting, rithmetic, and rogramming,” the freshman physics student will program, for example, the gravitational coalescence of an interstellar dust cloud or the flow of air over a lift-generating wing section and then better-understand that these natural laws govern the universe. Until we get around to open source code for this system of partial differential equations, the instructor might want to explain at the board how modeling is done. Here are a few websites containing results from the modeling of various systems that might astound a student enough to hook them on a career in science or engineering. Explain that repeated calculations through many time increments produces the displayed results. The student already knows all that is needed to model complicated systems.
Ageia Technologies makes the computer chip PhysX that is designed to perform the physics calculations needed for realism in video games.
The Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Visualization Group has numerous videos of complex systems.
http://www-vis.lbl.gov/Vignettes
The Taiwan National Center for High-Performance Computing has a variety of visualization from physics, engineering, geology, and biology. www.nchc.org.tw/en/htdocs/core_technology/application_research_develop/visualization//vr_result.php
The Theoretical & Computational Fluid Dynamics Laboratory has many modeling videos.
www.ecs.umass.edu/mie/faculty/perot/movies.htm
The Max Plank Institute has many reports, videos, and animations.
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/mpa/
8.3 Energy in humans and other species
Flip through Steven Vogel’s biomechanics textbook.
Comparative Biomechanics: Life's Physical World (Princeton University Press, 2003)
Animals use energy obtained from food to power their breathing, circulation, movement, nerve function, and temperature regulation. Animals use various physiological and behavioral mechanisms to maintain their body temperature and minimize the loss of heat energy through conduction, convection, radiation, and evaporation. Metabolism is the total of all chemical processes occurring within an organism. Since the Laws of Thermodynamics require that all of these processes release heat, the metabolic rate is a measure of the heat production of an animal. For example, when an animal synthesizes glucose to store energy in a molecule of ATP, 30% of the reaction’s energy is lost as heat to the surrounding materials; when a muscle contracts by using the energy stored in ATP, only 25% to 30% of the available energy goes into the motion of the muscle while the remainder is lost as heat, see www.sinauer.com/anphys/Hill_Ch05.pdf. The metabolic rate is found to be proportional to the 3/4 power of the mass of an animal, which is Kleiber’s law.
Since each liter of oxygen reacting with body fat releases 20,000 Joules of energy, metabolism is measured by measuring oxygen intake while a masked animal is doing various activities. Langman et. al. have done this to measure the energetics of a walking elephant, see http://spot.colorado.edu/~kram/elephant.pdf, which includes a photo of a masked elephant. Langman reports that the energy used in walking is maximum at about 1 m/s in both elephants and humans. (Some anthropologists have postulated that our first bi-pedal ancestors lost their hair because walking generates a lot of heat, as each of us knows.) Metabolism can also be measured in the physics lab by surrounding a “volunteer” with ice and measuring the resulting amount of ice that has been melted into water. Across many species, the surface area of animals varies as the 0.63 power of their body mass, and their basal or resting metabolic rate varies as the 0.75 power of body mass, see K.L. Paradis, et. al., at www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/Sciences/Zoology/AnimalPhysiology/EnergeticsMetabolism/EnergeticsMetabolism.htm. Biochemical reaction rates increase by 10% with every 10 Centigrade degree increase in temperature. (When we have a fever, our temperature raises by 1° Centigrade.) Since our metabolic rate increases after a protein-rich meal, we feel warmer after eating. A Plot of Kleiber’s law and numerous biological scaling laws are given by anaesthetist.com at www.anaesthetist.com/physiol/basics/scaling/Kleiber.htm. See also its web links.
Full, R.J. and Tu, M.S. 1990. The mechanics of six-legged runners. J. exp. Bio. 148, 129-146. Despite differences in body form, the mass-specific energy used to move the center of mass a given distance (0.9J/kg*m) is the same for cockroaches, ghost crabs, mammals and birds. Similarities in force production, stride frequency and mechanical energy production during locomotion suggest that there may be common design constraints in terrestrial locomotion that scale with body mass and are relatively independent of body form, leg number and skeletal type.
http://polypedal.berkeley.edu/twiki/bin/view/PolyPEDAL/MechanicsExp148Abstract
A resting person uses about 100 Watts of power. This amount of heat per second must be radiated away from our bodies (a room can be heated with either light bulbs or people). In his United Nations report Basal Metabolic Rate in Man, J.V.G.A. Durnin of the University of Glasgow shows that about 80% of the energy requirements of a person are needed to operate his or her liver, brain (independent of concentration level), muscles, kidneys, and heart (in that order). See Table 2 Metabolic Rates of Organs and Tissues in Man.
www.fao.org/DOCREP/MEETING/004/M2845E/M2845E00.HTM
Space-walking astronauts are necessarily equipped with their own oxygen supply, making the rate with which they breathe oxygen readily and continually measured while they go about their activities. J M. Waligora and D.J. Horrigan discuss the measured heart rates and calculated metabolic rates of the Apollo 15 Commander during EVA-1.
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-368/s2ch4.htm and figure http://history.nasa.gov/SP-368/p119a.htm
The Science Magazine has more scaling law papers.
Cornell University’s Pediatric Critical Care unit has a basal energy expenditure calculator using the
Harris-Benedict Equation. This equation relates the age, height, weight, and basal metabolic rate of a person.
http://www-users.med.cornell.edu/~spon/picu/calc/beecalc.htm
One ounce (27 grams) of body fat stores 270 calories or 1,130,000 Joules of energy. One pound stores 4,300 calories. See the National Institutes of Health on-line publication Fitness and Exercise for a table of calories burned during various tasks.
http://www.faqs.org/docs/consumer/exercise.html
The U.S. Department of Agriculture gives the caloric, fat, and nutritional contents of most every food.
www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/SR17/sr17_doc.pdf
By the way, here is a list of the ingredients in tobacco cigarettes.
http://www.rjrt.com/smoking/ingredientsCover.aspx
Radhakrishnan also has a comparison of the energy used by swimming, flying, and running animals.
www.pnas.org/content/vol95/issue10/images/large/pq0880446008.jpeg
The Amateur Athletic Foundation has a table of calories used per minute by a 150 pound (68 kg) person doing various activities. For example, a 68 kg person might take one minute to walk up stairs that rise ten meters in elevation will be doing a devilish amount of mechanical work per minute equal to W/t = mgh / t = ( 6664 J/min )( 1 Calorie / 4187 J ) = 1.6 Cal / min. But the efficiency of a person in converting eaten energy into muscular-mechanical work is 10% (20% at best). So the energy needed to be eaten to do this amount of mechanical work is ten times this amount, which is close to the value of 17.5 Calories/minute for walking up stairs as given in this report. Have students bring in food wrappers and convert the indicated Calories to hours spent swimming and running and such.
www.aafla.org/6oic/OlympicCurriculum/math4.pdf
The Harvard School of Public Health website has a table of “Energy requirements of common daily activities” such as playing the piano or vacuuming and a table of “Time for an Average 150 lb Adult to Burn 150 Calories” while walking or mowing the lawn and such activities.
www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/Exercise.htm
L. Gladney of the University of Penn teaches the course “Mechanics for the Health Sciences” and discusses the work, power, and trajectory of a jumping flea.
