Percussion and Physics

I have dedicated my life to the study of percussion and it’s many layers. Beyond just learning how to read music, performing percussion requires knowledge of techniques, instruments, stick and mallet choice, and how all of these factors effect the sounds produced. Within all of these factors are connections to physics.

One such factor is the concept of rebound in percussion. When a percussionist strikes an instrument beit a drum, a mallet instruments, or a cymbal, there is a certain amount of force that is returned to the stick after the initial strike. This sometimes results in the stick bouncing back up in a concept called rebound. This rebound force can be used a variety of different ways. It can be used to easily redirect the stick back towards the drum requiring less effort to strike the drum again, it can be used to manufacture two strikes of the instrument by using finger pressure, and it can be used to produce a “buzz stroke” which leads to drum rolls.

Another factor in percussion that is influenced by physics is volume. When a mallet strikes a marimba bar, it can produce a wide volume of sounds depending on the force exerted. In fact it is possible to produce a tone with a force so small that the initial “attack” of the mallet is nearly impossible to hear, with the resulting sound being pure tone. This technique is used to give marimba chorales a smooth connected feeling without any harsh sounds coming from the bars.

In conclusion force and physics have a large part to play in the performing of percussion instruments. More than just affecting volume, learning to manipulate the forces involved can result in a wide variety of sounds and effects that add textures and tambours to ensembles all over the world.

The Depletion of the Ozone Layer

The Ozone layer is one layer of our stratosphere that sits about 9.3 to 18.6 miles above earth. This Ozone layer serves as a shield that protects us from harmful ultraviolet rays that are emitted from the Sun. It absorbs some of the radiation hitting the earth. Ozone traps a type of radiation called ultraviolet radiation, also called UV light. There are two types of ultraviolet radiation: UVB and UVA. These ultraviolet radiations penetrate the skin, which causes DNA molecules in plants and animals to be damaged. UVB causes sunburn and cancers. UVA penetrates the skin more deeply causing melanoma, a deadly skin cancer. UVA is more harmful than UVB which scientists have just discovered.

The Ozone layer is getting thinner. The thinning is caused by chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons, or CFC’s. CFC’c are mostly in plastic products and refrigerants. When CFC’s reach the upper atmosphere and are exposed to ultraviolet light they are turned into substances that include chlorine. Once chlorine reacts with the ozone molecule it rips it apart. One atom of chlorine can destroy more than one hundred thousand ozone molecules. Ozone molecules are always being reformed and destroyed, but it is hard for the ozone to reform once its broken apart due to the CFC’s in the air.

Carbon tetrachloride, CCI4, is another known air toxin like CFC’s. CCI4 is a chemical once used in cleaning products and is still a commonly used compound in the chemical industry. This gas accounts for about 10-15 percent of the ozone depleting chemicals in the atmosphere today. The compound is included in a list of products to be phased out of production, but rates of this chemical being released is 30-100 times larger than what is being reported to emission inventories. The chemicals global concentration should be decreasing at a rate of about 4 percent per year, but is only decreasing at a rate of 1 percent says Montzka, who works in NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory. Analysis of all the data suggests that all the CCI4 emissions come from the same geographic areas as the industries reporting to the EPA.

With a hopeful future, the long-term recovery of the ozone layer looks good. The Montreal Protocol is the first international treaty to be now ratified by all 197 countries. This is an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out certain products that may release gases responsible for the depletion of the ozone layer. Scientists predict that if the international community continues to comply with the Montreal Protocol, then the ozone layer could fully recover between 2050 and 2065.

Flawed Physics in Star Wars

There is no doubt that the original three Star Wars films, episodes IV through VI, are three of the greatest space/sci-fi films of all time.  Even with these accolades, they do not come without a few physics flaws.  Filming a movie that takes place in outer space is an immense task that even movies of the twenty first century have not yet mastered.  The original trilogy was filmed in the 1970’s and 1980’s making filming techniques nearly entirely mechanical rather than digital.  I chose three of the blunders that are some of the biggest parts of the movies.

