A pair of designers based in London has raised $200,000 towards developing their design for a gravity powered lamp – GravityLight. The idea is that these can be used in communities where access to electricity is restricted. As you may remember from our lessons spent running up flights of stairs, gravitational potential energy (Joule) = …
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I have never really written much about pressure on the blog. Perhaps it has always seemed a little dull but questions do come up about pressure so I ought to have a go. It ties in nicely with the posts about forces because pressure is force applied per square centimetre. At C.E. pressure will always …
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There are not a great many types of calculation you will be asked to do at this level. You may be asked about speed, density, pressure or perhaps calculating weight from mass and the force of gravity. The question will usually give you enough information for you to work out what sums you need to …
Continue reading Units and Calculations…
[This is follow up to Gold Part One.] A pupil asked… Will the earth naturally produce more gold for us to extract? How long will this take? How long is the half-life of gold and what does it decompose into? Would it be possible to industrially produce gold from different atoms? A. Pupil Esq. When …
Continue reading Gold Part Two…
Some physics words with links to relevant Twig World videos. You will need to be logged into your Twig World account to be able to view the videos but you only need to log in once then you should be fine. Force – a force is a push or a pull gravity/weight – the force …
Continue reading Words, Words, Words (Phys. Ed.)…
As should be very obvious from how governments around the world have dealt with recent pandemic difficulties, science does not deal in absolute certainty. We often hear that they are ‘following the science‘ but I suspect that allows enough wiggle room for them to do what is politically most appealing. Science deals with probability and …
Continue reading Degrees Of Confidence…
Your weight is determined by your mass and the pull of gravity. On Earth, gravity is about 9.8 N/kg (usually rounded off as 10 N/kg). The force of gravity causes objects to accelerate towards the centre of the Earth at 9.8 m/s/s (m/s/s is sometimes written as m/s2 or ms-2). In a vacuum, two objects …
Continue reading Big Load Of Nothing…
Nobody is expecting you to now all of this – but I think it is helpful to add a bit of context to things. And it is interesting with a good song at the end! The current standard model has four fundamental forces explaining what we see in the observable Universe; gravity, electromagnetism, the weak …
Continue reading 12 Particles Of Matter And 4? Forces Of Nature…
Time, Distance & Speed The average speed of a moving object is the distance it travels divided by the time it takes. At CE, this will usually be calculated in metres per second (m/s). The equation to use is… speed = distance ÷ time (or s=d/t) You may also need to calculate distance or time, …
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This picture neatly captures the idea of liquids having different densities. The lowest density liquid floats on the top and all the other layers stay as they are because of their relative densities. This must have been done very carefully because some of these liquids will mix with one another (miscible). Immiscible liquids will not …
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