Rhett Allain
Rhett Allain is an American associate professor of physics at Southeastern Louisiana University and the author of the Wired (magazine), Wired magazine science blog Dot Physics. He received his Ph.D. from North Carolina State University in 2001 and works in the field of Physics education, physics education research. In his blog, Dot Physics, Allain discusses physical concepts, answers questions related to physics and math, and debunks questionable physical claims. Many of his posts are supported by experiments, calculations, and models. Recently, he has analyzed the physics behind the ''Angry Birds Space'' video game and behind a now-debunked video which purported to show a man flying with home-made wings. He has also criticized television shows, including ''Fight Science'', that perform poorly controlled experiments which are presented as scientific. In 2008 Allain rejected the concept of Sailing faster than the wind#Sailing dead downwind faster than the wind, sailing dead down ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which relates to the order of nature, or, in other words, to the regular succession of events." Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines, with its main goal being to understand how the universe behaves. "Physics is one of the most fundamental of the sciences. Scientists of all disciplines use the ideas of physics, including chemists who study the structure of molecules, paleontologists who try to reconstruct how dinosaurs walked, and climatologists who study how human activities affect the atmosphere and oceans. Physics is also the foundation of all engineering and technology. No engineer could design a flat-screen TV, an interplanetary spacecraft, or even a better mousetrap without first understanding the basic laws of physic ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sailing Faster Than The Wind
High-performance sailing is achieved with low forward surface resistance—encountered by catamarans, sailing hydrofoils, iceboats or land sailing craft—as the sailing craft obtains motive power with its sails or aerofoils at speeds that are often faster than the wind on both upwind and downwind points of sail. Faster-than-the-wind sailing means that the apparent wind angle experienced on the moving craft is always ahead of the sail. This has generated a new concept of sailing, called "apparent wind sailing", which entails a new skill set for its practitioners, including tacking on downwind points of sail. History Frank Bethwaite offers the following chronology of key advances in sailing technology that provided the essential elements of high-performance sailing: * 1900s: Moveable ballast and planing hulls were emerging. * 1960s: Flexible masts, sail-shaping controls, and knowledge of exploiting wind shifts in racing were developed. * 1970s: Powerful rigs, including wingsails, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Southeastern Louisiana University Faculty
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each separated by 90 degrees, and secondarily divided by four ordinal (intercardinal) directions—northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest—each located halfway between two cardinal directions. Some disciplines such as meteorology and navigation further divide the compass with additional azimuths. Within European tradition, a fully defined compass has 32 'points' (and any finer subdivisions are described in fractions of points). Compass points are valuable in that they allow a user to refer to a specific azimuth in a colloquial fashion, without having to compute or remember degrees. Designations The names of the compass point directions follow these rules: 8-wind compass rose * The four cardinal directions are north (N), east (E) ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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North Carolina State University Alumni
North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north'' is related to the Old High German ''nord'', both descending from the Proto-Indo-European unit *''ner-'', meaning "left; below" as north is to left when facing the rising sun. Similarly, the other cardinal directions are also related to the sun's position. The Latin word ''borealis'' comes from the Greek '' boreas'' "north wind, north", which, according to Ovid, was personified as the wind-god Boreas, the father of Calais and Zetes. ''Septentrionalis'' is from ''septentriones'', "the seven plow oxen", a name of ''Ursa Major''. The Greek ἀρκτικός (''arktikós'') is named for the same constellation, and is the source of the English word ''Arctic''. Other languages have other derivations. For example, in Lezgian, ''kefer'' can mean b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Science Bloggers
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of thousands of years old. The earliest written records in the history of science come from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age and later by the efforts of Byzantine Greek scholars who brought Greek man ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Living People
Related categories * :Year of birth missing (living people) / :Year of birth unknown * :Date of birth missing (living people) / :Date of birth unknown * :Place of birth missing (living people) / :Place of birth unknown * :Year of death missing / :Year of death unknown * :Date of death missing / :Date of death unknown * :Place of death missing / :Place of death unknown * :Missing middle or first names See also * :Dead people * :Template:L, which generates this category or death years, and birth year and sort keys. : {{DEFAULTSORT:Living people 21st-century people People by status ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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21st-century American Physicists