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/phys1/lectures/lecture8/phys_lecture_8_pg3_1.html
He includes an animation of the jumping flea.
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/textbook/movies/final_flea.avi
Here is another video of a jumping flea.
http://www.jdp.co.uk/content/movies/AnimalGames_FleaJump.mov
In the report Inexpensive Load Carrying by Rhinoceros Beetles, Roger Kram of the University of California at Berkeley describes the measured energy consumption of beetles.
http://spot.colorado.edu/~kram/rhino.pdf
Gary Ritchison of Eastern Kentucky University plots energy usage versus body weight in various species of birds in the report Avian Energy Balance & Thermoregulation.
http://people.eku.edu/ritchisong/birdmetabolism.html
See the report Modelling the energy budget and prey choice of eider ducks by A.G. Brinkman, B. J. Ens, and R. Kats.
http://www2.alterra.wur.nl/Webdocs/PDFFiles/AlterraRapporten/AlterraRapport839.pdf
Snails Save Energy by Re-Using Mucus Trails by the Live Science staff.
http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/070228_snail_mucus.html
8.4 Energy from the Sun powers all processes on the Earth, including life, wind, rain, and electrical power generating plants
Energy from the Sun powers all processes on the earth, from the weather to life. (Geothermal processes get their energy from the radioactive decay of nuclei within the Earth; in fact, the Earth would cool off in a few million years if this radiative heating were to cease.) The Sun’s energy is used to generate electricity through fossil fuel combustion, wind turbines, and hydroelectric plants. The sun is powered by converting mass to energy. Nuclear powered electrical generating plants also do this.
The Earth receives two-billionths of the Sun’s energy output. Sunlight provides 1360 watts per square meter on the top of the Earth’s Atmosphere, where it is either reflected or absorbed by air (see http://landsat.usgs.gov/resources/remote_sensing/images/Transmission.jpg), cloud tops, and ground features, as explained by the University of Michigan Program in the Environment. About 33% of the sun's energy is reflected back into space and 42% heats the atmosphere, surface, and waters. Another 23% evaporates water and drives the Earth’s water cycle, and the remaining 1% drives the winds. The 66% of incoming sunlight that is not directly reflected back into space, is soon re-radiated back into space, leaving a zero net gain of energy. This is the energy cycle of the Earth.
www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/energy1/energy1.html
About 0.0023% of sunlight striking the earth powers photosynthesis and all life on Earth. Of the sunlight falling on the Earth that is absorbed by plant life, about 10% of this energy is later consumed by herbivorous animals, such as rabbits, and 10% of that energy is consumed by the first layer of carnivorous animals, such as coyotes. About 10% of that energy is consumed by the next layer of carnivorous animals, such as mountain lions, see the National Wildlife Federation website at www.nwf.org/yellowstone/index.cfm?photo=2. In summary, about 10% of the energy of each tropic layer powers the next higher level. The sun is the source of all of this energy.
www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/highertrophic/trophic2.html
Phil Fraundorf of the University of Missouri - St. Louis discusses the flow of energy on the Earth.
http://newton.umsl.edu/infophys/lsp.html
Elizabeth Anne Viau of the California State University at Los Angeles calculates the energy landing at various latitudes and the energy flow through the tropic levels.
http://curriculum.calstatela.edu/courses/builders/lessons/less/biomes/SunEnergy.html
The energy emitted by the sun is spread in all directions. Draw a sphere of radius equal to the Earth’s orbit. The energy per square meter is then 1360 W/m2.
The astronomy department at New Mexico State University explains that sunlight glances along the poles of the Earth and hits most intensely at the equator. This can be demonstrated in the classroom by shining a flashlight on a tilted globe of the Earth.
http://astronomy.nmsu.edu/nicole/teaching/ASTR110/lectures/lecture07/slide04.html
The Department of Astronomy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has made a flash animation of sunlight per unit ground area.
www.astro.uiuc.edu/projects/data/Seasons/seasons.html
Project Atmosphere Canada explains why the sunlight per unit ground area varies by the minute, day, and month.
www.msc-smc.ec.gc.ca/education/teachers_guides/module10_sunlight_and_seasons_e.html
W. Bauer explains seasonal heating by showing sun rays striking the Earth during a selected month.
http://lectureonline.cl.msu.edu/~mmp/applist/seasons/cd190b.htm
NASA calculates that each square centimeter of surface area absorbs four times as much sunlight energy during long summer days as occurs during short, winter days when the sun is low.
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_Thinking/sun12b.htm
NASA satellites perform daily measurements of the Earth’s albedo. This is a measure of the reflected portion of incident sunlight.
http://nix.larc.nasa.gov/info;jsessionid=sakq9hl0gkh6?id=SVS002483&orgid=6
Eugene S. Takle and Richard C. Seagrave of Iowa State University explain that the two main factors are the heat output of the sun and the heat-holding properties of the Earth’s atmosphere, which raises the Earth’s surface temperature by fifty degrees Fahrenheit (twenty-degrees Celcius)
http://www.meteor.iastate.edu/gccourse/alumni/chem/evol/text.html .
David P. Stern of NASA explains that uneven heating and the Coriolis force drives the winds around the Earth.
http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Iweather2.htm
The Earth Simulator Center and the Frontier Research System for Global Change have modeled the resulting circulation of air around the globe.
www.es.jamstec.go.jp/esc/eng/atmospheric/move/afes.mpg
NASA explains the hydrologic cycle involving the evaporation of oceans to produce rain that gathers into rivers and flows back to the ocean. Sunlight drives this process. Some of the energy of flowing water and air is converted into electrical energy for use in our homes and factories.
http://watercycle.gsfc.nasa.gov/
The NASA fact sheet Clouds and the Energy Cycle (April 1998) (NF-207) discusses the water cycle and the amount of water in oceans, lakes, and the atmosphere.
http://eospso.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftp_docs/WaterCycle.pdf
NASA made a video to explain the water cycle,
http://gwec.gsfc.nasa.gov/movies/EnergyUncomp640.mpg
shows the ocean currents that help transport heat from the equators to the poles,
http://vathena.arc.nasa.gov/curric/oceans/drifters/topo_arr.gif
measures sea-surface height,
http://topex-www.jpl.nasa.gov/science/jason1-quick-look/
and shows the locations of the ARGO buoy array that measures ocean salinity, column temperature, and current velocities.
