Not quite a horse...


By that I am referring to a 'Trojan' Asteroid, the first to be found orbiting the Sun along Earth's orbit. This particular asteroid is known as 2010 TK7 and was discovered when the WISE telescope had been scanning the entire sky from January 2010 to February of this year, this asteroid was spotted because it follows an unusual orbit and as such takes it farther away from the Sun than is typical for Trojans. Such Asteroids have been found in the solar system before but never following the orbit of the Earth, this is because they are extremely hard to detect due to them being relatively small and from the Earth's point of view they seem relatively close to the sun. Trojans remain stable due to circling around 'Lagrange Points' which are gravity wells situated near two large objects, in this case the Sun and the Earth. These Lagrangian points mark positions where the combined gravitational pull of the two large masses provide precisely the required centripetal force required to rotate upon that orbit. As they follow in or lead in the same orbit as a planet they therefore can never collide with that planet, so any of you who were worried needn't worry about a catastrophic collision with 2010 TK7. 
The asteroid is roughly 300m in diameter, at a distance of about 80 million kilometres from the Earth. It has an unusual orbit that not only does it follow the orbit of earth with an extremely complex motion but that it also moves above and below the plane of orbit. The asteroid's orbit will most likely stay stable for the next 10,000 years therefore it shan't be disappearing into the vastness of space any time soon. A handful of other objects share an orbit similar to that of earth which may potentially be the aim of human or robotic exploration but 2010 TK7 is not one of these due to it's odd orbit travelling above and below the plane of orbit, therefore it would take a massive amount of fuel to reach. 

The Ridiculousness of Significant Figures

In my Physics lesson today we were posed with a seemingly simple question, but it is one to which it is very difficult to provide a solution. How can we calculate the mass of the earth? Upon hearing this you would expect the problem to be solved through the use of different high tech machines. However, the true answer is much simpler, it is through a bit of simple mathematics, if the ancient greeks can do it with rulers alone i'm sure that proves that it doesn't require any expensive equipment. The way they did this was rather ingenious really, they dug pits at a known distance apart from each other along the equator, they then waited until the sun lit up the bottom of the pit (i.e. when the sun is directly above the pit at midday) and then contacted the people at the second pit and told them to start timing. They would time up until the point that the sun shone into the bottom of the second pit and stop timing. This would seem to be an insignificant piece of information, knowing how long it takes to shine light in two different pits, but actually it provides us with the key to answer the question of the mass of the earth. Let me explain how:
Let's say that the pits are 5 km apart, if it took an hour for the light to get from one pit to the other (these being completely random numbers) then we know that 5 km would be one twenty-fourth of the earth's circumference. This is because as there are 24 hours in the day and it takes one hour to spin 5 km this therefore means that in 24 hours the earth would spin with a total circumference of 5 x 24 = 120.
With this data we can then use 2zr (there is no pi sign here so I shall use z) to work out the radius of the earth. I happen to know that this value is 6.4 x 10^6 m as the values that I made up were obviously not going to be correct. 
Now that we have the radius it is relatively simple (ok, it's not that simple) to work out the mass, to do so we must rearrange the equation F = (G x M1 x M2) / r^2 which is Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation. G being the universal gravitation constant, M1 being the mass of obejct 1, M2 being... well you can guess what it is, r being the distance from the centre of one object to the centre of the other and F being the force between them. In order to gain all of the necessary data to calculate the mass I must first assume that I am calculating the force between me and the centre of the earth (therefore providing the two seperate masses), weighing 64 kg myself this provides M2, F is 64 x 9.81 = 628N, G is 6.67 x 10^-11N m^2 kg^-2 and r being 6.4 x 10^6m. Now that I have all the necessary data I have to rearrange Newton's law to give me M1 = Fr^2 / GM2 ... M1 = 628 x (6.4x10^6)^2 / (6.67 x 10^-11) x 64 = 6.03 x 10^24 kg. So finally I have the mass of the earth! It is not the precise mass but it is within 10% of the true value, however, due to the number of significant figures it is impossible to comprehend how heavy that would be, we know how much 10 kg is even 100 kg but when you get into times ten to the power of twenty four it is somewhat harder to imagine this mass. It would be like saying to someone how much is that television? 50000 pennies please.

Fencing, similar to real duelling?

