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A question of complexity

Book Chapter

A question of complexity

What happens when you are given a problem that is either too complex to solve or one where there are crucial ingredients missing? Many problems are v...

Tunnel trouble

Book Chapter

Tunnel trouble

Newton was certainly not the first person to see an apple fall from a tree. He may, however, have been the first to imagine the apple and the Moon to ...

Magnetic vee

Book Chapter

Magnetic vee

This chapter focuses on finding the magnetic field. In the Biot-Savart law, the magnetic field is perpendicular to both the current element and the ra...

Rolling wheels

Book Chapter

Rolling wheels

The analysis of the rolling wheel has become much simpler. The kinetic energy of the rolling wheel is equal to the rotational kinetic energy of the w...

Batteries and bulbs

Book Chapter

Batteries and bulbs

Given a flashlight battery, a flashlight bulb, and a single piece of wire, hold them together to make the bulb light. Adults have taken more than an h...

Curved reality

Book Chapter

Curved reality

Visually, if not straight lines, then does nature favor curves? All curves are not equivalent. This chapter embarks on a brief tour of some simple ph...

Relativistic conservation laws

Book Chapter

Relativistic conservation laws

Conservation laws are everywhere! Conservation of energy is one of the most useful laws in all branches of science. Other conservation laws in physic...

A good theory

Book Chapter

A good theory

How does a good theory get judged? It must first be able to explain what the prevailing theory has successfully explained. It must also be able to exp...

The fundamental particles

Book Chapter

The fundamental particles

The search for the fundamental building blocks in nature has gone on for more than two thousand years. Aristotle felt that all the materials around u...

Sources, sinks, and gaussian spheres

Book Chapter

Sources, sinks, and gaussian spheres

Conservation of mass requires that the flow of mass into the volume be equal to the flow of mass out of the volume. Another way of stating this is tha...

The tip of the iceberg

Book Chapter

The tip of the iceberg

Archimedes’s law was a great achievement. Everybody knew that an object dropped in water made the water level rise (that is, it displaced some water...

A topless roller coaster

Book Chapter

A topless roller coaster

Up to now, all of the roller coasters of the world use a continuous track. But that does not restrict our imagination. In this chapter, we imagine tha...

Row, row, row your boat

Book Chapter

Row, row, row your boat

Imagine paddling in a rowboat from one shore to the opposite shore with no current. The trip takes you 15 minutes. If you return to the river and vent...

It Skips a Generation: Traits, Genes, and Crosses (Student Edition)

Book Chapter

It Skips a Generation: Traits, Genes, and Crosses (Student Edition)

Long before they understood why the strategy worked, farmers knew how to crossbreed plants to obtain more desirable traits. Even today, a farmer who ...

It Skips a Generation: Traits, Genes, and Crosses (Teacher Edition)

Book Chapter

It Skips a Generation: Traits, Genes, and Crosses (Teacher Edition)

Many of the early discoveries in genetics occured in plants. Plants have a few special characteristics that make them ideal for studying genetics. Fro...

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