1. In Episode IV: A New Hope, the Death Star is seen blowing up Leia’s home planet of Alderaan.  Making the assumption that this planet is near earth-like in its size, the amount of energy needed from a laser to obliterate Alderaan would be 10^32 Joules.  This amount of energy is more  than one million times more than the amount of energy released by the entire sun for a whole week.  If a laser was built like this on the Death Star, Luke Skywalker wouldn’t have had to shoot a proton torpedo down a thermal exhaust because the Death Star would explode from the immense amount of energy on board.  
   

   https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_onwa25RuEo/hqdefault.jpg

2. Another Physics misfire are the iconic laser blasters.  The laser blasters have a couple problems.  The first problem is that a laser is a beam of light.  In the movies, you can see a section of light travel at a speed much much less than the speed of light.  If you were in a battle with Stormtroopers 100 feet away, it would take light 100 nanoseconds which in the movies is drawn out to roughly 1/2 a second.  The laser blasters also make a cool noise when fired.  It is made to look as though the laser makes this noise when in reality, lasers are as silent as the light bulb someone turns on in his or her house.

   http://giphy.com/gifs/commercial-stormtrooper-armor-10meUuSGXSgUF

3. Along the lines of lasers making noise, all of the dog fights that happen out in space should be on mute.  Because space is a vacuum, there are no particles for sound waves to bounce off of making it silent.  Although Star Wars engineers have claimed the sound is a three dimensional creation placed inside the cockpit, the audience is not inside the cockpit, and should hear silence.

   http://25.media.tumblr.com/03570d21177ca501330b11a5bbf0c60e/tumblr_mg0g2s0TVr1r93xiko1_500.gif

   Even with this physics flaws, Star Wars films are still classics.  Without the bending of the rules in these ways, who knows how the films would have turned out.

   Sources:

http://www.thecollapsedwavefunction.com/2012/10/bad-science-in-movies-star-wars.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ethansiegel/2015/08/15/the-science-of-the-death-star-the-physics-of-destroying-an-earth-sized-planet/#779ea2fd6921

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_and_Star_Wars

Is Teleportation Possible?

With the newest installment into the video game series Final Fantasy with Final Fantasy XV, and with me sinking more hours into than I am willing to admit, a question continued to run in my head. The question is when will human beings be able to teleport? Will we ever be able to achieve such an impressive feat? This question first appeared in my mind because the main character of this game, Nocits is able to “warp” or teleport around during combat just by throwing his weapon and teleporting to it, which I find to be incredibly awesome, but that is besides the point. I thought how cool would it be that humans would be able to teleport to another location, maybe not in this fashion but in another more organized way.

To me, it would be one of if not the most important innovations humans has ever achieved. Think about all of the different uses teleportation has. It would eliminate the need for any kind of automobile transportation, reduce pollution immensely, and save an incredible amount of time! But of course nothing is without its risks. The idea of teleportation as Hollywood usually portrays it is that the body is literally completely broken down and rebuilt at the new location. Obviously there are an outstanding amount of risks with this way of teleporting, the main one being the fact that the body is broken down to the very last cell then trying to rebuild it completely the same afterwards. But assuming we are somehow able to do that successfully, I have another problem with this. Just how fast do you need to go to start at one point and in the blink of an eye be at a brand new location which may be half across the world? Do you need to go faster than the speed of light? Is that even fast enough to move across the world in an instant for example. Some people believe that the speed it would take can never be achieved, while others actually believe the whole process of teleportation of a human being would be so slow you would die long before you ever reached your destination. That is of course unless somehow the teleportation process would be able to preserve you until you reached your destination. It should be known that scientists have actually successfully teleported things before. However, these things were incredibly small pieces of matter, so small the naked eye cannot even see them.

But to me this is a great start! In my opinion, one day human beings will achieve teleportation, however we still need to tackle many obstacles in order to get there. And of course it will not be achieved by throwing swords around and teleporting to them, though that would be awesome!

Hyperspace travel: Completely Fiction

In the hit sci-fi franchise Star Wars, a typical method of traveling throughout the galaxy is known as Hyperspace travel.  This method of traveling requires two elements: light-speed travel and Hyperspace. Although a product of science-fiction, Hyperspace is an alternative region of space co-existing with our own universe which may be entered in order to induce a notional space-time continuum in which it is possible to travel faster than light.

