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For those of us who grew up with conventional electromagnets, it is very strange to see an electromagnet that is not connected to an external power so...
Book Chapter
It seems almost counterintuitive that wet air should be less dense than dry air and float in the sky. But the beauty of the cirrus and cumulus attest ...
Book Chapter
Medical questions were very important during the Skylab mission from May 1973 until February 1974. At the most basic level the scientists wanted to k...
Book Chapter
In what now seems like physics folklore, the young patent clerk Albert Einstein proposed that light behaves like a particle—known as a photon—and ...
Book Chapter
Although Isaac Newton probably never bowled a perfect 300 game, his physics can be used to analyze the sport of bowling. The collision of the ball wit...
Book Chapter
A converging lens bends all rays of light parallel to the principal axis (the axis of symmetry of the lens) in such a way that they converge at a sin...
Book Chapter
Edwin Hubble showed that most stars (and galaxies) are receding from Earth. Because of the expansion, the frequencies of the spectral lines from the s...
Book Chapter
When we think of forces, we usually imagine a push or a pull. Such a push or pull is assumed to be in the direction of the line connecting the pusher...
Book Chapter
Nature has exhibited the effects of a variable index of refraction for a very long time. The index of refraction of air varies with its density. There...
Book Chapter
Hos fast can you throw a baseball? How fast is a speeding bullet? Restricted to simple tools in the laboratory, this chapter explains how both measure...
Book Chapter
Every school-age kid has heard the prediction “What goes up must come down.” Many kids challenge it with a question relating to helium balloons. ...
Book Chapter
Watching the Olympic Games is a reminder of the versatility of physics. The equations for projectile motion can be used to analyze many different trac...
Book Chapter
All of the scenarios presented in this chapter have similar solutions. The trajectory of any object can be analyzed (without air resistance) by recogn...
Book Chapter
Light plays such a crucial role in our lives that it’s very hard to imagine a universe without light. But what is light? How do we describe its be...
Book Chapter
Can you keep a secret? Is it possible to send a signal out so that one person will receive the signal but another will not? The scenario presented in ...