This post was written as a project proposal for an electronics course, the project was not completed. Last year I participated in the Midwest High-Power Rocket Competition on the UW-River Falls team, wherein we were tasked with the building and launching of a high power rocket on which there was a mechanism to control the apogee via air braking. The flight computer on said rocket was less than satisfactory, a result of compromises for power...
This post was written as a project proposal but never submitted for funding. Introduction The acousto-optical effect is the change in refractive index of a material caused by an acoustic wave applied to said material. This is a particular case of photoelasticity, which can be used to experimentally measure stress distributions within a material1, where the difference in refractive indices (represented by the optic indicatrix2 $B$) along each axis is caused by acoustic waves rather...
I have no real motivation to do anything. Not to be awake, not to go to sleep. Not to stay here, not to go anywhere else. It’s a tricky thing, this motivation. Humans, as it would seem, need a reason to do anything. That reason can be as little arbitrary bullshit as some ancient societal structure that is simply outdated by literally everything that constitutes the modern era of information, but nonetheless it is some...
Introduction Oscillations are among the most important motions to understand when dealing with physics on both a macro and micro scale; the oscillation of an object can be used to determine specific properties of said object, especially in the case of magnets and magnetic fields1. In this case, we placed a cue ball containing a magnetic dipole in a constant magnetic field generated by an approximately2 Helmholtz coil (so as to create a consistent magnetic...
This post was written as a submission to an open call by @ruinedpicnic on twitter (now called @punishedpicnic) for music to sing. Ruined Picnic and Friends by ruined picnic and friends Every single morning I wake up in a state of peace. As if part of the void, or an emptiness at least. When not quite awake, life itself can be like a dream. Like the pop tarts that are flavored like cookies and cream....
Abstract. Using data collected with an infrared camera, a mean external temperature for any given building can be found and subsequently compared to that of other buildings or the building’s own internal temperature. This data gives a statistical basis for determining the heat efficiency of a building. Introduction With the current pushes to maintain a green campus and common complaints about certain buildings’ inconsistency in temperature, we decided that we would find a way to...
This post was published in Student Voice Volume 102, Issue 13 as “The process of spontaneously morphing into an octopus.” This argument has been deemed quite controversial: is it possible for one to simply become an octopus without outside forces acting upon them? To start off, one might ask if this is likely, the answer to which is clearly ‘no.’ While it would be amazing for someone walking alongside you to suddenly be dragging themselves...
Perhaps an argument against this would be the resource usage, the amount of paper used when you leave mistakes on the page is so much more. Think of the trees! Then again, erasers either come from trees or petroleum so you’re going to be using something either way. Efficiency aside, there is a sort of philosophy that really needs to be acknowledged here. We’re all taught that nobody is perfect, that we all make mistakes....
This post was published in Student Voice Volume 102, Issue 11 as “Philosophy of pencil classification can be very complicated.” Pencils are pencils, but to say all pencils were created equal is a stretch of the imagination that one should not be so willing to make. What exactly is a pencil? Here we shall assume that a pencil is a utensil that utilizes graphite to write, so as to be able to easily erase any...
This post was published in Student Voice Volume 102, Issue 10 as “Thinking about theory of relativity can garner many impactful realizations.” Four score and another score ago, Einstein introduced the idea of general relativity. Well, that’s when he presented the results at the Prussian Academy of Science. Unlike previous models for gravity and such, this relativity thing actually accounted for reality. Consequentially, a lot more science was able to be understood thereafter. Karl Schwarzschild,...