#everydayphysics — Public Fediverse posts

🧵 Post 3 / 3 — Why This Matters
🌀 Why this feels new (but isn’t wrong)
Physics didn’t get this wrong — the mathematics works beautifully.
But often we stop at abstraction because it’s sufficient for calculation, even when mechanical intuition still exists underneath.
Sometimes understanding doesn’t come from more abstraction,
but from slowing down and examining constraints we already know.
A childhood toy just made those constraints visible again.
🌀
#FromFirstPrinciples #ScientificUnderstanding #LearningNeverStops
#EverydayPhysics #ChemistryIsPhysics

🧵 Post 3 / 3 — Why This Matters
🌀 Why this feels new (but isn’t wrong)
Physics didn’t get this wrong — the mathematics works beautifully.
But often we stop at abstraction because it’s sufficient for calculation, even when mechanical intuition still exists underneath.
Sometimes understanding doesn’t come from more abstraction,
but from slowing down and examining constraints we already know.
A childhood toy just made those constraints visible again.
🌀
#FromFirstPrinciples #ScientificUnderstanding #LearningNeverStops
#EverydayPhysics #ChemistryIsPhysics

#PhysicsFactlet
It's a foggy day here in Albion, so let's talk about light (multiple) scattering!
Fog is composed of micrometre sized water droplet that can scatter light. This has two main effects: some of the light that was supposed to reach your eyes don't (because it is scattered away), and some of the light that was not supposed to reach you gets scattered into your eyes.
The denser is the fog and the further an object is from you, the more likely light is to be scattered away before it reaches your eyes. The amount of unscattered light (i.e. the one your eyes can use to form a sharp image) goes down exponentially (Lambert-Beer law), so an object in the fog gets dimmer pretty quickly. On the other hand there is a chance that light that was never meant to reach you is now scattered into your eyes, but since it arrives from a largely random direction, mixed up with a lot of other scattered light, your brain perceived it as a white blur on top of everything else. And since far away object were already dim, this white halo can easily overpower them, so you can't see them anymore.

#Physics #Optics #ITeachPhysics #EverydayPhysics

#PhysicsFactlet
Light propagates in a straight line (actually it is more complicated than that, but this is good enough for us here) and we see only the light that comes to our eyes. As a result you usually don't see the light going from its source to the objects it illuminates.
Unless it is misty, in which case light can scatter on the water droplets and you can "see" the light's path ("Tyndall effect").

#Physics #Optics #EverydayPhysics

Another #coffee linked video from the “Gallery of Fluid Motion”.

Have you ever watched as droplets of coffee ‘bounce’ over the surface of your brewing pour over?

A known #physics phenomenon, these ‘drops’ are usually observed in the lab using silicone oil. A ‘how to’ video to (reproducibly) make them is linked to this toot. To do it with coffee instead, mix the coffee with a little bit of soap.

Happy holiday experimenting!

#everydayphysics #science #coffeephysics

https://gfm.aps.org/meetings/dfd-2022/6322d6d0199e4c2c0873f8df

The other day I experienced the audio #DopplerEffect of a stationary emergency vehicle siren as I #cycled past it. Everyone has experienced a speeding ambulance or police car with its siren going off and its changing pitch as it goes past them but it was interesting to experience it in the alternative frame of reference. Not that I was going all that fast and so I was particularly surprised to notice the pitch go from high to low.

#EverydayPhysics