What you are about to read is the Mpemba’s effect. A controversial phenomenon that involves hot water freezing faster than cold water. The discovery of this effect is credited to Erasto Mpemba, a Tanzanian who accidentally observed the phenomenon while making ice-cream during cookery class back in the 1960s. Below is his story, somewhat fictionalized for clarity but overall a true-life tale. I hope you’ll enjoy.
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Has it ever occurred to you that the universe behaves in a systematic, profound, orderly way? It’s as if it subconsciously follows a hidden set of rules, privy to none other than itself. It becomes the job of the scientist then, to probe into nature and try find these little nuggets of truth. To accomplish this, a scientist makes observations, conducts experiments, and uses perhaps the greatest probing tool ever: mathematics. When scientists do discover these hidden truths of the universe they hand out names such as laws, principles, theorems, theories, etc. to these general behaviors of the universe. We get terms such “laws of physics”.
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Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA in 1977 with the sole purpose of studying the outer planets of our solar system. In a span of five years between 1979 and 1982, the space probe successfully visited Jupiter, Saturn, and Titan (Saturn’s largest moon) giving humanity the rawest, closest, and never-seen-before details of the so-called gas giants in our solar system. Although she was originally built to last only five years, Voyager 1 has outlived her life span 8 times over becoming one of humanity’s most resilient space-probes ever.
In 1998, NASA announced Voyager 1 was the furthest human-made object from Earth ever. In 2012, Voyager 1 set up another record as the first man-made object to “leave” the solar system as we know it and enter interstellar space. Today, 44+ years after its launch, Voyager 1 is still in operation and communicates regularly with NASA’s Deep Space Network. Although NASA is optimistic that Voyager 1 could remain operational until 2025, the truth is Voyager 1 could go “radio silent” any moment now.
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Aristotle was a philosopher, scientist, and teacher of the classical Ancient Greece period. He was by all accounts influential; he taught many great things in plenty of fields. For a long time, his philosophies were accepted as they were and other scholars merely only added to them or modified them a little. His philosophies about physics were however incorrect, and it took the audacious minds of Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Rene Descartes, Galileo, and ultimately Sir Isaac Newton to overthrow the long-established Aristotelian dogma.
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Physics, like all other disciplines, has a history. And like all other histories, it is made, shaped, and influenced by people and events. This being January 2022, I figured it’s a good time as any to revisit some key events that happened and helped shape physics as we know it today.
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The internet is awash with information. There are reportedly over 1.17 billion websites in the world right now, with over 250,000 new websites being created every day. By the time you finish reading this article, they’ll be another 2,000+ new websites on the web. Now that’s a lot of information for anyone to sift through. This is why I have taken the liberty to compile the 25 best physics websites on the internet for you. Whether you are a physics student, teacher, or just a mailman interested in the formation and development of black holes, I’ve got you. My comprehensive list caters to all classes of people, from those in academia to those “in the hood”.
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As we approach the end of 2021, I have taken a look back at history and some major events that happened in physics in December. Honestly, a lot of important things in physics did happen in the month of December, what I have complied here is more of my favorite personal picks; I hope you enjoy them – as I did!
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Earlier this year, I embarked on a daunting journey to study Einstein’s special theory of relativity. I was only about a page or two into Robert Resnick’s Introduction to Special Relativity and the word “Inertial Frames of Reference” popped up. The book simply wrote it off “as a framework that is not under acceleration”.
That seemed fair enough to me, and I didn’t think much of it. But five pages into the book, the word was getting repetitive, so much that I began to wonder whether I understood what that meant at all.
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If you happen to be around when they are knocking down a chimney (AKA a smokestack), you might notice it breaking in mid-air as it falls. This observation is characteristic of all falling tall structures – especially chimneys. It has been termed, “The Falling Chimney Paradox“.
Here is how this phenomenon unfolded before a multitude in 1980.
One chilly morning in the summer of 1980, some 10,000 people gathered in Kempton Hardwick, Bedford, England. They had come to witness what many considered to be a significant moment in Britain’s final chapter of the Industrial revolution. An event that was personal to most Britons of the area was imminent.
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I came across a question on Quora that asked to explain angular momentum in “layman’s terms”. Whenever someone asks me to explain a physics concept in simple terms (or in this case “layman’s terms”) I feel incredibly challenged. I am immediately reminded of Albert Einstein’s famous quote if you can’t explain it simply, then you don’t understand it well enough.
So here is the objective of this article: to explain angular momentum simply.
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