Physics Gist

Climate change is the change in average patterns of natural events or phenomena such as temperature and rainfall over time in a region or around the world. Changes may occur naturally as well as occur due to human activities posing threats to nature. How Climate Change Occur / Causes of Climate Change There has been a drastic increase in climate change since the industrial revolution around the globe. Greenhouse gases are the primary cause behind these climatic changes. These gases trap and hold light energy reaching the earth’s surface from the sun, and radiate it in the form of infrared heat. Eventually, this process causes an increase in the average temperature of the atmosphere of our globe. Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrogen oxide (N2O), and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are major greenhouse gas contributors.  Carbon DiOxide (CO 2 ) .  CO2 is generated due to natural processes (i.e. volcanic eruptions) as well as through human activities (deforestation and burning...

The  basic rule behind rocket science is Newton’s third law of motion: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite (in direction) reaction" which he discovered around 300 years ago. You can imagine how basic rocket science is. But that’s not it. There’s much more. We’ll see the basics and fundamentals behind rocket science. In this article, I’ll be giving answers to som e common questions that people usually ask or look for. What is Rocket Science? Rocket science in Physics is based on taking machines into space in order to achieve specific goals. Most commonly, nowadays, satellites are launched into space. But how do these satellites reach there? It involves rocket science to take these machines into space. How Rocket Science Works? Firstly, we’ll know what a rocket is made up of. A rocket is usually made up of a payload, a guidance system and a propulsion system.   Payload .       A payload is part of a rocket that carries a sa...

Historical Background of Magnets      Without the use of magnetism, we can’t even imagine the existence of light and there wouldn’t be most of the technology that we see today, use today, and utilize in our daily routine. The Greeks were the first to discover magnets. There was a village named Magnesia in an ancient Greek city in Ionia (we know this stone as Magnet today because of the village of "Magnesia"), where a shepherd found a magnetic stone (Lodestone) and observed the magnetism when nails from his shoes and metal pieces in his stick got attracted to the stone. People began to believe it was a healing element.      People used to use the stars and the sun to find their way around. But after the discovery of magnets, the Chinese were the first to use them as a tool for magnetic compasses. Magnets come in different sizes - as large as the earth and as small as the cell. Yes, you read it right. Our planet Earth is itself a big giant Magnet.  The h...

History of Marie Curie      Polish-French Physicist Maria Salomea Sklodowska commonly known by French version of her name “Marie Curie ” was a Polish (Poland was part of Russian Empire at that time) by birth. She was born into the family of a secondary-school teacher on November 7, 1867 in Warsaw, Poland. After completing her early education in Warsaw, she relocated to France (Paris) in 1891 to continue her studies at the Sarbonne      She earned Licentiateships (at Sarbonne) in Physics and Mathematics . In 1894, she met her future life partner, Pierre Currie, a Professor in the School of Physics. She later married Pierre in 1895 and completed her degree as a Doctor of Science in 1903. Her husband Pierre Curie died in a tragic incident (caused by a street accident). Marie joined the University as a Professor of Physics. Marie Curie’s 1 st Nobel Prize – Physics Nobel prize winner 1903      Marie Curie won her first noble prize for her ...

Stephen Hawking once gave us the famous theorem regarding the Black Holes back in 1971 that has been proven right, using ripples in space time caused by the merging of two distant black holes. The theorem was derived from Einstein's theory of general relativity. The theorem states that "it is impossible for the surface area of a black hole to decrease over time". The theorem boosted interest of Physicists because it was closely related to another rule: The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, which states that the entropy (disorder) of a closed system always increases. Recent studies shows that the Physicists' confirmation of the area law seems to imply that the properties of black holes are significant clues to the hidden laws that govern the universe.  A black hole's surface area can't be decreased, which is like the 2nd law of thermodynamics. It also have a conservation of mass as we can't reduce it's mass, so that's comparative to the conservation of ene...

Neutrinos are tiny, almost weightless particles that only interact by gravity and nuclear decay because they don't interact electromagnetically i.e with light. It literally can't be seen. In fact detecting a neutrino is kind of catching a bullet with butterfly net. A beam of neutrinos can travel through lead for 2 years before it stops. In comparison, radiation from a nuclear reactor will be blocked by a 10 cm of lead. So one common way to detect a neutrino is to fill a big tank with water. We know that light slow down while traveling through water. And if a neutrino knocks out the electron in water, the electron will zip through the water faster than the light does. When this happens, the electron gives a weak glow called Cherenkov radiation . "Cherenkov radiations is an electromagnetic radiation which is emitted in result of passing of a charged particle through some dielectric medium with a speed more than phase velocity of light in that medium. a classic example of Che...

