Helpmyphysics

CERN annonced today that it has discovered a new subatomic particle with a high confidence that it could be the uch sought after Higgs Boson.
This is the subatomic particle which gives objects mass.

Truly a momentous day for science. Congratulations to the scientists at CERN!

Read more about the discovery:

CERN announcement
BBC News Report
Discover Magazine
Sky News Report

How can we find a relationship between the length of a boomwhacker and the frequency of the sound it will produce?

This Apollo mission was the final dress rehearsal for the Apollo 11 moon landing.
This YouTube channel is a series of news specials from CBS television.

If you are of a certain age or just doing a project on the Apollo missions then this series is brilliant.

Apollo 10 CBS Special Part 1

You will find the rest of the series at the link.

You know that Spring is here when the constellation of Leo the Lion is in the southern sky.
Notice the planet Mars underneath the constellation.

Constellation Map

After the stormy weather of the Christmas period it was great to see the Sun shining brightly yesterday.

Actually, even though it is just past midwinter, the Sun was at its closet to the planet yesterday.
Astronomically we say the Earth was at perihelion

The fact that we are in winter is to do with the tilt of our planet which is tilted away from the Sun at the moment and nothing to do with distance from the Sun.

Anyway I wanted to capture the image of the Sun yesterday using a small compact mirror and piece of cardboard.

It is quite simple. Just make a hole in the cardboard with a pencil, just about the width of the pencil.

Sellotape the mirror onto the card over the hole.
Now carefully point the cardboard with the mirror towards the sun aiming the reflected image onto a wall a few metres away and there you have it! An image of the Sun`s disk.

WARNING! NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN

It is possible to see sunspots on the image if you project it into a dark box a few metres away.

The diagram below shows how to set up your pin hole arrangement.
The mirror is placed over the hole and by moving the cardboard the image of the Sun can be moved onto a wall a few metres away.
Click the diagram below to see it larger.

I projected the image of the Sun onto my shed wall.
The mirror has the effect of increasing the distance from the pinhole ( actually the hole in the cardboard ) to the wall thus making the image larger.

Try this solar project out and see if you can capture the image of the Sun.

But I do have to emphasize: DO NOT LOOK AT THE SUN

I was a boy aged seven at Christmas 1968. I have vivid memories of getting up really early on Christmas morning and my Dad taking me round to Corpus Christi Church Calderbank for the Dawn Mass of Christmas. I was an altar boy and was chosen to serve this Mass of Christmas. The morning was very dark.

In those days Scotland `didn`t celebrate Christmas`. So Dad attended Mass with me before going back home to open our presents while he had to go off to work leaving me, my sister, Mam and our year old brother to our Christmas morning.

I remember the excitement of that Christmas Eve when three Apollo astronauts: Borman, Lovell and Anders were about to go into Moon orbit. This was the first time a spaceship had gone to the moon.

I will always feel the excitement as the news on television broadcast the message these astronauts delivered from the orbit of the moon.

The words from Genesis read by the astronauts still make my neck hairs stand on end.

But it was Jim Lovell who I remember more for his famous reply to the control centre at Houston after the big engine fired to bring the astronauts home to earth.

” Houston. There is a Santa Claus!”

It is the biggest story in the world of physics. Here is a good infographic to read and impress your science/physics teacher with.

Source:LiveScience

A super time lapse film of the International Space Station as it flies over the planet.
Look out for the aurora. These are the green bands on the edge of the Earth. You can also see lightning storms and big cities lit up at night.
What a joy to see.

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

This is a wonderful movie showing how a simple set up of pendulums can create a beautiful pattern of swings.

Some questions to think about:

1. How do you measure the period of a pendulum`s swing?
2. What is the period of the pendulum at the front?
3. What is the period of the pendulum at the back?