Saturday, July 31, 2010




The August stories at the main Flying Circus of Physics site:
(1) Wall-climbing robots. Yes, robots can now climb the external walls of buildings and peer into a room with a camera. And some of them climb by means of quantum mechanics. (2) How snakes slither. (3) Ice spikes that can grow upward from an ice cube. (4) Can you get a vortex in a Miller Lite “vortex bottle,” to drain it quickly? (4) The physics behind a traffic jam. www.flyingcircusofphysics.com New stuff also coming up at Facebook Flying Circus of Physics.

Friday, July 02, 2010


The July stories at the Flying Circus of Physics site include (1) Lava lamps --- I supply the physics, you supply the psychedelic music and whatever substances you want. (2) Measuring cosmic ray rates with a Geiger counter on commercial flights. (3) Relativistic length contraction --- what would it look like? (4) Pub trick of the month --- covering your face with bottle caps. Here is my grandson --- can you beat his record of six bottle caps?(5) The second of my old articles about the physics of boomerangs.
At the Facebook site for The Flying Circus of Phyysics, I have posted two short videos where I derive the two relativity equations used in item 3 above (don't worry, I use only algebra). I have also posted a game about relativistic contraction that I wrote for my classes.