In 1609, Astronomer Johannes Kepler published Astronomia Nova, a book containing 10 years of work to understand the orbit of Mars planet using his revolutionary observations from his mentor and employer Tycho Brahe who was famous for generating huge quantity of high quality data and he needed to find the best explanations for the motion of Mars.  There were three models of planetary motions at that time but not a single of them worked well. First one was the Ptolemy System (presented bt Claudius Ptolemy) that puts the Earth at the center and all the other planets of our solar system and the Sun orbiting around the Earth in perfect circular paths so the Ptolemy system was an earth-centric system which suggested that the seemingly improper paths of the Sun, Moon, and planets were actually a combination of some proper circular motions seen in perspective from a stationary Earth. The second model was the Copernicus 's heliocentric model . According to this model, Earth was placed amo...

Do you know if the Sun was fueled by Gasoline or wood, it would have been burnt out in just a few hundred years, So how it is still here after 4.5 billion years.... Physics!!! The Sun is like a big nuclear reactor in the sky. It is fueled by nuclear reactions that fuse Hydrogen atoms into Helium, other heavier elements and energy (in the form of Photons) in the process. In this way the Sun is slowly converted into mass and energy in the form of sunlight and have more than enough fuel for us for billions of years. But nuclear fusion is not as simple as it looks. Fusion is the process that powers the Sun and the stars. It is the reaction, in which two atoms of Hydrogen fuse together to form an atom of Helium. In the process some part of hydrogen is converted into energy. On earth we need to heat hydrogen hundred times hotter than that of the Sun to set a fusion reaction. Sun has a temperature of 15 million Celsius degrees in its core whereas it requires more than 100 million Celsius deg...

 If we succeed in getting rid of everything from a part of space i.e. from all the planets, stars, atoms, particles, even light and radiation etc, this space still have weight. It turns out that NOTHING is not nothing but it is something. How is that possible? Space is bubbling with virtual particles that pop in and out of existence. These particles do this in such a short time scale so the laws of classical Physics forgives the creation of these ghost particles which seem to come out of nothing. The laws of Quantum Mechanics allow this.  To visualize, consider an empty space within a proton. Since most of our physical world is made up of protons and neutrons, this so called empty space (inside protons) gives mass of proton. "Empty space is actually full of quarks and Gluon Field Fluctuations, so empty space is not empty" (Professor Derek Leinweber, University of Adelaide).  Here is the simple visualization. 0 represents nothing. But 0 can also be expressed as 1+(-1) or 1...

    Matter as we know it, atoms, stars, the galaxies, planets & trees, rocks and us, this matter accounts for less than 5% of the known universe, about 25% is dark matter and 70% dark energy, both of which are invisible. This is kind of strange because it suggests that everything we experience is really only tiny fraction of reality. We really have no clue that what dark matter and energy are or how they work .We are pretty sure they exist though, so what do we know? Dark matter is the stuff that makes it possible for galaxies to exist. When we calculate, what the universe is structured the way it is, it quickly became clear that it's just not enough normal matter. The gravity of the visible matter is not strong enough to form galaxies and complex structures, the stars would more likely be scattered all over the place and not form galaxies. So we know that there is something else inside and around them, something that doesn't emit or reflects light, something dark. Bu...

 

     String theory flips the page on the classical description of our universe by replacing all matter and force particles with just 1 element; Tiny vibrating strings that twist and turn in complex ways that, from our view point, look like particles. To simply understand about String Theory, Imagine you have a beautiful tree that is full of Oranges and you ask yourself what is the Orange formed of. How do you answer that question. Well you  wanna look deeply inside the Orange so you’ll magnify it and magnify it again and again and will keep on doing it. Deep inside sooner or later, you’ll begin to see that molecules are not the end of the story. Because you can emerge them (the molecules).  And if you make them big enough deep inside, you’ll begin to see atoms. Atoms are not the end of the story too because, we have electrons. Zooming in around the nucleus, deep inside (mostly empty space in the atom) but deep inside we see the nucleus. So if you grab t...