Related papers: Where will a pen fall to?
An interesting phenomenon that occurs in projectile motion, the "coming and going", is analyzed considering linear air resistance force. By performing both approximate and numerical analysis, it is showed how a determined critical angle and…
Traditional derivations of the van der Waals equation typically use standard recipes involving ensemble averages of statistical mechanics. In this work, we study a box of weakly interacting gas particles in one-dimension from a purely…
Necessary and sufficient conditions for weak and vague convergence of measures are important for a diverse host of applications. This paper aims to give a comprehensive description of the relationship between the two modes of convergence…
The early stages of drop impact onto a solid surface are considered. Detailed numerical simulations and detailed asymptotic analysis of the process reveal a self-similar structure both for the velocity field and the pressure field. The…
If a droplet is placed on a substrate with a conical shape it spontaneously starts to spread in the direction of a growing fibre radius. We describe this capillary spreading dynamics by developing a lubrication approximation on a cone and…
The main aim of this article is that students, at the basic level of education, gain a quantitative understanding of the size of molecules by performing a simple experiment easily designed within the classroom.
Perfect fractals are mathematical objects that, because they are generated by recursive processes, have self-similarity and infinite complexity. In particular, they also have a fractional dimension. Although several proposals for the study…
We study experimentally the dynamics of a water droplet on a tilted and vertically oscillating rigid fibre. As we vary the frequency and amplitude of the oscillations the droplet transitions between different modes: harmonic pumping,…
The main objective of this talk is to develop a matrix pencil approach for the study of an initial value problem of a class of singular linear matrix differential equations whose coefficients are constant matrices. By using matrix pencil…
The teapot effect refers to the tendency of a poured liquid to cling to the lip of a container and run down the outside. It is a familiar but physically rich example of flow separation. We present a low-cost experiment for introductory…
In the present paper we study the problem of constructing a family of surfaces (surface pencils) from a given curve in 4-dimensional Euclidean space $\mathbb{E}^{4}$. We have shown that generalized rotation surfaces in $\mathbb{E}^{4}$ are…
Impact of single particle onto a rigid substrate leads to its deformation and fragmentation. The flow associated with the particle spreading on a solid substrate after impact is extremely complicated. In this theoretical study a simplified…
The course "Phy Ex" was created by Yves Couder in the Paris VII university to teach experimental physics through projects. In this article, we present this teaching method through a particular project that took place in the autumn semester…
We show how to hang a picture by wrapping rope around n nails, making a polynomial number of twists, such that the picture falls whenever any k out of the n nails get removed, and the picture remains hanging when fewer than k nails get…
This work reveals that the dynamic response of a spherical cap bubble in contact with a rigid wall depends on the effective contact angle at the instant prior to collapse. This parameter allows us to discriminate between two regimes in…
The dynamics of fluid vesicles in simple shear flow is studied using mesoscale simulations of dynamically-triangulated surfaces, as well as a theoretical approach based on two variables, a shape parameter and the inclination angle, which…
To wield an object means to hold and move it in a way that exploits its functions. When humans wield tools -- such as writing with a pen or cutting with scissors -- our hands would reach very specific poses, often drastically different from…
We consider a liquid droplet which is propelled solely by internal flow. In a simple model, this flow is generated by an autonomous actuator, which moves on a prescribed trajectory inside the droplet. In a biological system, the device…
I present a method for text analysis based on an analogy with the dynamic friction of sliding surfaces. One surface is an array of points with a 'friction coefficient' derived from the distribution frequency of a text's alphabetic…
The nature of physical processes can depend substantially on the dimensionality of a system. One such example are buckling instabilities, which arise from the competition between axial compression and bending in elastic filaments. Thus,…