05 January 2016- Event Horizon | PWN Physics 365

On this day in physics: 05 January 1940, FM radio is demonstrated for the first time. (Source).

Word of the day: Event Horizon- The point of no return at the edge of a black hole. Because black holes are so massive, and so dense, there exists a point where space time is so warped, that even light cannot escape, but rather gets bent back into the black hole. The escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. This means that nothing can escape from inside the event horizon, not even light. This is why black holes are black. Because of this, it means that to an outside observer, there is no way to retrieve information from beyond the event horizon. We cannot know what is actually happening inside a black hole.

Killer Resource: Exploring Physics: Force App. This app gives the user steps to solve any Newton's 2nd Law problem.

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Keywords: Event Horizon, Black Hole, Radio, Force, FM.

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04 January 2016- Absolute Zero | PWN Physics 365

On this day in physics: 04 January 1643, Happy birthday to Issac Newton, the father of classical physics, inventor of calculus, author of principia, discoverer of universal gravitation, three laws of force, etc.

"It is impossible for any process, no matter how idealized, to reduce the entropy of a system to its absolute-zero value in a finite number of operations." -Nernst

Absolute Zero- The absolute floor in terms of temperature. Temperature is in some sense a measure of energy of a system. Because particles are always moving, and vibrating, they always have some energy. At Absolute Zero, the particles or objects would be completely devoid of energy. According to the Third Law of Thermodynamics, it is not possible to achieve absolute zero. In America, we predominantly measure temperatures using Farenheight, and the rest of the world using Celsius. Absolute Zero is accepted to be -459-67 Farenheight and -273.15 Celsius. There are two analog scales, Rydberg for Farenheight and Kelvin for Celsius, which keep the same gradation of degrees, such as 1 degree Farenheight is the same as 1 degree Rydberg, and 1 degree Kelvin is the same as 1 Degree Celsius. However, Rydberg and Kelvin both set their 0s to align with Absolute Zero, whereas 0 Celsius is aligned with the freezing point of water, and 0 Farenheight is aligned with absolutely nothing. (It's actually based on some really convoluted mixtures of ice water, brine, and other chemicals. I'm not sure what they were thinking)

Recently it has been proposed that some scientists have managed to create a temperature colder than absolute zero. The idea is that if you heat something up to an infinite temperature, it "swings around" and becomes a negative temperature. In doing so they have managed to come to a temperature lower than absolute zero. However, absolute zero at the time of this writing has as of yet been unachieved.

Killer Resource: Hyperphysics

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Keywords: Absolute Zero, Thermodynamics, Kelvin, Newton, Hyperphysics

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03 January 2016- Light Year | PWN Physics 365

On this day in physics: 03 January 1999- Mars Polar Lander is launched. (Source)

Light Year- A light year is the measure of distance which describes the amount of distance travelled by light in a vacuum during 1 Earth Year. It's a little misleading because the name can be easily misunderstood to mean an amount of time.

A light year is a vast amount of distance. Light travels 300,000,000 m/s, or 3 million km in on second. It takes roughly 8 minutes for light to travel from the sun to the Earth. New Horizons just travelled all the way to Pluto, roughly 7 billion miles. This immense distance represents roughly .0007 light years. The nearest star, except our Sun is something like 4 Light Years. A light year is a very long distance, but it can be very useful when measuring large distances and exploring our Cosmos.

Killer Resource: Symphony of Science

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Keywords: Light Year, Distance, Astronomical, Pluto.

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02 January 2016- Quark | PWN Physics 365

On this day in physics: 02 January 1822 - Happy birthday to Rudolph Clausius, one of the founders of the field of thermodynamics.

Quark- A quark is a subatomic particle which makes up protons, neutrons and other particles classified as baryons and mesons. Baryons and mesons form a family referred to as hadrons.

There are 6 different quarks: up, down, top, bottom, charm, and strange. Each quark also has an associated "antiquark" which has all of the same properties except some have the opposite sign, i.e. charge, spin, etc.

Baryons are particles made of 3 quarks and mesons are made of 2 quarks. Protons and Neutrons are both Baryons. A proton is made of two up quarks and a down quark. A Neutron is made of two down quarks and an up quark.

Killer Resource: The Physics Quiz A great app from a scientist at CERN which quizzes you about all manner of particle physics.

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Keywords: Quark, Proton, Neutron, Hadron, Meson, Physics, Quiz

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01 January 2016- Laser | PWN Physics 365

On this day in physics: 1801 The dwarf planet Ceres is discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi; astronomers lose track of it shortly afterwards but its position is later correctly predicted by Carl Friedrich Gauss and Ceres re-sighted on 31 December. (Source)

Laser- (as per wikipedia) - a device that generates an intense beam of coherent monochromatic light (or other electromagnetic radiation) by stimulated emission of photons from excited atoms or molecules.

When I was a graduate student I had the opportunity to learn about several ways in which lasers are generated. The basic idea is that once you can keep the electrons cascading up and down between certain energy states, you can then "pump" them up and down and it generates light in a very reliable way. These days, we use lasers for many things: eye surgery, etching, sights on guns, to detect speeds, to measure whether something is straight, the list goes on and on. Back in the last century (can't believe I'm writing that), it was widely thought that lasers were only red, because this was the only type of photons that could be reliably pumped. However, nowadays, we are able to produce lasers which are red, green, blue, blue-violet, and purple.

Laser actually stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

Killer Resource: Science Porn

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Keywords: Laser, Science, Porn, New Year, Ceres, Light, Amplification, Stimulated, Emission, Radiation, Gauss.

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31 December 2015- A Warm Welcome | PWN Physics 365

Hello and welcome to a new podcast in the pwn physics universe, the pwn physics 365: word-of-the-day podcast. In some ways this is an extension, or satellite of the pwn physics podcast. In this podcast, each episode will feature a new "word of the day", which we will dig into for 1-2 minutes. These are not dictionary-level definitions, I'm not going to just read to you from the Oxford English, but rather try to explain in plain-ish speech what some of these words are, and how they relate to the big ball of information that is physics. There are so many great words and so much jargon that exists I don't think we will run into a shortage of words for at least the first few years. I hope you will enjoy it, and we'll see how it goes. See you soon!

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Episode 084: A New Year- PWN Physics 365

At the end of this year, I'd like to share a few things with the readers of this blog. First, thank you so much for tuning in this year. For me it was a lot of fun and I think we've covered a lot of ground, even though we're still on the ground floor.

Next, we're going to take things to the next level in 2016, starting with PWN Physics 365. It's going to be a 3 segment podcast to tune into every day of the year. The first segment will be a "on this day in physics history" bit. The next will be the word of the day. Lastly, I'll be sending you off with a killer physics resource to check out. The "episode zero" will be debuting right on this very blog on December 31. Stay tuned. I hope to see you every day next year!

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