Related papers: Why does the meter beat the second?

A periodic lattice in Euclidean space is the infinite set of all integer linear combinations of basis vectors. Any lattice can be generated by infinitely many different bases. This ambiguity was only partially resolved, but standard…

Time is a parameter playing a central role in our most fundamental modeling of natural laws. Relativity theory shows that the comparison of times measured by different clocks depends on their relative motions and on the strength of the…

When identifying instruments that have had great influence on the history of physics, none comes to mind more quickly than the pendulum. Though 'birthed' by Galileo in the 16th century, and in some respects nearly 'dead' by the middle of…

The difference between "beating" and "pushing" results in the perception that a push just makes the object move as a whole, while a beat produces also a sound. Through a detailed analysis of the physics underlying such everyday experiences,…

We scrutinize congruence as one of the basic definitions of equality in geometry and pit it against physics of Special Relativity. We show that two non-rigid rods permanently kept congruent during their common expansion or compression may…

Without the use of cameras to record 2D motion and an appropriate analysis tool, creating a laboratory activity for students to experience the vector nature of momentum can be challenging. Even with appropriate measurement tools, it is…

The probability `measure' for measurements at two consecutive moments of time is non-additive. These probabilities, on the other hand, may be determined by the limit of relative frequency of measured events, which are by nature additive. We…

For simple electromagnetic models of a rod and a clock, a change of the shape of the rod and of the rate of the clock when they are set in uniform motion is calculated exactly, employing the correct equation of motion of a charged particle…

The model we consider consists in a double pendulum set, where the pivot points are free to shift along a horizontal line. Moreover, the two pendula are coupled by means of a spring whose extremities connect two points of each pendulum, at…

A physical pendulum with variable point of suspension (and, as an outcome, variable inertia moment) is experimentally analysed. In particular, the period of the small oscillations as a function of position of the suspension point is…

The simple pendulum is one of the first experiments that students of higher physics do. There are certain precautions which the students are asked to take while performing the experiment. In this note we will try to explain as to why these…

The persistent, second order, anomalous signal found in the Brillet and Hall experiment is derived by applying 4D differential geometry in the rotating earth frame. By incorporating the off diagonal time-space components of the rotating…

The small angle approximation often fails to explain experimental data, does not even predict if a plane pendulum's period increases or decreases with increasing amplitude. We make a perturbation ansatz for the Conserved Energy Surfaces of…

This paper demonstrates that metre is a privileged indicator of authorial style in classical Latin hexameter poetry. Using only metrical features, pairwise classification experiments are performed between 5 first-century authors (10…

A compound pendulum of simple geometry was built from a lightweight rod to which a pair of masses are clamped, one above and the other below the axis of rotation. By making the position of the upper mass variable, it was found that the…

The atomic transitions employed in the best of today's optical clocks are a strong foundation for the upcoming redefinition of the SI second. Including multiple transitions in the definition offers increased accuracy, a robust diversity of…

In one-dimensional random walks, the waiting time for each direction transitions is the same, even in the presence of bias, as a consequence of the microscopic-reversibility. We study the symmetry breaking of forward/ backward transition…

Ideal rods and clocks are defined as an infinitesimal symmetry of the spacetime. Since no a priori geometric structure is considered, all the possible models of spacetime are obtained.

Galileo noted in the 16th century that the period of oscillation of a pendulum is almost independent of the amplitude. However, such a pendulum is damped by air friction. The latter may be viewed as resulting from air molecules getting in…

Bullets are fired, one per second, with independent speeds sampled uniformly from a discrete set. Collisions result in mutual annihilation. We show that the second fastest bullet survives with positive probability, while a slowest bullet…