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Twists, turns, thrills and spills: the physics of rollercoasters
WEBAug 14, 2021 — A unit that might make purists wince, the G-force is the difference between the acceleration, a, that you experience as a rider and the acceleration due to gravity, g, (9.8 m/s 2) divided by g and expressed per unit mass: (a–g)/g.This force comes into play thanks to the movement you undergo on the ride– you experience a “positive” G-force when the train is at the bottom of a hill, and ...
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: the woman who found hydrogen in the …
WEB08 Mar 2022. Taken from the March 2022 issue of Physics World, where it appeared under the headline "The woman who found hydrogen in the stars". Sidney Perkowitz delves into the work and life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, from her stellar astronomical findings to a career-long struggle with bias against women in the early 20th century.
The physics of blood spatter – Physics World
WEBTaken from the October 2019 issue of Physics World. Analysing the blood stains following a shooting can be key to finding the perpetrator, but it’s a field of forensics that is being called into question. Sidney Perkowitz explains how understanding the physics behind the blood distribution could help uncover the truth.
How Stephen Hawking became the world’s most famous physicist
WEBJul 10, 2021 — The one I found most shocking detailed how, in 1999, Hawking repeatedly tried to have a PhD student called Andrew Farley kicked off the course at Cambridge, apparently because Farley’s research threatened Hawking’s belief that information is destroyed in black holes (which Hawking later changed his mind about).
The double-slit experiment – Physics World
WEBSep 1, 2002 — This article is an extended version of the article “The double-slit experiment” that appeared in the September 2002 issue of Physics World (p15). It has been further extended to include three letters about the history of the double-slit experiment with single electrons that were published in the May 2003 issue of the magazine.
Brilliant polymath, troubled person: how John von Neumann …
WEBDec 18, 2021 — Visionary thinker John von Neumann (right) received the Medal of Freedom from President Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. (Courtesy: Byron Rollins/ AP/ Shutterstock) Few mathematicians during the last century – perhaps only Bertrand Russell and Alan Turing – were as successfully polymathic as John von Neumann, the subject of the biography The Man from the Future: the Visionary Life of John von ...
Graphene at 20: why the ‘wonder material’ is finally coming good
WEBApr 30, 2024 — The report estimates that the graphene market was worth about $100m in 2022 and is rising at a compound annual growth rate of 20–30%. The biggest potential applications, the authors reckon, lie in graphene electronics, where the market could be worth up to $1bn in the next few years. Growth rates of up to 40% are predicted – …
To catch a quantum jump – Physics World
WEBJun 7, 2019 — Experiments on an artificial three-energy-level atom. A team led by Michel Devoret and Zlatko Minev has now focused on the “canonical case” of quantum jumps between two levels indirectly monitored by a third. This case, they say, corresponds to the 1986 tests of Bohr’s original idea on quantum jumps. …
Max Planck: the reluctant revolutionary – Physics World
WEBDec 1, 2000 — Planck initially believed that he had justified the irreversibility of radiation processes through the lack of time symmetry in Maxwell’s equations – i.e. that the laws of electrodynamics distinguish between past and present, between forward-going and backward-going time. However, in 1897 Boltzmann demolished this argument.