Wednesday, July 01, 2009


http://www.flyingcircusofphysics.com/ The July stories are (1) the physics of tossing a pizza, including both the single-toss technique and the multiple-toss technique. (2) Dead water refers to a strange sea condition when a ship is stopped, even though it is at full power, the sea is calm, and there is neither wind nor current. What would it be like to swim across a region of dead water? (3) The pub trick of the month is about how to allow a ring to fall down a loop of string and end up tied in a ring hitch at the bottom. It is easy to do if you know how but stumps everyone else in the pub. The photograph here depicts part of the wrapping-up process. (4) Suppose you have two containers with equal amounts of water, and you heat one of them. Then you place both containers, one hot and one not hot, in a sub-freezing environment, either a freezer or outside on a cold night. Which will freeze first? Well, very surprisingly, the container that starts from the higher temperature can freeze first.