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/search/Keyword/OceanCirculation.html
8.5 Energy in our vehicles, homes, factories, and civilization
In the article Locomotion: Dealing with friction, see www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/95/10/5448, V. Radhakrishnan of the Raman Research Institute discusses the energy needed to move cars, planes, and boats and such.
www.pnas.org/content/vol95/issue10/images/large/pq0880446007.jpeg
In his book Nanomedicine, Robert A. Freitas Jr. estimates of the energy stored in a human body.
http://www.nanomedicine.com/NMI/Tables/6.4.jpg
NASA measures speed loss while coasting in a car to calculate the energy used while driving the car.
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_Thinking/jeep_to_estimate.htm
Local, national, and global energy policy is a science and society issue. It’s worth one day of class time to discuss energy policy with your students and fellow citizens. Voting citizens need this information.
The El Paso Solar Energy Association describes photovoltaic, passive, and active energy collection.
Gordon Aubrecht of Ohio State University is the author of Energy (0-13-093222-1, Pearson, 3rd ed., 2003). His website has numerous facts about energy and society.
http://www-physics.mps.ohio-state.edu/~aubrecht/energyblurb.html
U.S. energy sources, consumption, history, and future are discussed by the Energy Information Agency (EIA) of the Department of Energy.
The World Energy Council has information about energy.
http://www.worldenergy.org/wec-geis/default.asp
Greg Bothun of the University of Oregon has lectures and weblinks for his online course in renewable energy sources.
http://zebu.uoregon.edu/2001/phys162.html
Tidal power can be tapped to generate electricity, as done in France, see , and in Canada, see http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-75-1750-11997/science_technology/hydro/clip8
The Ocean Energy Council describes tidal and wind power around the world.
http://www.oceanenergycouncil.com/development.html
The Murdoch University explains the various forms of tidal power capture.
http://wwwphys.murdoch.edu.au/rise/reslab/resfiles/tidal/text.html
The Departement de Recherche sur la Fusion Controlee has an overview of totals for each of today’s possible energy sources.
http://www-drfc.cea.fr/gb/energies/energie02.htm
Where does our nation’s energy come from and what does it go? The EIA report Energy Consumption by Sector Overview shows the 1949-2004 total and percentage of U.S. energy consumed by the industrial, home, transportation, and commercial sectors and also reports the percentage of electrical power generation by each of coal, natural gas, petroleum, nuclear, and alternative energy source.
www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec2_2.pdf
A 1,500 megawatt (the power used by one million homes) nuclear-fired electrical generating plant uses an amount of uranium or plutonium that is about the size of a basketball. It is hard to imagine powering one million homes from a basketball-sized amount of fuel. Coal-fired electrical generating plants burn a trainload of coal every day (Gianfranco Vidali’s energy table, metioned above, says that the plant uses about one hundred 90-ton cars per day.) One quarter of the energy used by such a plant involves the transportation of the coal to the plant. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, each of the six hundred coal-fired, 500 megawatt plants in the U.S. burn about 1.4 million tons of coal per year, see www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c01.html. A pea-sized amount of nuclear material powers a nuclear submarine for a few years. One scientist calculated that a grain-sized amount of nuclear fuel would power an automobile for 100 years. Can you imagine not having to stop for gas in your entire lifetime and not generating a lifetime of pollution from the combustion of gasoline in your car? The joint EIA, DOE, and IEA report Impact of U.S. Nuclear Generation on Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Hagen, Moens, Nikodem explains that 40% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are produced by coal, natural gas, and petroleum fired electrical generating plants while nuclear fired plants emit none. The report states that about 82% of the U.S. energy-related carbon emissions stem from the combustion of fossil fuels.
www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/analysis/ghg.pdf
The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that the percentage of electricity generated by nuclear power is about 20% in the U.S. but 80% in France. The percentage is larger than 20% in 17 other nations. The agency’s 2003 report Energy, Electricity and Nuclear Power Estimates for the Period up to 2030 shows the percentage of electricity generated by nuclear power in various nations, see Figure 1.
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/RDS1-25_web.pdf
The EIA Annual Energy Review tabulates energy sources.
www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/overview.html
The consumption of each sector is further categorized.
www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/consump.html
The EIA report Energy Imports, Exports, and Net Imports 1949-2004 shows our energy trend.
www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec1_10.pdf
The EIA report Motor Vehicle Mileage, Fuel Consumption, and Fuel Rates, Selected Years, 1949-2003 shows how car and truck gas mileage has changed through the years.
www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec2_23.pdf
The EIA report Total Energy Consumption in U.S. Households by Climate Zone, 2001 shows the amount of each type of fuel used in the regions of the U.S.
www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2001/ce_pdf/enduse/ce1-1c_climate2001.pdf
The EIA report End-Use Consumption of Electricity 2001 shows the percent of electricity consumption in the home by water heaters, air conditioners, space heaters, lights, and various appliances.
www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2001/enduse2001/enduse2001.html
The EIA Manufacturing Energy Consumption Survey has figures for energy consumption by industry.
www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/mecs/contents.html
Which European nations are net energy importers and which are exporters, and what are the sources of energy? The EIA’s Country Analysis Brief for the European Union has the answer.
www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/European_Union/Energy.html
The EIA Country Analysis Briefs compare the production and consumption of energy in various countries.
www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/contents.html
and
www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/contents.html
The International Atomic Energy Agency reports that as of January 2006, there are 443 nuclear power plants in operation with a total capacity of 370 gigawatts and there are 24 nuclear power plants are under construction. The agency reports the number of nuclear reactors in each nation.
www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/NuclearPower/table_of-reactors.pdf
Water is either kept heated 24-hours per day or it is heated only on demand. Compare the energy consumption of U.S. and European water heating approaches.
The European Commission’s JOULE-THERMIE programme.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy_transport/atlas/htmlu/hotdintro.html
They also give figures for European energy consumption by industry.
http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy_transport/atlas/htmlu/ioinden.html
See also, EU SAVE II Project Promotion of Energy Efficiency in Circulation Pumps, especially in Domestic Heating Systems.
www.eci.ox.ac.uk/lowercf/pdfdownloads/EUsave_circulation_Task1.pdf
See also, Technical Study on Improving on Electric Water Heater Efficiency for the Australian Greenhouse Office by Energy Partners in association with Sustainable Solutions Pty Ltd and The University of New South Wales, May 2000.
www.energyrating.gov.au/library/pubs/tech-ewhsmall2000.pdf
The energy consumption of household appliances.
