Related papers: Simplified Gyroscopic Treatment
In this paper we show that with the help of accessible, teaching quality equipment, some interesting details of the motion of a gyroscope, typically overlooked in introductory courses, can be measured and compared to theory. We begin by…
The motion of astronomical bodies and the centre of mass of the system is not always well perceived by students. One of the struggles is the conceptual change of reference frame, which is the same that held back the acceptance of the…
Simulation of human motion is the subject of study in a number of disciplines: Biomechanics, Robotics, Computer Animation, Control Theory, Neurophysiology, Medicine, Ergonomics. Since the author has never visited any of these fields, this…
This preprint concerns a mathematically rigorous treatment of an interesting physical phenomenon in relativity theory. We would like to draw the reader's attention particularly to the abstract mathematical formalism of relativity (which was…
This paper presents reflections on the validity of a series of mathematical methods and technical assumptions that are encrusted in macrophysics (related to gravitational interaction), that seem to have little or no physical significance.…
Although osmosis is a familiar phenomenon, and of pivotal importance in natural systems, it is seldom explained how it might work on the molecular level (if treated at all in physics text books). The standard treatment of osmosis in…
Courses in mathematical methods for physics students are not known for including too much in the way of mathematical rigour and, in some ways, understandably so. However, the conditions under which some quite commonly used mathematical…
This article provides a popular, largely non-technical explanation of how large objects can behave classically while smaller objects behave quantum mechanically, based on the effect of the presence of cosmic expansion velocities in extended…
I begin by reviewing some recent work on the status of the geodesic principle in general relativity and the geometrized formulation of Newtonian gravitation. I then turn to the question of whether either of these theories might be said to…
A new simple geometrical interpretation of complex numbers is presented. It differs from their usual interpretation as points in the complex plane. From the new point of view the complex numbers are rather operations on vectors than points.…
[Taken from the "README" in the book] My goal with this book is to provide some kind of bridge for mathematics between the high-school-level and college-level for physics students. From my perspective, our job as physicists is to observe…
The purpose of this paper is to show the magic of physics by showing the physics of magic. What usually makes magic tricks interesting is that something unexpected occurs. Similarly, demonstrations are interesting inasmuch as they produce…
We consider a generalization of the notion of a natural mechanical system to the case of additional forces of gyroscopic type. Such forces appear, for example, as a result of global reduction of a natural system with symmetry. We study…
Difficulties and discomfort with the interpretation of quantum mechanics are due to differences in language between it and classical physics. Analogies to The Special Theory of Relativity, which also required changes in the basic worldview…
We discuss how a class of difficult kinematic problems can play an important role in an introductory course in stimulating students' reasoning on more complex physical situations. The problems presented here have an elementary analysis once…
A symmetric top or gyroscope can start its motion with different initial values. One can not decide the motion type only by looking at these initial values. For example, in a motion, precession angular velocity can be negative at the…
Existing representations for human motion, such as MotionGPT, often operate as black-box latent vectors with limited interpretability and build on joint positions which can cause ambiguity. Inspired by the hierarchical structure of natural…
Why would anyone wish to generalize the already unappetizing subject of rigid body motion to an arbitrary number of dimensions? At first sight, the subject seems to be both repellent and superfluous. The author will try to argue that an…
A perplexing problem in understanding physical reality is why the universe seems comprehensible, and correspondingly why there should exist physical systems capable of comprehending it. In this essay I explore the possibility that rather…
Since physical theories employ mathematical models to describe and predict physical phenomena, our knowledge depends on the models available to that end. To increase their scope we present a particular type of simplified models, serial…