Keith_smart_fencingBeing a fencer myself I can say that fencing is definitely not an easy sport to master. You need extremely fast reaction speeds, a good cardiovascular fitness and the ability to remain cool-headed under pressure. As for the sports realism, in technique and required skill it is almost identical. However, as in fencing you often have to score as many as 15 points in order to win a match, it is said that many defensive acts are carried out that would never be done in a real duel as you effectively have 15 'lives'. Compare this to a real duel in which, obviously, you only have the one life and the duellers would be far more cautious. Out of the three potential swords that you can fight with (foil, epee or sabre), epee is most like what the weapons used in duels would have been like, similarly the rules reflect a more realistic fight in that you can hit anywhere on the body and there is no 'right of way' for scoring. I myself use a sabre but when I have fought with an epee I can safely say that it hurts like a bitch to be hit with one. It has even been said that the force produced by a fencers lunge with an epee is comparable to the force produced by a bullet. Whether or not this has any factual evidence is debatable but there is definitely no debate as to which is more lethal, i'd pick a fencers lunge any day of the week. 

Paper Cuts, why are they so awful?


As I often suffer from the nasty little buggers that are paper cuts I thought it worthwhile to find out why they are such a nightmare to endure. The reason is that paper cuts are like razor blade cuts, the wound is normally small and shallow, but unlike a razor blade cut where very few foreign particles are left behind, many are left with a paper cut. Paper is created by pressing wood mulch along with a number of chemicals, as the paper cuts into your skin these chemical coated fibres, as well as bacteria, are left in the wound. The wound closes quickly due to it being quite thin. These fibres and particles are left inside of the wound and these stimulate the pain receptors in the skin. As much as this knowledge consoles me when I get a paper cut (note sarcasm) I shall still remain to handle my books with far much more care than I would my razor blades...                                                                                  

The zombie apocalypse from a scientific point of view

zombies!Having recently played a zombie survival game (Project Zomboid for any who are interested) in which you must search for food, shelter and most importantly a big piece of wood to cave in some zombie skulls. It has got me wondering about what would truly occur in a zombie apocalypse, would the zombies shuffle or run? Would there be a cure? And most importantly would the gun-nut weirdo who has their own personal armoury as well as zombie proof bunker with food for years to come truly survive or would they become zombie food in five minutes?
I came across some answers in the most unlikely of places, a scientific research paper oddly enough. Written by David and Robert Madore they look at the behaviour of zombies as similar to gravity and molecular activity which can be modelled. Reading through the paper I was intrigued by the depth they had gone into to inform us of the risks of the zombie riddled future world, and how they supposedly 'hide' in buildings. As for my own zombie apocalypse survival method all I know is to stick clear of most zombie film stereotypes. 'Ooh that abandoned abattoir looks like an amazing place for me to camp overnight. All of you fellow survivors stay here whilst I check it's safe, what could go wrong?' A lot. A lot of things could go wrong is the answer to that question. Those kinds of characters sort of deserve what they have coming towards them like an unstoppable freight train. However, I believe I got slightly off topic there, if anyone would like to read the paper then you can find it at this site:
http://wezombie.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/57439058-The-Physics-of-Zombies-Madore%E2%80%99s-Rules-of-Zombie-Cohesion-Zombie-Cells-and-Super-Cells-Zombie-Black-Holes-Zombie-Cell-Stress-Fission-and-Zombie-Qui.pdf
To quote the Madores, "We must prepare".

Physicists around the world tackling the fuel crisis... and making superlenses out of tin cans. Not everything can be all work no play.

Photograph of the acoustic superlensSooo this is my first blog, I would do a 'this is my first blog, that is all' but to be honest it seems a tad mundane. Instead i'll jump straight into it with an odd bit of physics I stumbled upon. Admittedly at first glance you wouldn't expect this to be that significant, but in the broad spectrum of things it opens up masses of ways to manipulate sound that have never been seen before. Arranged in a grid as such the tin cans can focus acoustic waves into areas much smaller than their metre long wavelengths usually allow (a few centimetres in this case). Right now it just looks like a couple of lazy uni students have left some tin cans on the floor... in a specific grid... surrounded by very expensive equipment *cough* but this technology could eventually be used in biomedical fields for cell sorting or for particle removal in ultrasound cleaning. I suppose the only question left is would the same experiment be better or worse with pepsi cans...