Cool Appliances, Policy Strategies for Energy Efficient Homes by the International Energy Agency, 2003.
www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2000/cool_appliance2003.pdf
See also Changes in Residential Energy Consumption Patterns and Future Trend in Japan, by Hidetoshi Nakagami , Akio Tanaka , Chiharu Murakoshi, Osamu Ishihara.
www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2001/ce_pdf/waterheat/ce4-1c_climate2001.pdf
The Canadian Industrial Energy End-Use Data and Analysis Centre has information about energy in Canada.
www.cieedac.sfu.ca/CIEEDACweb/index.php
The Web Japan Gateway for all Japanese Information includes the report Electric Energy Consumption by Industry (F.Y.1986-2004)
http://web-japan.org/stat/stats/07IND33.html
The Solar Cooking Archive explains how to cook food using sunlight.
The Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory provides an online, home energy audit that can reduce your home energy costs by half.
The U.S. Department of Energy provides energy information, including a home energy audit.
http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/energy_audits/index.cfm/mytopic=11170
The heating and cooling of your home depends on the temperature and the numbers of hours or days at which that temperature occurs, which is given in terms of “degree days.” This is explained by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, which also provides data from various cities. (Degree days are also useful in calculations involving crop growth or insects populations.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/cdus/degree_days/
Environmental Valuation & Cost-Benefit News.
http://www.envirovaluation.org/
This report shows a commercial building requires $1.5 million per year in utilities. It adds 2% to construction costs to build “green” buildings which then save 20% - 50% on annual utility usage and costs.
Here are two companies that sell electric vehicles.
LEDs produce light much more efficiently than do incandescent bulbs.
http://lighting.sandia.gov/XlightingoverviewFAQ.htm
chend
9 Torque, Rotation, and Rotational Motion
J. S. Havinga of Havinga Software, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, (email: j.havinga@havingasoftware.nl phone: +31 24 3501783) uses motion equations to animate billiard ball collisions (FC 2.27).
http://www.havingasoftware.nl/software/ThreeDimSim/ex6/billiard.htm
J. S. Havinga of Havinga Software, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, (email: j.havinga@havingasoftware.nl phone: +31 24 3501783) uses equations of motion to show the results of a car driving over a book, including the torque and rotation of the book.
http://www.havingasoftware.nl/software/ThreeDimSim/ex3/simple_car.htm
J. S. Havinga of Havinga Software, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, (email: j.havinga@havingasoftware.nl phone: +31 24 3501783) shows that if a top-heavy top or Tippy-top (FC 2.73) is placed heavy side down and then spun, after some revolutions it will turn itself such that the heavy side is up.
http://www.havingasoftware.nl/software/ThreeDimSim/ex8/tippetop.htm
Tops, Precession
Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
http://www.nat.vu.nl/CondMat/rw/mech03/
Marko Horbatsch of York University in Toronto, Ontario has a video clip showing the Coriolis effect on a pendulum above a rotating platform,
http://www.yorku.ca/marko/PHYS2010/Clips/Coriolis.MPG
and a video clip showing precession.
http://www.yorku.ca/marko/PHYS2010/Clips/Precession1.MPG
So that its occupants will feel their normal earth weight, what should be the rotational speed of a spaceship whose diameter is as large as your campus? Here is a NASA painting of such a ship.
www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/70sArt/AC76-0492.1.jpeg
David G. Alciatore of Colorado State University in Fort Collins has numerous video clips of billiards along with some pendulum examples.
www.engr.colostate.edu/~dga/video_demos/dynamics/
NASA astronaut asks if a yoyo will work in space,
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Video/yoyo.mpg
and then spins himself in space
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Video/spin.mpg
Can a floating astronaut turn around in space?
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Video/drill1.mpg
Sam Hokin explains the conservation of angular momentum using the example of a spinning figure skater. Students might estimate values from the included video clip.
http://www.bsharp.org/physics/stuff/skater.html
http://www.bsharp.org/physics/stuff/sspin2.avi
The Harry S. Truman College has a billiard ball simulation.
http://faculty.ccc.edu/tr-scimath/physics.htm
The University of California at Berkeley has a video clip of the motions of a person in free-spinning chair who is holding and tilting a wheel that is spinning,
http://www.mip.berkeley.edu/movies/physics/wheel.mpg
and a video of a tippy-top that inverts while spinning.
http://www.mip.berkeley.edu/movies/physics/top.mpg
In the article Free-Body Diagrams Revisted (The Physics Teacher, 37, Oct 1999), Glenn A Carlson of St Charles Community College shows several systems that can be used to practice making free body diagrams for systems in rotational equilibrium,
http://www.stchas.edu/faculty/gcarlson/physics/docs/FreeBodyDiagrams/FBD_RotationalEquilibrium.pdf
The Wake Forest Physics Department has a few video demonstrations of spinning wheels, torque, and gyroscopes,
http://www.wfu.edu/physics/demolabs/demos/avimov/bychptr/chptr3_energy.htm
including a video of a person on a rotatable platform while holding and twisting a spinning wheel.
http://www.wfu.edu/physics/demolabs/demos/1/1q/1Q4030.html
Michael R. Gallis and Dr. Ping Wang of Penn State University animate an inclined plane race of objects of differing moments of inertia.
http://rt210.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/mech/ramped_2.avi
The Nasa website has a video of a spinning person.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NasaNews/ReleaseImages/20030305/angmom.mov
In the article Free-Body Diagrams Revisted (The Physics Teacher, 37, Oct 1999), Glenn A Carlson of St Charles Community College shows several systems that can be used to practice making free body diagrams in dynamic rotational systems.
Describe the forces involved while a skateboarder performs an Ollie maneuver.
http://skatephysics101.tripod.com/physicsinskateboardingtheollie/id4.html
http://www.skateboarding.com/skate/video/0,23430,215105-147596,00.html
Skateboarder Jeremy Menard recommends http://www.exploratorium.edu/skateboarding/ for a video discussion of the physics of skateboarding:
Here is a student project on the physics of gymnastics.
http://www.angelfire.com/sc2/physics212/
Larry Gladney at the University of Pennsylvania has an animated diagram of circular motion,
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/textbook/movies/cirmot1.avi
and an animation of the forces on a circling airplane,
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/textbook/movies/plane.avi
and an animation explaining a moment of inertia integration.
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/textbook/movies/moment.avi
Stuart Hutton of Lyon College has an animation of the right hand rule for angular velocity.
