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We quantitatively analyze a familiar classroom demonstration, Van Waltenhofen's eddy current pendulum, to predict the damping effect for a variety of plate geometries from first principles. Results from conformal mapping, finite element…
The Rattleback is a very popular science toy shown to students all over the world to demonstrate the non-triviality of rotational motion. When spun on a horizontal table, this boat-shaped object behaves in a peculiar way. Although the…
We consider the problem of a sphere rolling of a curved surface and solve it by mapping it to the precession of a spin 1/2 in a magnetic field of variable magnitude and direction. The mapping can be of pedagogical use in discussing both…
We consider the mechanical motion of a system of six macroscopic pendula which are connected with springs and arranged in a hexagonal geometry. When the springs are pre-tensioned, the coupling between neighbouring pendula along the…
We realized a potential energy gradient - a ramp - for indirect excitons using a shaped electrode at constant voltage. We studied transport of indirect excitons along the ramp and observed that the exciton transport distance increases with…
We report on specific signatures of squeezing for time-modulated light fields. We show that application of periodically-modulated driving fields instead of continuous wave fields drastically improves the degree of quadrature integral…
We consider the period of a simple pendulum in the gravitational field of the spherical Earth. Effectively, gravity is enhanced compared with the often used flat Earth approximation, such that the period of the pendulum is shortened. We…
Every university introductory physics course considers the problem of Atwood's machine taking into account the mass of the pulley. In the usual treatment the tensions at the two ends of the string are offhandedly taken to act on the pulley…
In this paper, we present results from an experimental study into turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection forced externally by periodically modulated unidirectional rotation rates. We find that the azimuthal rotation velocity $\dot{\theta}$(t)…
We examine several conducting spheres moving through a magnetic field gradient. An analytical approximation is derived and an experiment is conducted to verify the analytical solution. The experiment is simulated as well to produce a…
The binary radix expansion of a real number can be used to code the outcome of any series of coin tosses, a fact that provides an intriguing link between number theory, measure theory and statistical physics. Inspired by this fact, a…
We present an analytical description of the large-amplitude stationary oscillations of the finite discrete system of harmonically-coupled pendulums without any restrictions to their amplitudes (excluding a vicinity of $\pi$). Although this…
Laminar flows through pipes driven at steady, pulsatile or oscillatory rates undergo a sub-critical transition to turbulence. We carry out an extensive linear non-modal stability analysis of these flows and show that for sufficiently high…
We consider the orbital motion of a test particle in the gravitational field of a massive body (that might be a black hole) with mass $m$ placed on the expanding cosmological manifold described by the McVittie metric. We introduce the local…
Creating a simulation of a system enables the tuning of control systems without the need for a physical system. In this paper, we employ Lagrangian Mechanics to derive a set of equations to simulate an inverted pendulum on a cart. The…
We study the motion of a charged quantum particle, constrained on the surface of a cylinder, in the presence of a radial magnetic field. When the spin of the particle is neglected, the system essentially reduces to an infinite family of…
The circular twin paradox and Thomas Precession are presented in a way that makes both accessible to students in introductory relativity courses. Both are discussed by examining what happens during travel around a polygon and then in the…
We present an analytic model in which an inefficiently radiating accretion disk drives upward wind from its surfaces. The accretion process is controlled simultaneously by a global magnetic field penetrating the disk and by a viscosity of…
We study the apsidal precession of a Physical Symmetrical Pendulum (Allais' precession) as a generalization of the precession corresponding to the Ideal Spherical Pendulum (Airy's Precession). Based on the Hamilton-Jacobi formalism and…
We investigate the gravitational wake due to, and dynamical friction on, a perturber moving on a circular orbit in a uniform gaseous medium using a semi-analytic method. This work is a straightforward extension of Ostriker (1999) who…