2007 Summer Honors Institute at Cleveland State University

Here are the presenters in the physics section. I enjoyed every one of these presentations.

Faith Tandoc and Raymond Johnston explained how a falling cat might have a better chance of surviving a fall if they fall from a large height than a shorter one, owing to the cat spreading out and encountering additional air drag.

Nadia Ahlborg and Soham Chakraborty talked about the plight of someone falling through a hole that runs through the center of the Earth, and the possibility of a gravity train (a train powered only by gravity) running along a straight line through the Earth, from city to city.

Jennie Simson and Masami Matsuyama discussed the nature of quasars, mentioning the supermassive black hole that powers a quasar. Their apparent motion relative to us is almost lightspeed.

Krissy Bodnar discussed Archimedes’s principle in the situation where the fluid density is varied.

Tyler Cullinan and Emily Hascher talked about how a certain type of lizard can run over the top of water without become submerged.

Richard Pham and Andy Kimble analyzed projectile motion. In particular they discussed the old question: if one ball is dropped vertically and a second ball is shot out horizontally, which one will hit the floor first.

Priya Datta and Meredith Harris discussed Newton’s second law of motion, tying it into the hang time in ballet and the movement of the giant stone blocks in the formation of Stonehenge.

Bridgitte Petrash and Andrea Shergalis presented material about the production of vortex rings as made by a smoker and a porpoise. They also talked about the stability of a rectangular floating container as the container is filled with water.

Stephen Meil and Grace Patuwo talked about the conservation of both energy and momentum in elastic collisions. They also talked about the use of air bags in increasing the duration of a collision in order to decrease the magnitude of the collision force. They demonstrated the chain collision when a tennis ball and a basketball are dropped, with the tennis ball on top.

Myles Davis, Alexandria Claytor, and Shaniguea Fails discussed the motion of a ball down an inclined ramp, the classic Galileo incline demonstration.

Lauren Reese and Dung Vo talked about momentum, impulse, collision duration, and collision force.

Kelly Clatterbuck and Alexandria Cooke talked about the conservation of energy in an isolated system. They also talked about the “two-spring surprise” and the Wilberforce pendulum, as shown in The Flying Circus of Physics.

Tian You, Justin Duane, and Mansoor Khan discussed the flight of paper airplanes

Carl Friess and Dakota Piorkowski discussed the physics of lacrosse, the right and wrong ways to throw a ball with the stick.

Anastacia Strosser and Kara Thomas examined the fate of a falling cat and how they can use air drag to decrease its rate of fall.

Mohiuddin Ahmed, Ian Conant, and Mike Lombardo talked about elastic and ineleastic collisions, involving the conservation of momentum.

Dennis Arutyunov, Vija Prashant, and Vinai Suresh give a PowerPoint show (with rap) about the motion of a car.