16 hours agoMythBusters: Swimming in Syrup and “the Momentum Force”In a recent episode of Adam Savage’s Tested, Adam talked about some myths that changed due to budget constraints. As always, it’s quite entertaining to listen to all of his stories from his time on The MythBusters. I’m going to talk about some physics from this episode, but I want…Physics5 min readPhysics5 min read
1 day agoMember-onlyDriving Towards a Wall, Should You Stop or Turn?This is just a fun physics question. It goes like this: Imagine that you are in a car on a flat road. Boom. All of a sudden, there is a wall in the road. Where did that even come from? Well, you don’t have time to contemplate the existence of…Physics6 min readPhysics6 min read
4 days agoMember-onlySolving the Radial Function of the Hydrogen Atom with PythonThe best thing in a quantum mechanics course is solving for the wave function of a hydrogen atom. It’s great because it’s possible to get an analytical solution to this problem in terms of some functions. For all the other atoms, we have to cheat or make some approximations. Historically…Physics9 min readPhysics9 min read
Nov 18Member-only2D Quantum Mechanics: Using Python to Solve Non-Trivial PotentialsI’m not really an expert with quantum mechanics calculations — but I need to do some stuff for the class I’m teaching. If I don’t write out my methods, I will forget the next time I teach this course. So, maybe you will find this useful — but future me…Physics9 min readPhysics9 min read
Published inStackademic·Nov 14Member-onlyQuantum Mechanics: Particle in a 2D Infinite Square WellYes, you have seen a particle in a 1D square well. But what about a particle in a 2D well? Can we find the wave function that solves Schrodinger’s equation for that case? Yes we can. I’ll be honest, if you understand the 1D well then this is fairly straightforward…Physics9 min readPhysics9 min read
Nov 10Member-onlyYou Can Jump Like a Superhero — If You Are In an Accelerating FrameYou see a bunch of awesome (and sometimes weird) stuff online. In this case, it appears to be an attendant on a carnival ride doing a seemingly impossible jump. Check it out. How do you even find out you can do this!? 🤯😳 (via qhal.s1177/IG) #shorts My knees just evaporated seeing that landing 🤯NBA PLAYERS REACT TO THEIR HIGHLIGHTS…youtube.com This appears to be on a ride that both rotates AND moves up and down. With a little…Physics8 min readPhysics8 min read
Oct 30Member-onlyThe Physics of Ezra and Sabine’s Force JumpI’m not going to give away too many details, but there’s a cool scene in Ahsoka Epsiode 8. The basic idea is that Ezra is trying to make a jump into the bay of a Star Destroyer. Of course he can use the force to get a longer jump —…Physics7 min readPhysics7 min read
Oct 25Member-onlyModeling Quantum Tunneling With PythonEverybody loves quantum tunneling. It’s just cool. It would be like having a ball rolling towards a hill. Imagine that ball doesn’t have enough kinetic energy to make it over the hill and down to the other side. …Physics10 min readPhysics10 min read
Oct 13Member-onlySpace Trivia Questions (and Answers)So, we had this homecoming event with a “space” theme. Since I have a show on the university radio station, they asked if I would participate in the event and ask students space trivia questions (for candy). Of course I would. Since I had to come up with questions, I…Science5 min readScience5 min read
Oct 13Member-onlySocial Media Showdown: Mastodon vs. Threads vs. BlueSky vs. X (Twitter)I’m clearly not a tech-expert. But I’ve been using social media for quite some time. As you probably know, a lot of people are jumping off the Twitter (X) platform to something else. But where should you go? Should you go? What other questions are there? Of course I don’t…Social Media4 min readSocial Media4 min read
