Given that these correlations cannot be mere coincidence, and that information cannot travel faster than light, how do these two electrons "know" about each other and maintain their correlation?

I’m enrolled in a research course this term, and my work is on the dynamics of Bloch electron in crystals. It’s mostly semiclassical dynamics, and there’s a lot of work involving Berry curvature.

Marder’s Condensed Matter Physics is one of the assigned books I’ve been given, but because it’s a graduate level book and I don’t have sufficient completed coursework in quantum mechanics, I can’t finish the whole thing myself.

Regardless, I want to get an intuitive understanding of what crystal momentum and Berry curvature are. What is reciprocal space? Is Berry curvature a property of the reciprocal space? What are the closest analogues in classical particle dynamics?

Hi, I’m writing a thriller set in a hotel where the protagonist creates clever, unconventional booby traps to outsmart the villain and his men.

I’m looking for creative ideas that use things commonly found in a hotel, such as cleaning supplies, kitchen equipment, plumbing, electrical systems, or other everyday objects.

For example, imagine a large-scale version of the Elephant’s Toothpaste experiment that rapidly fills an entire corridor with foam. I’m also interested in visually spectacular traps involving environmental hazards, electrical failures, or unexpected chain reactions.

The traps should feel scientifically plausible, be inventive rather than generic, and have potentially serious consequences for the antagonists. I want ideas that are cinematic, surprising, and make the audience think, “I never would have thought of using that this way.”

Say a body of water (like a large lake) is frozen over with ice (Lets say a foot thick) will this affect the water pressure below it? Is there a way to calculate this? Trying to solve something for a personal project of mine.

During this process, how do electrons move so easily to another atom? Why don't they fall onto the nucleus, and why don't they collide with each other?

hi, I’m having trouble finding ideas for a high school physics project (it’s a group project) our teacher is very picky and doesn‘t like project topics that would be easier and more efficient for us as students (out of the box ideas if you will)

topics can be anything related to physics but we don’t have a physics lab or any physics equipment so any experiment that involves equipment we the student have to provide it ourselves

topics that we have in our curriculum to give you an idea on what we’re learning:

1/ unit on gravity (basic intro to astrophysics think kepler’s law, cavendish‘s experiment, newton‘s law of universal gravitation, ect)

2/ unit on rotational motion (angular velocity, angular acceleration,torque,ect)

3/ momentum and its conservation (impulse and momentum)

4/ work energy and simple machines

5/ energy and its conservation

6/ thermal energy

I am looking at AP placement on my ceiling and trying to determine if it can reach a IoT device in my attic. I am looking at Ubiquiti U7 Pro XGS and found the AP spectrum pattern for this device.

From what I can gather, I should have pretty good coverage I place my wireless plug 9' horizontal and 3' vertical from the AP. The device uses the 2.4GHz band.

https://imgur.com/a/hOrySN4

Anyone good at reading spectrum maps? From what I can gather through google, I should have pretty good coverage if my IoT device is 9' horizontal and 3' vertical from the AP. At 9' out and 3' up, the device sits at a diagonal angle of approx 72 degrees off the center vertical axis. Near the 60° to 75° mark, the color is a solid, vibrant orange/red.

Just trying to confirm I am reading this correctly, as I am not an RF engineer and not really sure what the charts describe.

I'm reading 'Red Mars' by Kim Stanley Robinson, and came across the line: "Total column mass about 10^-3 grams per cm^-2." (The actual text is more elegant with properly written exponents)

It looks to me that this unit is wrong, using "per" and also using the negative exponent is doing the same thing. Wouldn't you use one or the other?

I asked this in a scale-visualization post in another subreddit, figured I should ask actual physicists.

Each nucleon is three quarks bound tightly together but the shell model has, well, shells. I can't quite wrap my head around how that works with the very short-distance forces going on in the nucleus.

The power output from a wind turbine is proportional to the cube of the wind speed. This can easily be shown using dimensional analysis.

Similarly, the radius of the shock wave from a nuclear explosion is proportional to the 2/5 power of the time since detonation, as shown independently by John Von Neumann and GI Taylor during WWII in classified documents.

