My First Lesson!

I taught my first high school physics lesson today! It went really well!

I lead students in a lab exercise that was developed to help them determine the acceleration do to gravity. We used ticker tape timers to gather data about the motion of a dropping ball. They used this data to graph position vs. time, velocity vs. time, and acceleration vs. time. They really enjoyed it!

SO excited for what the future holds!

The Engagement Story!

Here's the official engagement story! Enjoy!

Girl Meets Geek

I'm A Christian Physicists

If you didn’t know me, would my Facebook page give you the impression that I’m a Christian?
If you met me on the street, would you think I was a Christian?
If someone from church joined a conversation I was having with my non-church friends, would I be embarrassed by my own language or content?

The last two weeks in church, the messages have really hit home for me. In particular, there were two challenges set forth that I feel God is calling me to accept. I feel that as Christians, we love to be content. We’ll find a place that makes us comfortable and we’ll stay there. So instead of allowing myself that opportunity, I am choosing to put my goals out there so that my family and friends can help me to stay committed to completing them.

The first challenge that I am taking on is to be a full-time Christian. The message on July 4 at Journey of Faith talked about how we can leave two lives: our church life and our life in the real world. It’s easy for me to start swearing or have inappropriate conversations that I would never have in church. But that’s the nature of the environment I’m in and I slip into it too easily! I need to live my life for God all the time, not just when it’s convenient or easy. When I go to school, am I being a witness for God with my life? Or do my friends that that I’m the perfect example of why they don’t want to be a Christian… a hypocrite… the very reason they think Christians are idiots… I want to be an example. Someone who’s life speaks God’s message without me needing to explicitly minister to those around me. So that someone can be lead to a relationship with Christ.

On July 12, we talked about how non-Christians view our relationship with God. Does the world think that God’s a fool for loving a bunch of hypocrites who keep abusing his love? I know that I’ve had the thought that God will forgive me instead of just stopping whatever it is that I know is wrong. The example used in the message was Hosea. Hosea married and adulterous woman and loved her, giving her everything she needed and having a family with her. But she left him… not only that, she sold herself into prostitution. That had to hurt Hosea! But you know what? He bought her back! The people in Hosea’s neighborhood muse have thought he was some kind of love struck moron! I mean, what a fool! That’s just asking for trouble! But think about it…. Isn’t that exactly what God has done for me? I sell myself into the traps and lures of the world around me, but God still seeks me out and takes me back. Man, if I didn’t know better, I’d probably think God was as foolish as Hosea. I completely abuse His love. I just expect that He’ll take me back no matter what I do instead of trying to lead a life that would honor God.

And that’s exactly what we talked about on July 18. I have to be humble enough to realize that I’m not nearly as good as I think I am. More often than not, I look at my downfalls and try to justify them by finding someone I can use to say, “Well, at least I’m not as bad as ______.”  But what does that do? NOTHING! I need to be able to admit that I am not who I need to be and be willing to make it a priority to move toward that ideal self. I know I can’t be perfect, but I can strive to honor God with my life.

SO here are my goals:
*Be a full-time Christian
*Instead of being content where I am, strive to move forward
*Be humble
*Live a life that would honor God

I ask that you help keep my goals and challenge you to take your next step in your relationship with Christ.  If you need to talk, I am always here. Just shoot me a message.

To hear the sermons I’ve been talking about, go to:
http://www.journeywired.org/index.php?page=message-player

I'M [mildly] FAMOUS!!!!

Hey there everyone! You can now say you read the blog of a [mildly] famous physicist!

Today I got an email from Prof. dr hab. Łukasz A. Turski from the Center for Theoretical Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences and Department of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at Cardinal Wyszyński University [Basically a Polish professor]. He asked if he could use my Death Star physics in a public lecture on the Science Festival in Łódż. OH MAN! [of course I said yes]

In the email he said,

I found your page on the destruction of the Alderaan. I found it so well prepared and interesting that I will show copy of your calculations slide (taken from your page) in my presentation clearly showing who was the author of it. I would be proud to have students so keen to do their own independent thinking like you. Keep going!

WOW! I've attached a copy of the slide that has MY NAME and MY CALCULATIONS on it!

 
P.S. - Zniszczenie = destruction in Polish

New Look!

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the new and improved Physics Phanatic blog, complete with background upgrade. To kick of this wonderful new chapter, try to wrap your head around this video:

Imagining the Tenth Dimension

Tell me how far you could fathom in a comment below! Thanks everyone!

Science Fiction... or Science FACT?

So it turns out that Elder-Geek.com was interested in my calculations, so I wrote a feature article on it:

Is Science Fiction Science FACT? - Death Star Physics

You should definitely check that out! It's got all you need in there! The story behind my quest for knowledge, the math, cool pictures, THE WORKS!

Alright, the moment you've all been waiting for! Here's the physics behind the Death Star:

I wanted to find the minimum amount of energy needed to destroy Alderaan. I thought that a good way to do this would be to find the amount of energy needed to tear the planet apart, chunk by chunk, at escape velocity (meaning just fast enough to pull free of the gravitational field). This is nowhere near as dramatic as it is in the film, but it’s a start. First, we’ll use the equation for the potential energy of an object in the gravitational field of the planet:

where G is the gravitational constant, M is the mass of Alderaan, and m is the mass of the chunk being torn off. We want to make this easier on ourselves, so we’re going to substitute an equation for both masses. We’ll do this by using:

where m is mass, ρ is the density, and V is volume. First up, the mass of Alderaan! We know the volume of a sphere to be:

so our new equation for M is:

We’re going to take a slightly abstract approach to finding an equation for m. We’re going to imagine that we’ll “peel” a layer off of the planet that’s infinitesimally small (really, really, really, small). We’ll find the volume of this layer by multiplying the surface area of the spherical layer (4πr²) and the width of the layer (dr). This will give us the following equation for the mass of the layer:

Now we’re ready to calculate the energy. We’re going to take the integral of our formula so that we can add up every layer from the surface to the core. Assuming Alderaan has a radius R:

Since most of the values in the equation are constants, we can take them out front and simplify the integral:

After integrating, we see that plugging lower boundary term results in zero, so we now have our final equation:

We can now plug in our values:

• G = 6.673 x 10^-11 m³ kg^-1 s^-2
• Diameter of Alderaan = 12,500 km → R = 6250 x 10³ m
• ρ_Alderaan*= 5515.3 kg m^-3

Plugging in these numbers gives us:

E = 2.038 x 10³² J

*Note: I assumed that the density of Alderaan in equal to that of the Earth. I did this for several reasons: (1) Both Alderaan and Earth are terrestrial and support human life, (2) Alderaan’s diameter is only 250 km shorter than the Earth’s, and (3) Alderaan does not have any major oceans, just rivers and lakes. This means that it would have less water than the earth and more dense land mass.

BWAHAHAHA

Hello World:

I have calculated the minimum energy necessary to destroy Alderaan!

Isn't it beautiful? Yes, yes, it's on a napkin. I can't help it. I'm a nerd. The specifics to come later.