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Physically Incorrect
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Physically Incorrect is a blog dedicated to entertaining and insightful technical posts on physics, mathematics and everything in-between. Written by a physics PhD, the blog explores a different topic every week, often from a technical viewpoint (equation
Recent Posts Tagged With 'physics'
My Top 5 Mechanics Textbooks
Or: “What, No Goldstein?” Of all of physics, mechanics is my favorite subject (followed by electromagnetism). It’s the easiest to grasp, because it deals with daily phenomena, but th...
Physics Puzzle: Balls on a Stick
There’s an interesting physics puzzle hiding behind that painful title. Consider an infinitely long stick, with masses m initially placed along it (at rest) at distances d: A constant ...
Physics Puzzle: the Bulbs and the Students
Here’s a nice puzzle to challenge your understanding of simple electricity. Two students live in adjacent houses in the dorms (ignore the dodgy art, I can only draw as well as Microsoft Word le...
Physics Puzzle: Changing an Oscillator’s Spring
Here’s a nice physics puzzle I was asked a while ago. Suppose you had a harmonic oscillator - a very simple one, with no friction or driving force. Suppose your oscillator’s oscillating wi...
Bus Stops and the Electron Charge
While I’m preparing the next part in our neural networks tutorial, let’s digress a bit and talk about something completely different. You’re standing outside, waiting for the bus to ...
Getting Shot Isn’t So Bad For You
In this post we’ll be doing some simple, yet illuminating calculations. A typical baseball weights about 150 grams and can reach velocities of up to 100 mph, or 40 m/sec, and so its kinetic ener...
Beating your Guitar into Tune
If you have any musical friends, this should get their attention (if it doesn’t, just spill petrol over their musical instruments and ignite. THAT will). Basic trigonometry tells us that the rul...