What other scaling laws can be found using dimensional analysis

I always get my friend's kids books for the holidays. Her son is 13, and increasingly fascinated by all things related to physics and cosmology. He's in an accelerated track at school, and reads at a college level, but still has only a middle school math background (I'd hazard a guess that they're somewhere around quadratic equations and the Pythagorean theorem this winter).

Two years ago I got him an illustrated edition of A Brief History of Time + The Universe in a Nutshell, and he reportedly couldn't put it down. Any ideas for a followup that he might find similarly compelling?

EDIT: Wow, I did not anticipate nearly so many responses, and probably can't respond individually to all of them. Looks like I've got a whole bunch of books to check out. Thank you to everyone who responded for all these ideas, and please keep them coming!

The problem dictates:

Two punctual still masses, M₁ = 4,00·10¹²kg and M₂ = 9,00·10¹²kg, are on x₁ = 0 and x₂ = 1000m, respectively. Only the (gravitational) fields are considered.

a) Draw the fields both masses produce on P coordinate x = 500m. Calculate the resulting field, with its direction and orientation (?).

This is translated from Spanish, and the words it uses, "dirección" (direction) and "sentido" (orientation) mean exactly the same in normal Spanish, so I'm already unsure of what different things it is asking.

Beyond drawing, I'm at a loss on what to do. So I decide to check the solution because sometimes I can decipher what is meant to be done from reading it. But I still do not understand what was done this time.

The solution is:

M₁ ⃗g₁ ⃗g₂ M₂

○----------------------<-----P--------------->------------○

x=0 x=1000 m

--------------500m-------------∖------------500m----------

● Q: x = 400 m; distances between 400 m and 600 m

𝑔⃗1 = − 6,67 ⋅ 10^-11 ⋅ 4,00 ⋅ 10^12 / 500^2 = ı⃗ = −1,0672 ⋅ 10^−3ı⃗ N kg−1

𝑔⃗2 = 6,67 ⋅ 10^-11 ⋅ 9,00 ⋅ 10^12 / 500^2 = ı⃗ = 2,4012 ⋅ 10^−3ı⃗ N kg−1

𝑔⃗ (𝑃) = 𝑔⃗1 + 𝑔⃗2 = 1,334 ⋅ 10−3ı⃗ N kg−1

Its modulus is approx. 1,33 ⋅ 10−3 N kg−1, its direction is the one on the X axis, and its orientation is to the right, towards the bigger mass.

My questions:

1) What does the solution mean with "its direction is the one on the X axis"? Wouldn't that be a position?

2) What does the "Q" mean? What's there for?

3) From my understanding, the thought process was to calculate the gravitational fields of both M₁ and M₂ and then just add the results up to get the field of P. Am I correct?

Is it energy or force?

does the current in plasma globes prefer your skin over air because skin has less resistance?

I heard that a ship moving 99% the speed of light with a light beam in front of it would see the beam move away at the speed of light, while a stationary observer would see the beam pull away from the ship slower. If this is the case, then what would happen if a ship sent light infront of an behind it? Wouldn't the ship always see the light equadistant from itself while a stationary observer would see the front light move away from the ship slower than the back light? How is this possible?

​

Olá a todos! Tenho 14 anos e estou começando a estudar física nuclear por conta própria. Tenho interesse em compreender a física fundamental das interações entre nêutrons.

Entendo que dois nêutrons livres não formam um estado ligado estável nas condições conhecidas, e gostaria de aprender mais sobre esse assunto.

Tenho três perguntas:

1. Quais são as principais razões físicas pelas quais dois nêutrons livres não formam um estado ligado estável?

2. Quais modelos matemáticos ou simulações computacionais vocês recomendam para estudar as interações entre nêutrons e o dineutron hipotético?

3. Quais livros, artigos científicos ou materiais educativos confiáveis vocês recomendam para alguém que está começando a estudar esse tema?

Meu interesse é compreender a física teórica e explorar cálculos e simulações educativas.

Agradeço por qualquer orientação ou recomendação de material de estudo!

This came up as I was explaining to my 12 yo about the why you land at the same spot when you jump in a train. If somebody can explain this in a way to explain the underlying concepts that will be very helpful.

There appears to be sort of three or four versions or notions of “acceleration” I can think of, and I want to ask a bit about them.

