Posted by Sunny Kalara | 3 Comments
Wee Planet : 3D panoramic photos as planets – its all about coordinate systems
A beautiful panoramic picture of Paris. 360 degree photo called Eiffel planet, was built from 80 pictures.
To create this effect, all you need to do is to use the “polar coordinate filter” and then use rotational filter in your photo editing software: hmmm.. why does that sound so familiar?
Our mind already does so much processing of the visual stimuli we receive, sometime it is good to start with raw data and reprocess it in a different way.
For more 3D – Wee Planet pictures of Paris, see here. And you can see more Wee Planet pictures of interesting vistas here.
If you want to make your own planet – use planetizer!
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 0 Comments
pendulum Trajectory
This picture shows the trajectory of a pendulum, as seen from the bottom. The pendulum bob is equipped with a white punctual light source, which emits in all directions. On the picture you can notice a drop in the amplitude, mainly caused by air friction. You can also notice that the ellipse traced during each cycle undergoes a precession, or a rotation of the major axis. As the amplitude increases relatively to the length of the pendulum, the period, or the time to complete a to and fro cycle, tends to increase also (non-harmonic oscillator). Since the amplitude of the major axis of the ellipse is greater than that of the minor axis, the periods of the major and minor axes are different, which brings the axes to oscillate out of phase and rotate.
Credits Richard Germain
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 1 Comment
Differences between how a theorist and an experimentalist solve a problem
The Problem:
Source : Brightly Wounded
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 0 Comments
[math] H\heartsuit=E\heartsuit; sin(\heartsuit), d\heartsuit/dt [/math] Physicist tries to understand valentine’s day
This is the geekiest Facebook Status message I have posted
[math] H\heartsuit= E\heartsuit;sin(\heartsuit), d\heartsuit/dt [/math] – my usual techniques are useless! Thank god for [math] C_4H_8O_2 +C_7H_8N_4O_2 [/math] made by Godiva.
If you haven’t figured, [math] C_4H_8O_2 +C_7H_8N_4O_2 [/math] is the chemical formula of two of the compounds in Chocolate. Taken from the master at XKCD.
Don’t try this at home! Your valentine might refuse to go out with you if she finds out that you are trying to use some deterministic equations with a quantity like Heart. Thankfully, my valentine speaks my physmathogeekinglish language. [math] \heartsuit \heartsuit \heartsuit [/math]
Here is a better one:
Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF
All my base
are belong to you
If you want some simplicity
But I like this 8 bit dynamic life – two t-shirt sets with red hearts; get within a hugging distance and the hearts light up!
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 10 Comments
Gamers are taking over the word “Physics” and I hate it – last warning to Gamers
Gamers (video game coders and players) are taking over the word “Physics” and I absolutely hate it!
I did a simple search for “car physics” on Google and 25% of the links on the first page are for coding the games and how to render the cars within the game!
For gamers to claim that what they are doing is physics is like the Italian plumber Mario to claim that he is the smartest cosmologist or most experienced astronaut ever because in Super Mario Galaxy , he traveled to seven different galaxies.
For gamers to claim that what they are doing is physics is like Salvador Dali to claim that his painting of warped clocks is same as warped space time of general relativity!
I know, some of you are going to point me to the definition of physics “the science of matter and energy and their interactions” and argue that “hey, the gamers are doing the same thing – they are implementing the relationship between the matter and energy and their interaction”; and of course you will be completely wrong.
Read the definition of Physics again – it is the science of matter and energy and their interactions. To decipher this definition, you need to understand what “science” is; and science is “the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.” So Physics is “The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of matter and energy and their interactions”. Now tell me, if you think gamers are using the word physics in the same way.
Gamers take the crib sheet that physicists gave them and try to code it on the silicon chip or in the software. They might be doing the science of computer programming, but they are not doing science of matter and energy and their interactions!
I have a great deal of respect for their skill – I enjoy playing Grand Theft Auto, and Spores and Sims and Mario on Wii – and more power to them -but it is not the same as doing “physics”!
Major hardware developers are on the band wagon too: nVIDIA – Physics Graphic Cards; and cute ones like PhysX graphic cards – as if we wouldn’t notice. Reminds me of the Microsoft’s “The Intenet” on a disc; compare that to the nVidia or ATI “physics cards”.
Wow, all of Physics, on a chip with a little fan! how nice!
So call it something else – call it gPhysics, Gasics, Ghysics, iZysics, McPhysics, or something. Leave the word Physics alone.
I am warning you… if you continue to use the word Physics for some silly graphic tricks, we will have no choice but to withhold the laws of physics from you guys, like we do with cartoonists and for fine folks that draw anime.
Trust me, you don’t want a mob of angry physicists on your tail… we have black holes and all your bases are belong to us.
Talk Like a Physicist
Posted by Sunny Kalara | 0 Comments
Rings of Saturn : four views
Rings of Saturn are one of the most visually exciting and fascinating cosmic sights.
Given the picture of the rings and knowing that the Saturn is about 120,000 km, it seems that the rings have a diameter of about 250,000 km. And based on the picture, I would have guessed that the thickness of the ring must be about 5,000 – 10,000 km.
And of course that is wrong. The first time I looked it up, I was told that the rings are about 1-2 km thick… impossible, I said to myself. How can that be? Especially with 60 moons – and Titan which is the largest moon in the solar system, there must be tidal forces and forces that act asymmetrically when the moons are on the different sides of the planet. How can a complex system like that produce a sharp ring on 1-2 km.
And then we all learned that the thickness of the rings might actually be 10-30 meters!
Things in physics are never this sharp; they are always fuzzy, and have gradient. but thickness of 10 meters for a ring that has a diameter of 250,000 km is just unfathomable.
The rings are also dynamic, in the sense that the clusters within the ring come and go; dissolve and re-form somewhere; yet manage to stay within 10-30 meters.
Some have argued that the rings remain so tight because of all those moons – the moons act like traffic cops and keep them in line. Yah, sure.. take 60 orbiting objects of different size and different placement and they all conspire to have a razor sharp plane where everything settles down! May be it is true, but I just don’t buy it, not yet, anyway.
I see it, I read about it, I see all the calculations, but my astonishment is never diminished.
The physics is most interesting when the results are hard to fathom; The laws of physics retain the right to astonish you.
Sort of reminds me of a friend of mine – an aerospace engineer, who was doing his postdoc on helicopter dynamics. And once a while, he would just whirl his textbook or the journal he was reading and exclaim “I still don’t understand how this damn thing flies!!!’…. I sympathize with him, I still don’t understand how the rings of Saturn are so sharp and so stable.
here are four views of the rings:
(1) Sketch of Saturn by Galileo in 1616 and first sketch of a gap in the rings by Cassini from 1676.
(2) A short video of Saturn and its rings – from Bad Astronomy
(3) Sounds of Saturn rings – rings are very active source of radio waves. Cassini space craft captured these radio sounds.
(4) A-F rings and various gaps. The images in this view were obtained on May 9, 2007. Image scale is about 6 kilometers per pixel.
Talk Like a Physicist