The North Carolina State University (NCSU) Physics DemoRoom has a video clip showing the change in rotational speed as a spinning person moves weights toward or away from the axis of revolution,
http://demoroom.physics.ncsu.edu/multimedia/video/1Q40.10.1.MOV
and several video demonstrations of a book being tossed about its three principle axes.
http://demoroom.physics.ncsu.edu/html/demos/409.html
Oswego City School District has an animation of the center of mass motion of a tossed hammer.
http://regentsprep.org/Regents/physics/phys06/acentomas/centomas.mov
UT Dallas has an animation showing that each of the two stars comprising a double-star system rotate about their common, center of mass.
http://www.utdallas.edu/~pca015000/ISNS_4371/slides/center_mass_binary_star.swf
Catharine H. Colwell of Mainland High School has a video of an arc-shaped mass balancing on its center of mass.
http://online.cctt.org/physicslab/content/PhyAPB/lessonnotes/centermass/PerpendicularGyration.avi
In this University of Maryland video, the marked center of mass of a stick is seen to fall straight to the ground.
http://www.physics.umd.edu/lecdem/outreach/QOTW/vids/c1-21.mpg
David G. Alciatore of Colorado State University discusses the physics of billiards.
http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~dga/video_demos/dynamics/
Wolfram science explains the moment of inertia of objects.
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/topics/AngularMomentum.html
Wolfram science explains the moment of inertia of a cone rotating in each of several directions.
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/MomentofInertiaCone.html
The Department of Physics of the University of Guelph has a torque tutorial.
http://www.physics.uoguelph.ca/tutorials/torque/index.html
Syracuse University has a JAVA interactive tutorial of the vector cross product.
http://www.phy.syr.edu/courses/java-suite/crosspro.html
Melissa Boss of James Madison University has a report about the physics of dance.
http://www.jmu.edu/madisonscholar/feature001.shtml
For center of mass and moment of inertia integrals and problems, see
http://www.mathlab.sunysb.edu/~pkahn/CDDiana/physb/physb.htm
and
http://homepages.ius.edu/WCLANG/m311/fall2005/notes16.5.pdf
problems:
http://johnarner.com/apphysics/week05/lesson05.html
The US Diving Inc., has video clips of angular momentum in high dive competitions.
http://www.usadiving.org/USD_03redesign/media/video.htm
For example, here is Mary Ellen Clark altering her moment of inertia while diving.
http://www.usadiving.org/USD_03redesign/media/wpl_maryellen.WMV
The Pennsylvania State University Engineering Department links to a video of a falling chimney that breaks as it falls,
http://www.esm.psu.edu/courses/emch12/intdyn/activities/kinetics_rigid/chimney_problem/
or
http://www.esm.psu.edu/courses/emch12/intdyn/activities/kinetics_rigid/chimney_problem/chimney2.mov
Brian Feeny of Michigan State University has another chimney video.
http://www.egr.msu.edu/classes/me361/feeny/fallingchimballUIowa.mpeg
Gabriele Varieschi of Loyola Marymount University has a chimney video.
http://myweb.lmu.edu/gvarieschi/chimney/toy2m-forweb.mov
Tightrope walkers get help from the moment of inertia of a stick.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7037167097832343728
If wheels of differing radii make the same number of revolutions, the wheel having the larger radius will travel a greater distance and have a greater speed. For this reason, the pedal wheel of a penny-farthing bicycle has a large radius. See
http://www.ihpva.org/people/tstrike/pennyfast.mpg
or
http://www.davistownmuseum.org/MuseumInterior/0034PR_rightwall.jpg
NASA studied the wobbling motions and other dynamic characteristics of a space station spinning in space. The effects of crew motion and cargo transfer within the station were simulated by an electrically driven mass moving around a track on the torus.
http://nix.larc.nasa.gov/info;jsessionid=sakq9hl0gkh6?id=EL-2002-00322&orgid=1
NASA video of Mars rover motion shows a wheel that is spinning with slipping, see
http://nix.larc.nasa.gov/info;jsessionid=sakq9hl0gkh6?id=PIA07984&orgid=10
or
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/archive/PIA07984.mov
As a star forms, it would flatten out due to its spin if it was not magnetically interacting with the surrounding disk material.
http://nix.larc.nasa.gov/info;jsessionid=sakq9hl0gkh6?id=PIA08626&orgid=10
NASA telescope has direct measurements of a star that is somewhat flattened by its spin.
http://nix.larc.nasa.gov/info;jsessionid=sakq9hl0gkh6?id=PIA04204&orgid=10
Here is a NASA video showing hurricane rotation.
http://nix.larc.nasa.gov/info;jsessionid=sakq9hl0gkh6?id=PIA04383&orgid=10
Motioneering uses tuned mass dampers to reduce sway in skyscrapers by reducing the motion of the center of mass.
http://www.motioneering.ca/Public/TunedLiquidColumnDamperAnimation.aspx
David G. Alciatore of Colorado State University has a video explaining the inverting, tippsy-top.
http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~dga/video_demos/dynamics/Tipse_Top.wmv
NASA has an animation of a millisecond pulsar. The surface of some pulsars reaches a speed of c/5. http://agile.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xte/Snazzy/Movies/millisecond.html
Caltech has an animation of a millisecond pulsar.
http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/LIGO_web/gsfc/gsfc_files/MillisecPulsarShot201.mpeg
Great Valley School has a video of an aircraft rollover maneuver.
http://www.great-valley.k12.pa.us/gvhs/graduation2001/physics/rollover.mov
Paul Nylander animates a billiard break shot,
http://www.bugman123.com/Physics/Pool.m1v
using the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s discussion of the physics of billiard collisions.
http://www.unc.edu/~hanch/yo.htm
Scott Schneider of Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan has physlets that show the angular acceleration of a spinning disk,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/rotkindyn1.shtml
velocity and acceleration vectors for a point on the edge of a spinning wheel,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/rollingwheel.shtml
a bee spiraling in to a hive,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/honeybee.shtml
a rolling race,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/rot_race.shtml
masses hanging from a pulley,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/pulley1.shtml
torque on a diving board,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/divingboard.shtml
hanging sign,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/hangsign1.shtml
and a leaning ladder.
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/ladder.shtml
Des Penny of Southern Utah University discusses Rollover of Sport Utility Vehicles,
http://www.suu.edu/faculty/penny/RolloverPaper/RolloverPaper.pdf
and the rollover ratings for your car.
