Science > Physics > What physics principle governs this common world experience-- graduate student quiz
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Science > Physics |
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"" |
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16 Sep 2005 12:25:59 PM |
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What physics principle governs this common world experience-- graduate student quiz |
In the past I have occasionally given quiz questions to graduate
students. And I seemed to have picked on Stanford and Cal Tech too
much, so let me pick on some Eastern schools today-- Harvard and Yale
and Princeton. A question fit for graduate students to see who is the
best and brightest.
This question came up in connection with the Fusion Barrier Principle
that no tokamak will surpass 2/3 breakeven and still be a controlled
machine.
Question: Say you are mowing a rectangle and say the rectangle for
instance is 100 feet by 300 feet. So the longest side is 300 feet. And
consider the mowing (fusion tokamak) as that of eating up the lines as
you mow. Eating and thus disappearing. Now the experience is that as
you mow or eat up the rectangle, why is the longest side the 300 foot
side the first side to disappear completely? And as you are mowing the
last patch to be mowed is the shortest side of 100 feet. So the
question to the graduate students, since this example seems to be
counterintuitive that the usual answer back would be the shortest side
is eaten up first. So what principle of physics or what laws of physics
governs this experience.
Note: usually in physics and the other sciences we have principles and
laws and then we look for common experience or analogies to apply those
laws. Here I am going in reverse in that I have a common experience and
now looking for what physics principles or laws encompass that
experience.
Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: What physics principle governs this common world experience-- graduate student quiz |
18 Sep 2005 02:23:01 AM |
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I forgot to mention that this experience is the mowing of grass, since
there is a international audience and many of which do not know what
"mowing" means. In the US, mowing means mowing grass. And in the
example above the idea is that in mowing a rectangle of grass, that the
longest side is mowed before the shortest side.
A.P.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: What physics principle governs this common world experience-- graduate student quiz |
18 Sep 2005 06:09:26 AM |
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Perhaps you could go out into the real world from your cyberspace
retreat and mow some real grass and do something useful with your
life????????????? Rake up the grass, feed it to cattle, and feed the
starving multitudes, then come back to sci.physics and report that your
life is now not a total waste. Have a nice day. Address your issues.
Engage in no inappropriate behavior. Do not troll. Wash behind your
foreskin.
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| User: "Autymn D. C." |
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| Title: Re: What physics principle governs this common world experience-- graduate student quiz |
18 Sep 2005 05:29:04 AM |
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laziness
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