SCIENCE SCOUTS. How Exercise Benefits Nerve Cells. Tracker Video Analysis and Modeling Tool for Physics Education. Does a Magnet Gun Conserve Momentum? | Wired Science The Gauss gun. A very simple, yet very cool device. Check out this video. There are many other examples of this Gauss gun. You can easily reproduce this yourself. You just need some magnets and steel balls (or balls of steel). Energy This seems to be someway to cheat, doesn’t it? In terms of work-energy, I can think of the balls and the magnets as closed system. Since the final ball speed is greater than the initial, the change in kinetic energy is a positive value.
Momentum Although the kinetic energy is not conserved, the momentum should be conserved. Since forces are an interaction between objects, the force on the initially moving ball must be the same magnitude as the force the moving ball exerts on the rest of the stuff. Same force (magnitude) and same time means the other stuff will have the same change in momentum (magnitude). Momentum Reality Check Come with me. Here I reproduced the Gauss gun, but at a better viewing angle. What about after the interaction? WARNING. Lunar Erratum | Sci-ence! A Skeptical Comic and Blog.
Humans, Version 3.0. Credit: Flickr user Suvcon Where are we humans going, as a species? If science fiction is any guide, we will genetically evolve like in X-Men, become genetically engineered as in Gattaca, or become cybernetically enhanced like General Grievous in Star Wars. All of these may well be part of the story of our future, but I’m not holding my breath. The first of these—natural selection—is impracticably slow, and there’s a plausible case to be made that natural selection has all but stopped acting on us. Genetic engineering could engender marked changes in us, but it requires a scientific bridge between genotypes—an organism’s genetic blueprints—and phenotypes, which are the organisms themselves and their suite of abilities. And machine-enhancement is part of our world even today, manifesting in the smartphones and desktop computers most of us rely on each day.
Simply put, none of these scenarios are plausible for the immediate future. But how do I know this is feasible? And culture’s trick?