There is the type of acceleration where something like thrusters are used to increase velocity for one object relative to another object.

There is a notion of (effectively) “acceleration” where if I go forward with constant velocity, measuring time with my clock, away from some planet let’s say and another ship passes under me going towards the planet, and the ship syncs its clock with mine as it passes, effectively “information has accelerated relative to earth”/the information has a change in reference frame.

There is the concept of gravitational assist that is also considered acceleration, where an object can increase/change velocity relative to some other object via a gravitational assist.

(I suppose you could also do the same with magnets and have “magnetic assist” of a magnet, where the magnet wouldn’t feel itself accelerating, or?)

First of all, is it the case that it is only the first version that is considered proper acceleration or are all considered/called proper acceleration?

A thing these scenarios have in common is a change in reference frame. They will age less relative to an object that does not engage in any of this if they start off together and then meet up.

What do these scenarios have in common that leads to a change in reference frame contra objects that do not engage in these scenarios and only “experience” the coordinate acceleration (fourth notion of “acceleration”) relative to objects that engaged in these processes (even though there of course is no universally agreed upon coordinates in space and velocities and distances always have to be defined relative to other objects)? Can that be explained in more detail or is it more accepted as a rule, that:

“If any object/information engages in one of these three scenarios of using something like thrusters, clock syncing or gravity assist, then they have a change in reference frame and objects that do not engage in any of this will not change reference frame (in a universe with no ‘official coordinates’)” ?

Hi r/askphysics, question about special relativity:

if you were an observer standing (Say on the outer rim) of a disk that was rotating close to the speed of light, what happens in terms of length contraction? I’m trying to reason that since my velocity is basically only in the azimuthal direction (say in cylindrical coordinates) I think only angles and therefore arc lengths would appear to shrink around the observer, and not radii (So objects in the surroundings would not appear closer). Also since the reference frame is non-inertial I’m sure something weird happens with GR in that case, but I don’t know much about GR.

I’m a high school student from Kazakhstan, and I want to prepare for the International Physics Olympiad (IPhO). I’m trying to study physics and math as much as I can, but I often feel like I’m not doing enough.
My biggest problem is time management, especially with physics. I’m not always sure how to divide my time between learning theory, solving difficult problems, and reviewing my mistakes. I also need to study math, so it’s hard to balance everything with regular schoolwork.
For those who have prepared for IPhO or other national and international physics olympiads:
How did you organize your daily or weekly study schedule?
What books, websites, or other resources helped you the most?
How much time did you spend on theory versus problem-solving?
Did you study independently or with a coach or olympiad team?
What would you recommend to someone who wants to reach the IPhO level?
I’d really appreciate any advice or personal stories about your preparation, especially what worked for you and what you would do differently if you started again.
Thank you!

I’ve been thinking about special relativity and the idea that there’s no absolute reference frame, meaning we can’t say one object is truly stationary while another is truly moving.
But the Big Bang and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) seem to complicate this.

Imagine two advanced civilizations, one in the Milky Way and another in Andromeda. Both could estimate the age of the universe using the same cosmological model, measure their own velocities relative to the CMB, and compare their results. For example, the Sun moves at roughly 370 km/s relative to the CMB.

I understand that the Big Bang wasn’t an explosion from a single point in space, and that the CMB provides something like a preferred cosmological reference frame. But if we can measure our motion relative to it, doesn’t that suggest there’s at least one physically meaningful frame that isn’t arbitrary?
So what’s the fundamental difference between a cosmological reference frame and an absolute frame of motion?

I’m not suggesting that relativity is wrong. I’m just trying to understand why a frame defined by the universe itself isn’t considered an absolute reference frame.

The SM is built on the idea that all fundamental fields are invariant under the SU(3) X SU(2) X U(1) group of transformations. But why those specific groups? I understand why those groups suitably describe nature mathematically, but not why nature obeys specifically those transformations.

For example, why is QCD governed by the SU(3) group? There doesn't seem to be a good reason why it's not governed by the U(3) group, leading to 9 gluons, with one being colourless and long-ranged.

Even if we don't have a specific reason, are there more general requirements for a valid group to be unitary, or any requirements for it to be special?