Seven and a Half Times Per Second
Empty space isn’t empty. Random fluctuations at the quantum level cause particles to pop into existence. But, average energy = 0 Implication: For all the…
Land Breeze
eight o’clock -- Ms. Jenny, the physics teacher once said that in the day, the sea stores heat in its folds as it collects the sun in handfuls (the sea has…
All The Stars In The Sky Can Be Mistaken For Planes
The theory behind roller coasters lies within the concept of gravity: How what goes up must ultimately come down and how friction (both literally and…
Several Stories to Go...Ever So Slowly
Limited though his understanding of physics was, John realized the twenty story fall should not have been taking that long. Shortly after this realization…
Texas Physics
Ten story drop if I missed it. Two story drop if I made it. I’d had better odds, and I’d had worse. In the glare of that Texas sun fate seemed to smiling…
Mass/Energy Equivalence, or: The Repairman
40 minutes, give or take: how long they have to fix things when they go wrong. Always this planet, always this species. The repairman sighed. The computer…
The physics of horror
The theoretical physicist calmly observed the mathematician through her binoculars. She had never anticipated such a grim end to their lifelong rivalry. She…
Scientific Frontiers
Tim may be the finest mind humanity had ever known, and yet when he tells other researchers what his field is, they scoff. This was because he is the world’s…
A Description Alphabetical, in Terms of Matters Physic.
I am acceleration. I am a barycenter. I am 299,792,458 meters per second ( c ). I am distance. I am energy. I am force. I am -9.81 meters per second per…
Ongoing Lesson
An impossibly bright single tiny pinpoint of light appeared in the center of the sphere suspended onstage in the physics theater. “The interior of the sphere,”…
Schroedinger's Cat
You think I’m here. You think I’m a goofy physics teacher who writes essays on the weekends, but I know better. I’m Schroedinger’s Cat, and this is only one of…
Down the Rabbit Hole
“...So, where does this new mass and energy go?” asked the chief researcher for one of the LHC projects. The team leader sipped his coffee and said, “We think…
Everything you know is...
It was a private conference when the team leader at the Large Hadron Collider spoke the news. “So far, over the past year of successful runs on the LHC, we…
The Strange Gift of Adam Fisher
Adam Fisher had an unusual gift. He first knew it when he built a cathode ray tube out of his sister’s Power Wheels Jeep when he was 7 or 8. He was asked to…