The Physics and Astronomy Animations Project of Penn State - Schuylkill explains that the Coriolis effect is a deflection of an object's motion due to a rotating frame of reference, and is responsible for the circulation pattern in large storms,
http://phys23p.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/mech/coriolis_earth.avi
show circular motion and centripetal acceleration as a limit of a many-sided polygon,
http://phys23p.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/mech/centripetal.avi
animate a car failing to coast through a loop.
http://phys23p.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/mech/car_vert_fail.avi
show motion on a Merry Go Round,
http://phys23p.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/mech/embederQ2.3301.html
and
http://phys23p.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/mech/embederQ2.3302.html
the precession of a gyroscope,
http://phys23p.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/mech/embederQ2.401.html
the nutation and precession of a gyroscope
http://phys23p.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/mech/embederQ2.402.html
and its wobble,
http://phys23p.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/mech/embederQ2.405.html
chend
Joerg-M. Sautter of Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet in Duesseldorf, Germany has modeled several systems.
http://www.am.uni-duesseldorf.de/~sautter/old/math/
Wolfram Science has the solution and an animation of the double pendulum.
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/DoublePendulum.html
Peter Lynch of the University of Dublin has an animation of the double pendulum.
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~plynch/SwingingSpring/doublependulum.html
Michael Hart animates the double pendulum,
http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/explore/michaelspages/Double.htm
and a pair of spring-coupled pendulums.
http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/explore/michaelspages/Coupled.htm
Scott Schneider of Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan has physlets that shows a sliding pendulum support,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/sliding_pendulum.shtml
coupled masses on springs,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/coupledosc.shtml
coupled oscillators of variable frequencies (Lissajous Figures),
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/2d_oscillator.shtml
air resistance (linear) on a projectile,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/air_resistance.shtml
the damped and driven harmonic oscillator - Fourier series solution,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/osc_fourier.shtml
damped and driven harmonic oscillator,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/osc_damped_driven.shtml
and the damped and driven harmonic oscillator - amplitude graph.
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/osc_damped_driven_amp.shtml
chend
11 The Gravitational Force and Satellite Motion
NASA astronaut asks what do things weigh in space.
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Video/weight.mpg
NASA astronauts do acrobatics in space.
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Video/acrob.mpg
NASA astronauts eat in space.
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Video/mms.mpg
NASA astronaut plays basketball in space.
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Video/bb.mpg
NASA astronauts in space.
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Video/banana.mpg
NASA’s J-Track 3-D is a real-time plot of 500 satellite positions.
http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/jtrack/3d/jtrack3d.html
The Miami University at Oxford, Ohio has a movie that shows a comet colliding with the sun. http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/movies/cometCoronaSun.mov.
J. S. Havinga of Havinga Software, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, (email: j.havinga@havingasoftware.nl phone: +31 24 3501783) animates 3-D satellite motion.
http://www.havingasoftware.nl/software/ThreeDimSim/ex7/satellite.htm
Michael Fowler and his students–Jacquie Hui Wan Ching, Heather Welch, Michael Timmins, and Aris Stylianopoulos–at the University of Virginia have made several flash animations. A planetary motion program that allows one to set initial speeds and distances of planets and then see the resulting orbits.
http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/more_stuff/flashlets/kepler6.htm.
They have animated the annual motions of the inner and outer planets,
http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/more_stuff/flashlets/innerplanets.htm
and
http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/more_stuff/flashlets/outerplanets.htm
They also allow one to try to send a probe from the Earth to Mars
http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/more_stuff/flashlets/ShootMars22.swf
They illustrate the gravitational slingshot effect.
http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/more_stuff/flashlets/Slingshot.htm
They illustrate the phases of Venus as seen from the Earth.
http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/more_stuff/flashlets/PhasesofVenus.htm
The appearance of the moon as it passes through the Earth’s shadow during an eclipse.
http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/more_stuff/flashlets/eclipse3.htm
Michael Fowler at the University of Virginia also made Newton's cannon, to illustrate the speed needed for a satellite to orbit the Earth.
http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/more_stuff/Applets/newt/newtmtn.html
Movie clips of structural implosions at www.implosionworld.com.
A. John Mallinckrodt of Cal Poly Pomona has an Interactive Physics™ explanation of Lagrangian points.
http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm/ip.html#lagrange
Horseshoe-shaped orbits around a set of Lagrangian points, from Space.com.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/second_moon_991029.html
Neptune’s Trojan asteroids orbit at with Neptune at Neptune-Sun Lagrangian points, from Space.com.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060615/sc_space/neptunelinkedtopotentialswarmofasteroids
A. John Mallinckrodt of Cal Poly Pomona explains gravitational boost.
http://www.csupomona.edu/~ajm/ip/grvboost.mov
Tony DiMAuro of San Diego State University has an animation that shows how the speed of a satellite varies in its orbit.
http://tonydude.net/assets/movies/orbit480.avi
Dr Wooley of Eastern Michigan University has an animation of the orbits of the inner planets.
http://www.physics.emich.edu/jwooley/Movies/InnerSolarSystem.mov
George and Marcia Rieke of the University of Arizona have an animation of a moon getting closer than the Roche Limit from its planet,
http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSci102/movies/Ring.mpg
and the merger of two galaxies.
http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSci102/movies/twogalaxymerger%5b1%5d.mpg
Efstratios Manousakis of Florida State University in Tallahassee has animations explaining Keplers’ Laws,
http://www.physics.fsu.edu/courses/fall98/ast1002/section4/
an animation showing Kepler’s law of equal areas,
http://www.physics.fsu.edu/courses/fall98/ast1002/section4/kepler/10_13_27.mov
and many other astronomical things such as the accumulation of planetesimals.
http://www.physics.fsu.edu/courses/fall98/ast1002/section4/solarsystem/06_05_08.mov
Ann Zabludoff of the University of Arizona has an animation of the collision that formed our moon.
http://atropos.as.arizona.edu/aiz/teaching/a204/images/Moon_formation_collision.mov
Due to a resonance with the filling of the bay (like a moving child causing water to slosh within a bath tub), the world’s largest tides occur in the Bay of Fundy.
http://www.thehopewellrocks.ca/english/fundytides.htm
Kyle Forinash of Indiana University Southeasthas photos of “resonance and tidal bores in the Bay of Fundy.”
http://physics.ius.edu/%7Ekyle/stuff/FUNDYBAY.html
Syracuse University Physics Department has created Educational Modules & Simulations, including one about gravity.
http://www.phy.syr.edu/research/education/java/SUorbitnew/SUorbitnew.html
Here is a NASA animation of gravitational accumulation of debris that formed a comet.
http://nix.larc.nasa.gov/info;jsessionid=sakq9hl0gkh6?id=PIA02107&orgid=10
James Schombert of the University of Oregon has an animation of the precession of an orbit.
http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/images/precess.mpg
Glenn Kacprzak of New Mexico State University has a video of two comets colliding with the sun,
http://ganymede.nmsu.edu/glennk/labs/lab3/c2_comets.mpg.mpeg
and a meteor fireball along with a damaged car.
http://ganymede.nmsu.edu/glennk/labs/lab3/fireball.mpg.mpeg
Bruce Land of Cornell University has an simulation of the three-body problem.
http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/Courses/cs417-land/SECTIONS/dynamics.3body.mpg
Uri Wilensky.of Northwestern University has a movie that demonstrates the gravitational effect one large mass has on many smaller bodies.
http://ccl.northwestern.edu/cm/models/gravitation/gravitation1.mov
Saturn's gravitational tidal force on Titan is 400 times greater than that of Earth's moon tugging at our oceans and causes surface winds on Titan that sculpt dunes up to 330 feet high. See the May 5, 2006 issue of the journal Science.