The 1st century was the century spanning AD 1 ( I) through AD 100 ( C) according to the Julian calendar. It is often written as the or to distinguish it from the 1st century BC (or BCE) which preceded it. The 1st century is considered part of the Classical era, epoch, or historical period. The 1st century also saw the appearance of Christianity. During this period, Europe, North Africa and the Near East fell under increasing domination by the Roman Empire, which continued expanding, most notably conquering Britain under the emperor Claudius (AD 43). The reforms introduced by Augustus during his long reign stabilized the empire after the turmoil of the previous century's civil wars. Later in the century the Julio-Claudian dynasty, which had been founded by Augustus, came to an end with the suicide of Nero in AD 68. There followed the famous Year of Four Emperors, a brief period of civil war and instability, which was finally brought to an end by Vespasian, ninth Roman emperor, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Year Of Birth Missing (living People)
A year or annus is the orbital period of a planetary body, for example, the Earth, moving in its orbit around the Sun. Due to the Earth's axial tilt, the course of a year sees the passing of the seasons, marked by change in weather, the hours of daylight, and, consequently, vegetation and soil fertility. In temperate and subpolar regions around the planet, four seasons are generally recognized: spring, summer, autumn and winter. In tropical and subtropical regions, several geographical sectors do not present defined seasons; but in the seasonal tropics, the annual wet and dry seasons are recognized and tracked. A calendar year is an approximation of the number of days of the Earth's orbital period, as counted in a given calendar. The Gregorian calendar, or modern calendar, presents its calendar year to be either a common year of 365 days or a leap year of 366 days, as do the Julian calendars. For the Gregorian calendar, the average length of the calendar year (the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Blackbird (land Yacht)
''Blackbird'' is an experimental wind-powered vehicle, built in 2010 to demonstrate that it is possible for such a vehicle to go directly downwind faster than the wind. ''Blackbird'' employs a rotor connected to the wheels and does not have a motor, battery or flywheel. It was constructed by Rick Cavallaro and John Borton of Sportvision, sponsored by Google and Joby Energy in association with the San Jose State University aeronautics department. In a test supervised and recognized by the North American Land Sailing Association in July 2010, Cavallaro achieved a speed of sailing directly downwind in winds: almost three times the speed of the wind. - Explanation of the Blackbird workings and its physics. In 2012, ''Blackbird'' also demonstrated sailing directly upwind with twice the speed of the wind. Theory Rotor-powered vehicles are wind-powered vehicles that use ''rotors''—instead of sails—which may have a shroud around them (ducted fan) or constitute an unducted propel ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fight Science
''Fight Science'' is a television program shown on the National Geographic Channel in which scientists and martial arts masters work together to analyze the world's fighting techniques, to compare the disciplines and to find out which one has the strongest hits, kicks and deadliest weapons. The show also tries to prove through science if certain legends in fighting are possible, such as whether a one-punch knockout is possible or if ninja are as nimble and deadly as stories tell. There is also a feature on human strength, where in it a man hits his head on bricks in order to shatter them. The show had several spin-offs including ''Sport Science''. The narrator is Robert Leigh. It featured fighters including Melchor Menor, Tito Ortiz, Bas Rutten, Randy Couture, Alex Huynh, Amir Perets, Mindy Kelly, Bren Foster, Amir Solsky, Glen Levy and Dan Inosanto. Legend tests *The agility of a martial artist practicing ninjutsu (Glen Levy) was confirmed by revealing that one's center of gravi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Blogging
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. Until 2009, blogs were usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single subject or topic. In the 2010s, "multi-author blogs" (MABs) emerged, featuring the writing of multiple authors and sometimes professionally edited. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other "microblogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into the news media. ''Blog'' can also be used as a verb, meaning ''to maintain or add content to a blog''. The emergence and growth of blogs i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Angry Birds Space
''Angry Birds Space'' is a physics-based puzzle game and the fifth game in the ''Angry Birds'' video game series. It is developed and published by Rovio Entertainment. Angry Birds Space was released on March 22, 2012. The game was featured in NASA videos and the game features NASA spacecraft that when found unlock unique levels. ''Angry Birds Space'' was discontinued on February 3, 2020 along with ''Angry Birds Rio,'' ''Angry Birds Star Wars and Angry Birds Star Wars ll,'' with the games also being pulled out of app stores. Gameplay Unlike the previous ''Angry Birds'' games, the stage is no longer flat, instead comprising several different planets, each of which has its own gravitational field that affects the trajectory of the birds after launch. There is an aiming system that makes it easier to aim the birds. Some pigs are in space bubbles, and when the birds break them, they will freeze and smash unless they get into a gravity field. Like in ''Angry Birds Rio'', ''Angry Birds ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |