Ms Pique’s Intermediate 1 Physics class have produced this video about the ‘Fire Tornado’ experiment!
Watch & comment below!
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Category Archives: Physics
CERN: A day devoted to Particle Physics
For quick facts and a better summary than I could manage, look here!
This morning at 8:30am GMT, the world’s largest and one of the most important physics experiments was
switched on. The Large Hadron Collider, situated on the Swiss/Franco border, near Geneva, and found 100m underground, the 27km long circular tube began accelerating small particles of matter to speeds close to the speed of light. Two beams of protons are fired in opposite through a vacuum at temperatures colder than those found in deep space. It’ll take about a month for them to reach the speeds wanted before they allow the two beams to overlap, and let the protons collide – at these high energies, it is hoped that a new particle will be discovered – the Higgs Boson.
After about 40 years of colliding protons elsewhere in the world, the existence of the ‘God particle’ has still not been confirmed – now, on a much larger scale, physicists believe that they will be found. If they are, it’ll prove many theories that are surround physics – e.g. the Higgs field; it’ll explain why some objects have mass, while others don’t. But, even if nothing is found, it’ll still be useful – it’d show us that we have severely misunderstood something; that one of their assumptions is wrong, allowing them to rethink and rediscover, which may lead to the right answer.
CERN and the LHC will be a major stepping stone as physicists search for an ever simpler and more ‘beautiful’ solution to the puzzles of our universe.
Watch the videos below for a better explanation than I could write!
CERN in 3 minutes:
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Why not learn about CERN in rap form?
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An Archimedes riddle…
Archimedes was no slouch! The Greek mathematician was also a physicist, engineer, inventor and astronomer in his spare time!
He is most well known for his “Eureka moment”…
The most commonly related anecdote about Archimedes tells how he invented a method for measuring the volume of an object with an irregular shape. According to Vitruvius, a new crown in the shape of a laurel wreath had been made for King Hiero II and Archimedes was asked to determine whether it was of solid gold – or whether silver had been added by a dishonest goldsmith. Archimedes had to solve the problem without damaging the crown, so he could not melt it down in order to measure its density as a cube (which would have been the simplest solution).
While taking a bath, he noticed that the level of the water rose as he got in. He realised that this effect could be used to determine the volume of the crown. For practical purposes water is incompressible, so the crown would displace an amount of water equal to its own volume. By dividing the weight of the crown by the volume of water displaced, its density could be obtained.
In other words, the density of the crown would be lower if cheaper and less dense metals had been added…
Archimedes then took to the streets naked (so excited by his discovery that he had forgotten to dress!) crying “Eureka!” (“I have found it!”)
So what is your Archimedes Riddle?
You are sitting in a rubber boat in a swimming pool. In the boat lies a stone. You throw this stone from the boat into the pool. Will the water level in the pool rise or drop?
Over to you…