NASA demonstrates what happens to a flame in zero g.
http://microgravity.grc.nasa.gov/combustion/cfm/cfm_intro.htm
Wolfram Science calculates the gravitational self-energy of a spherical mass.
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/SphereGravitationalPotentialEnergy.html
Carl Sagan’s Cosmos episode 13.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-671618929404695355&q=gravitational+force+mass&hl=en
Florida State University has an animation of the gravitational interaction of two galaxies.
http://www.physics.fsu.edu/courses/fall98/ast1002/Galaxies/hv27.mov
Larry Gladney at the University of Pennsylvania has animation that shows how the Earth and Moon orbit about their common center of mass while orbiting about the Sun.
http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/courses/gladney/textbook/movies/orbit.mpg
NASA’s Grace mission measures how the gravitational field of the Earth varies about the surface because of local variations in terrain.
http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/gallery/animations/measurement/measurement.rm
Purdue University students experience zero g in NASA’s training jet.
Students from the University of Wisconsin - Madison have a zero-g ride.
http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~aerogel/zgvideo1.ram
The Summer Institute of the Ohio Supercomputer Center has an animation of many masses that are gravitationally interacting.
http://www.osc.edu/education/su_programs/si/si2004/projects/Parallel-2.mov
Guy Worthey of Washington State University links to an animation of the observed, rapid motion of stars in the center of M32 that reveal the presence of Black Hole,
http://astro.wsu.edu/worthey/astro/html/im-movies/m32anim.mpg
and an animation of the collision of an asteroid near New York City.
http://astro.wsu.edu/worthey/astro/html/im-movies/asteroid-nyc.qt
Robert A. Braeunig has an online textbook of Rocket and Space Technology,
http://www.braeunig.us/space/index_top.htm
including orbital mechanics.
http://www.braeunig.us/space/orbmech.htm
ORBITER is a free, space flight simulator.
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html
JPL explains the basics of space flight.
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/
Chuck DeMets of UW-Madison Department of Geology and Geophysics discusses mountains and the local gravitational force.
http://www.geology.wisc.edu/courses/g112/mtn_roots.html
Scott Schneider of Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan has physlets that animate an object falling through a tunnel that has been dug through the Earth,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/gravity_shm.shtml
circular near-Earth orbits,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/gravity_earthorbit.shtml
elliptical orbits around the Earth,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/gravity_ellipse.shtml
launching from the Earth's surface,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/gravity_launch.shtml
and launching from another planet.
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/gravity_launch2.shtml
Gemini Observatory has an animation of the formation of a solar system.
http://www.gemini.edu/videos/press_releases/pr2005-2/FormationAnimationHR.mov
Clemson University demonstrates that if you put water in a cup that has a hole in the bottom and then drop the water-filled cup, no water will pour out of the hole while both the cup and the water are falling.
http://phoenix.phys.clemson.edu/wise/2001/gravity.mpg
Brian Beckman has a one-hour video explaining the physics of computer games and simulations.
The Web Lecture Archive Project demonstrates that the center of gravity of an object can be found by hanging the object by a string three times, each from a different point.
http://webcast.cern.ch/Projects/WebLectureArchive/HST2002/exp21.rm
The Zuse Institute Berlin has visual plots of the results of their relativity computations.
http://www.zib.de/visual/movies/ART/NSF-768x576.mpg
and
http://www.zib.de/visual/movies/ART/Numrel1999.mpg
and
While on the surface of the moon, NASA astronauts dropped a feather and a hammer at the same time to verify Galileo’s earlier experiments.
http://lava.larc.nasa.gov/MOVIES/LARGE/LV-1998-00046.mov
Newton’s description of gravity and the moon’s orbit is discussed in a portion of the Mechanical Universe series.
http://ctlvideo.ua.edu:8080/ramgen/muab/muab08.smi
The Astronomy Department of Indiana University has several Simulations of gravitationally interacting masses (n-bodies).
http://www.astro.indiana.edu/animations/
The UT Astrophysics website has an applet that allows one to vary the parameters in an ellipse.
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Java/Ellipse.html
The Department of Geosciences of Idaho State University has a two-minute animation of gravitational accumulation.
http://wapi.isu.edu/Geo_Pgt/Mod02_SolarSys/images/nebula.GIF
The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive has a biography of Isaac Newton.
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Newton.html
Physikshow Uni Bonn demonstrates Newton’s apple.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZYmxVzMzF8
University of Surrey has plots real-time satellite orbits with its Satmap programmed by Philip Howson Click on Track satellites live!.
http://www.ph.surrey.ac.uk/satellites/main/teachers_page.html
Noriyoshi has an applet that lets you alter a planet’s speed and position,
http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~norimari/science/JavaApp/e-Planet.html
or make a solar system.
http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~norimari/science/JavaApp/e-SolarSys.html
Fu-Kwun Hwang of the National Taiwan Normal University has an applet that shows Kepler motion.
http://www.phy.ntnu.edu.tw/ntnujava/index.php?topic=9
Phillip R. Dukes of the University of Texas at Brownsville has an animation that shows the direction of the force on the Moon as it orbits the Earth.
http://pdukes.phys.utb.edu/PhysApplets/MoonApp/Moon.html
Chris Mihos’ group shows the realtime display of the collision of galaxies comprised of hundreds of stars.
http://burro.astr.cwru.edu/JavaLab/GalCrashWeb/main.html
chend
12 Waves and Periodic and Vibrational Motion
The Sounds Amazing website of the University of Salford has many videos and simulations of waves, reflection, refraction, and diffractions and such.
http://www.acoustics.salford.ac.uk/feschools/
Caltech Civil Engineering Department studies the effects of earthquakes on building by forcing vibrations in a home. http://ce.caltech.edu/research.html.
Alex Krizhevsky shows the dynamic superposition of two sine waves.
http://thespoon7.tripod.com/wave.htm
Fergus Murray’s Resonata Wave Machine illustrates waves on a spring. He discusses some aspects of periodically driven motion and resonance in buildings, machinery, the human body, plumbing, musical instruments, atoms, electrical circuits, planetary motions, thinking, and bridges.
http://oolong.co.uk/resonata.htm
Physics Education Technology project at the University of Colorado has a user-wiggled string simulation.
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phet/simulations/stringwave/stringWave.swf
Caltech Civil Engineering Department studies the effects of earthquakes on building by forcing vibrations in a home. http://ce.caltech.edu/research.html.
The Newton site has a video clip of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge oscillations.
http://newton.burney.ws/physics/videos/tacoma.mov
Mark Ketchum's Bridge Collapse Page has several Tacoma movie clips and information about a few other bridge collapses.
www.ketchum.org/bridgecollapse.html
Craig Kutil of the College of the Redwoods has an animation showing how the motion of a spring generates a cosine curve and how a point on a spinning circle generate a sin function.
http://online.redwoods.edu/instruct/ckutil/Summer2006/Math25/applets/spring.html
http://online.redwoods.edu/instruct/ckutil/Summer2006/Math25/applets/sincurve.html
Physics Education Technology project at the University of Colorado has a simulation that explains the spring constant.
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/phet/simulations/massspringlab/MassSpringLab2.swf
Richard Vawter of Western Washington University shows position and velocity plots for an animated spring.
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~vawter/PhysicsNet/QTMovies/Oscilations/HooksLawMain.html
Richard Vawter of Western Washington University shows the complicated motions of the masses in a double pendulum.
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~vawter/PhysicsNet/QTMovies/Kinematic/ComplexMotionMain.html
Jack Ord has several applets showing solutions to the classical wave equation for the oscillations of a string.
http://www.kw.igs.net/~jackord/bp/n2.html
Ken Menning of the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point has applets that illustrate superposition and interference and such.
http://www.uwsp.edu/physastr/kmenning/Phys203/Lect31.html
The University of Colorado Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM) program has an applet about the Doppler Effect.
http://stem.colorado.edu/applets/
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign shows how wavelengths change with relative motion.
www.astro.uiuc.edu/projects/data/Doppler/index.html
The Physics Force group from the University of Minnesota discusses people waves and wave energy,
http://groups.physics.umn.edu/pforce/waves.html
and then uses a rope to demonstrate antinode jumping.
http://groups.physics.umn.edu/pforce/Doubledutch.mov
Wake Forest University has several video demonstrations of wave propagation on a Shive machine, the Doppler Effect, sound production by musical instruments, sound propagation, and beat frequencies.
http://www.wfu.edu/physics/demolabs/demos/avimov/bychptr/chptr6_sound.htm
The Department of Physics of the University of Guelph has a simple harmonic motion tutorial.
http://www.physics.uoguelph.ca/tutorials/shm/Q.shm.html
The California and Carnegie Extrasolar Planet Search has an animation illustrating the Doppler effect in a moving star.
http://exoplanets.org/esp/55cnc/new/Doppler.mov
The Rowan Astronomical Observatory has movies that explain wave superposition.
http://elvis.rowan.edu/astronomy/music/movies/
Dan Russell of Kettering University explains superposition and beats.
http://www.kettering.edu/~drussell/Demos/superposition/superposition.html
The Physics Department at Pennsylvania State University -Schuylkill has animations of waves and interference.
http://rt210.sl.psu.edu/phys_anim/waves/indexer_waves.html
Senri International School has video clip that show constructive and destructive interference in transverse and longitudinal waves traveling on a slinky.
http://www.senri.ed.jp/students/physics/
For example, here is the constructive interference of two waves of differing amplitudes.
http://www.senri.ed.jp/students/physics/Movie%20files/constructive-2amp2.wmv
Wondermagnet has a video showing Bessel functions in water.
http://www.wondermagnet.com/images/pool.mpg
The UCLA Physics Department has a video of vibrations of soap film on wire frames that show various modes of oscillation.
Evgeny Demidov combines simple harmonic motion in two or three independent dimensions to create animated Lissajous figures.
http://www.ibiblio.org/e-notes/Lis/Lissa.htm
Physics Education Technology project at the University of Colorado has simulations that explain Wave on a String,
http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/stringwave/stringWave.swf
Wave Interference,
http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/waveinterference/waveinterference.jnlp
and Fourier composition.
http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/fourier/fourier.jnlp
Wolfgang Christian has an applet that shows the damped driven oscillator.
http://webphysics.davidson.edu/physlet_resources/bu_semester1/c19_driven_sim.html
Andrew Cantino of Haverford College has an applet that shows the damped driven oscillator.
http://www.haverford.edu/physics-astro/Teaching_websites/final/DDHO/
Noriyoshi has an applet that lets you wiggle a string to create waves,
http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~norimari/science/JavaApp/nami1/e-nami.html
compare circular and simple harmonic motion,
http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~norimari/science/JavaEd/e-wave1.html
reflect a sin wave,
http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~norimari/science/JavaEd/e-wave5.html
observe the superposition of two waves,
http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~norimari/science/JavaEd/e-wave2.html
and
http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~norimari/science/JavaEd/e-wave3.html
and create a stationary wave.
http://www2.biglobe.ne.jp/~norimari/science/JavaEd/e-wave4.html
Paul Falstad has applets that show the Fourier frequency analysis of periodic functions,
http://www.falstad.com/fourier/
wave motion of a string,
http://www.falstad.com/loadedstring/
vibrational modes in a 2-d membrane,
http://www.falstad.com/membrane/
vibrational modes in a 2-d circular membrane (drum head),
http://www.falstad.com/circosc/
bending waves in a bar,
http://www.falstad.com/barwaves/
acoustic standing waves in a 3-d box,
http://www.falstad.com/modebox/
and will generate audio interference between your speakers.
http://www.falstad.com/interference/
Scott Schneider of Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan has physlets that shows damped and driven harmonic oscillator,
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/osc_damped_driven.shtml
and the damped and driven harmonic oscillator - amplitude graph.
http://qbx6.ltu.edu/s_schneider/physlets/main/osc_damped_driven_amp.shtml
Phillip R. Dukes of the University of Texas at Brownsville has an animations that compares transverse and longitudinal wave motion,
http://pdukes.phys.utb.edu/PhysApplets/WaveTrans/TabbedWaveTrans.htm
and an animation of the damped motion of a mass on a spring when the mass, spring constant, or damping is varied.
http://pdukes.phys.utb.edu/PhysApplets/MassOnSpring/MassOnSpring.htm
chend
Chapter 13 Properties of Materials
