Math, Physics, and Engineering Applets Oscillations and Waves Acoustics Signal Processing Electricity and Magnetism: Statics Electrodynamics Quantum Mechanics Linear Algebra Vector Calculus Thermodynamics Mechanics Miscellaneous Licensing info. Links to other educational sites with math/physics-related information or java applets useful for teaching: And when you get tired of learning, here is some fun stuff: Pong Simulation Circuit-level simulation of original 1972 Pong. Physics Flash Animations We have been increasingly using Flash animations for illustrating Physics content. This page provides access to those animations which may be of general interest. The animations will appear in a separate window. The animations are sorted by category, and the file size of each animation is included in the listing. Also included is the minimum version of the Flash player that is required; the player is available free from The categories are: In addition, I have prepared a small tutorial in using Flash to do Physics animations. LInks to versions of these animations in other languages, other links, and license information appear towards the bottom of this page. The Animations There are 99 animations listed below. Other Languages and Links These animations have been translated into Catalan, Spanish and Basque: En aquest enllaç podeu trobar la versió al català de les animacions Flash de Física.
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Community FQXb (bio)By WILLIAM OREM • Mar. 23, 2014 @ 21:39 GMT Everyone is talking this week about the dramatic confirmation of inflationary theory: those first-instant gravitational waves whose details may even point--being, if you will, quantum phenomena that went suddenly ultra-macroscopic--toward the correct way to unify QM and GR. I myself have been musing on rather astonishing work in another field. Will you pardon the intrusion if we talk a little bit about biology? Recently the big news there was released: an unprepossessing experiment involving a weak acid bath showed it's possible to revert mature, differentiated cells to a stem cell state, allowing for the prospect of wholesale repurposing. The surprise wasn't that reversion (or conversion from one mature type into another) can be done--genetics work in that direction took home a Nobel in 2012--but that it can be done so simply. Alas--you knew this part was coming--it is now looking like the champagne may have been premature. 1. 2. 3.
Stellarium Failed Star Found In The Neighborhood: Scientific American Podcast It looks like we have a new neighbor. It's actually been there all along, but astronomers have only now spotted what could be the seventh closest star system to the sun. The system is just nine light years away, a mere stone's throw in astronomical terms. It took so long to find because it's an extremely dim and cool kind of failed star called a brown dwarf. The sun's newfound neighbor and five other supercool brown dwarfs belong to a class of failed star called Y dwarfs. You could safely touch one of the newfound brown dwarfs—its temperature is estimated at about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Hundreds of possible brown dwarfs are out there awaiting confirmation. —John Matson [The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
Is Time An Illusion? From The Buddha To Brian Greene : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture Can time be stopped, captured or even known? Does it exist, or is it all just an illusion? Karim Sahib / AFP/Getty Images Is time real, or is change just a kind of optical illusion resting on a deeper unchanging reality? As finite creatures, with death hovering just out of our sight, the true nature of time haunts all our endeavors. In the domains of spirituality, humans have also asked if there is more, or less, to time than ticking clocks or the march from birth to death. Buddhists, with their emphasis on meditation, have long seen the unspooling of time as an artifact of the mind. "You may say, 'I must do something this afternoon' but actually there is no 'this afternoon' ... Christian writers such as Meister Eckhart have taken a similar stance: "There exists only the present instant ... Science however has its own take on time's illusion. For decades physics inverted the problem, holding the now to be something less than real. One thing is, however, certain.
Neutrino Experiment Replicates Faster-Than-Light Finding Physicists have replicated the finding that the subatomic particles called neutrinos seem to travel faster than light. It is a remarkable confirmation of a stunning result, yet most in the field remain sceptical that the ultimate cosmic speed limit has truly been broken. The collaboration behind the experiment, called OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tracking Apparatus), made headlines in September with its claim that a beam of neutrinos made the 730-kilometre journey from CERN, Europe's particle-physics lab near Geneva in Switzerland, to the Gran Sasso National Laboratory near L'Aquila, Italy, faster than the speed of light. Neutrinos — here betraying their presence by interacting with other particles — are elusive and, it would seem, impossibly speedy. The result was highly statistically significant, but following author and astrophysicist Carl Sagan’s dictum that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, most physicists expressed doubts.
Hunt for Higgs Particle Enters Endgame By Geoff Brumfiel of Nature magazine Bill Murray is a man with secrets. Along with a handful of other scientists based at CERN, Europe's particle-physics facility near Geneva, Switzerland, Murray is one of the few researchers with access to the latest data on the Higgs boson -- the most sought-after particle in physics. Looking at his laptop, he traces a thin black line that wiggles across a shaded area at the centre of a graph. Despite Murray's coyness, there are few places left for the Higgs to hide. At a conference in Paris on November 18, teams from ATLAS and the CMS experiments presented a combined analysis that wipes out a wide swathe of potential masses for the Higgs particle. Analysis of the very latest data from this autumn--which Murray isn't yet ready to share -- will scour the range that remains. Waiting for God Four fundamental forces are at work in nature: gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force and electromagnetism. If there is no Higgs, then what?