fizzics » AH Physics

beautiful equations

mrmackenzie — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:43:32 +0000

Those of you not out celebrating New Year might have spotted a programme called Beautiful Equations on the BBC schedule. The programme follows an artist as he asks about five famous physics equations.

One of the featured equations should be familiar to you from unit 1 of the AH Physics course;

Hopefully you recognise this as Newton’s equation for the gravitational force between two bodies. I have extracted the nine minutes or so relating to Newton’s work and embedded it below.

The link below will download the entire programme, which also looks at , time dilation in special relativity, the Dirac equation and Stephen Hawking’s work on black holes.

decommissioning Dounreay – Bang Goes the Theory

mrmackenzie — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 23:35:15 +0000

This week’s episode of Band Goes the Theory was about the Fukushima disaster in Japan. Part of the programme was filmed at Dounreay, where Dallas investigated the methods being used to decontaminate the site. You can watch the part about Dounreay by playing this clip.

The whole programme is available for download using the link below (large download).

AH – help using Excel

mrmackenzie — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:18:08 +0000

This tutorial will help you with adding a line of best fit to your LO3 graph. If you use the linest function, you can extract useful information on gradient and intercept of the line. There are also screenshots to show how error bars can be added to individual points.

Excel Tutorial: Using LINEST function, Plotting a graph, Adding Error Bars

I have added a download link to a short pdf on the use of linest.

AH LO3

mrmackenzie — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:58:25 +0000

You completed the practical aspect of your LO3 task today.

For next week, please process your data so you can show me

complete table of results
a graph of centripetal force vs the square of angular velocity
sample calculations for your uncertainties.

This will probably be easier to complete if you use a spreadsheet program such as Excel or OpenOffice. You will need diagrams for the procedure section of your LO3 report. Scanned images of the apparatus are available here.

AH uncertainties solutions

mrmackenzie — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Here are the answers to your uncertainties exercise. Please compare these to your own solutions and ask me about anything you don’t follow.

AH uncertainties homework

mrmackenzie — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:47:11 +0000

Here is an electronic copy of the uncertainty questions you should attempt before Monday. Remember to check which type of combination is appropriate for each situation before starting the question.

huge magnet

mrmackenzie — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 19:25:43 +0000

What would you do with a great big electromagnet? These people made a film.

F5 2011 RE:PLAY Film Festival. Inductance from Physalia Studio on Vimeo.

What do you make of the film?

very large telescope

mrmackenzie — Mon, 30 May 2011 13:19:13 +0000

I found a brilliant timelapse video on the Popular Science site. It shows the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at work in Chile.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFpeM3fxJoQ

Here are some VLT links to explore

You can get a pdf summary of the VLT from the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the organisation that runs the VLT, by clicking on the download link below.

good luck from Albert and me

mrmackenzie — Sun, 22 May 2011 13:44:30 +0000

I’m sure you’ll do your best tomorrow. Remember to check the exam advice for Higher and Standard Grade on BBC Bitesize.

Higher classes – remember my advice to attempt Section B first. 70 of the 90 marks are there and each mark requires less effort than Section A. Aim to leave 35 minutes for the multiple choice questions.

100 years of Rutherford’s model of the atom

mrmackenzie — Thu, 19 May 2011 11:21:53 +0000

I read yesterday that Rutherford’s model of the atom is 100 years old this year. He presented his findings at a meeting of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society – this link is worth a read.

I dug a little deeper and found that Google Scholar has indexed a copy of Rutherford’s article published in May 1911 (100 years ago this month!) where he explains the scattering of alpha and beta particles by matter. Some of the diagrams are missing and the maths is a little scary but the commentary at the end is interesting. You can download the article using the link at the end of this post.

Professor Martyn Poliakoff made a video about Rutherford and his work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOj9ZjKnJcY

Rutherford was a Physicist but he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908, just before he discovered the structure of the atom. It may have been in revenge for his famous quotation

All science is either physics or stamp collecting

There is a video of Rutherford talking to the IEE about his work and I found this modern video showing a recreation of the original experiment on alpha particle scattering.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBqHkraf8iE