Search results for "Physics - Popular Physics"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
One pendulum to run them all
2013
The analytical solution for the three-dimensional linear pendulum in a rotating frame of reference is obtained, including Coriolis and centrifugal accelerations, and expressed in terms of initial conditions. This result offers the possibility of treating Foucault and Bravais pendula as trajectories of the same system of equations, each of them with particular initial conditions. We compare them with the common two-dimensional approximations in textbooks. A previously unnoticed pattern in the three-dimensional Foucault pendulum attractor is presented.
Teaching particle physics to high school teachers
2017
In Norway, particle physics is part of the high school curriculum in physics which introduces the need for good university teaching in particle physics without the usual technical approach. Given how much conflicting information and inaccurate explanations there are on the subject; how should we teach this to people without much knowledge in mathematics? By carefully explaining the fundamental consepts of the theory it is fully possible to achieve an appreciation of particle physics without much mathematics. Through the use of analogies, such as an analogy between the freedom in choosing timezone and the freedom in choosing phase angle, one can introduce gauge theory and hence show the unde…
Exact non-Hookean scaling of cylindrically bent elastic sheets and the large-amplitude pendulum
2010
A sheet of elastic foil rolled into a cylinder and deformed between two parallel plates acts as a non-Hookean spring if deformed normally to the axis. For large deformations the elastic force shows an interesting inverse squares dependence on the interplate distance [Siber and Buljan, arXiv:1007.4699 (2010)]. The phenomenon has been used as a basis for an experimental problem at the 41st International Physics Olympiad. We show that the corresponding variational problem for the equilibrium energy of the deformed cylinder is equivalent to a minimum action description of a simple gravitational pendulum with an amplitude of 90 degrees. We use this analogy to show that the power-law of the force…