Starships reach hyperspace by means of a hyperdrive.  One famous example of a starship containing a hyperdrive would be the Millenium Falcons (pictured from the cockpit above).  Once a starship’s hyperdrive is activated, the ship warps to another dimension consisting of physical laws differing from those within our own universe. One of these differing factors includes the laws of gravity, for it is apparently active within this dimension during Hyperspace travel.

Although the topic of Hyperspace travel is fascinating, current physical laws today prove that it is impossible for any type of physical object to attain that speed.  The speed of light is equal to 299,792,458 meters per second.  Nothing is faster than light.  In order for an object of mass to travel anywhere near this speed, it would require an infinite amount of energy. Even if one was traveling at the speed of light, it would still take thousands of years to travel the galaxy.

Due to the fact that we are still limited by the technology of our time in order to create something which can produce an infinite amount of energy, along with the fact that starships still cease to exist, hyperspace travel would not be able to exist for at least a few centuries.

Source:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.259.4336&rep=rep1&type=pdf

The Lightsaber: Could it exist?

The lightsaber, also known as a laser sword, is a fictional weapon featured in the hit sci-fi franchise Star Wars.  It is the signature weapon of the Jedi and the Sith, and is used by said factions in close-combat situations.  A typical lightsaber consists of a small metal hilt (usually 11 inches in length) which, when activated, projects a bright beam of energy in the form of a blade.  The beam is concentrated and never breaks its form.  It can burn, melt, and cut through pretty much anything, except another lightsaber’s energy beam.  It also has the ability to deflect blaster bolts.  Although the weapon has been a topic of science fiction for nearly four decades now, there is still the pending question as to whether or not a lightsaber could exist in reality.  But how do you freeze a beam of light?

The beam of a lightsaber, although mistaken as a laser, has been explained as a beam of plasma kept in a force field usually of a magnetic or electric field.  The hilt which projects this beam is usually made out of metal, and houses the parts necessary to produce the beam.  These parts include a kyber crystal, an emitter matrix, a blade emitter shroud, and an activator.  Below is a picture displaying the many different parts of Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber (the first lightsaber to be ever introduced).  Most of these parts are fictional and do not exist in today’s reality.

With modern technology, the lightsaber described in the Star Wars universe, and pictured above, would not be able to exist.  In order for a concentrated beam of plasma to be produced, the energy would have to come from a source consisting of something along the lines of a nuclear reactor.  Also, a magnetic field is incapable of containing heat, so the force field is also a product of some form of technology not yet introduced into the real world.  If produced with modern technology, lightsaber blades would not block each other when meeting together as seen in the films.  With a lightsaber blade basically being described as a beam of frozen light, this would not be possible for light has no mass or substance like matter. Instead, the blades would pass through one another as normal light beams do. Also, if two plasma blades made contact in the real world, the resulting effect would be magnetic reconnection.  This would cause the two blades to explode and release the plasma contained in both sabers. Another issue concerning the beam of a lightsaber dwells in the fact that light has no limit and cannot be held in place.

Many experiments have taken place in order to produce a lightsaber.  One notable experiment took place at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when a team of scientists from the Center of Ultracold Atoms accidentally produced a lightsaber during a physics experiment.  During this experiment, they coaxed photons into hardened molecules which they were able to make direct contact with. Although similar to the signature weapon of the Jedi Order, the photons were still able to pass through one another when two separate beams came into contact, unlike the ones in Star Wars.

With today’s technology, producing a lightsaber would take a building full of equipment as opposed to an 11-inch hilt.  Experts have concluded that our technology today would have to be advanced at least five decades into the future in order to create a device so advanced that it can freeze light whilst remaining under the classifications as a handheld weapon.

Sources:

http://www.iflscience.com/technology/why-lightsabers-would-be-far-more-lethal-george-lucas-envisioned/

 

Brightest Supernova Ever Actually Star Consumed by Black Hole

Scientists analyzing data captured by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) came across what they thought was a supernova brighter than an known supernova discovered to date. This incredibly bright supernova was originally classified as a superluminous supernova. A supernova is a star that suddenly increases greatly in brightness due to an explosion that ejects just about all of its mass while a superluminous supernova, or hypernova, is defined as a type of star explosion with an energy substantially higher than that of a standard supernova. A superluminous supernova is one of the most catastrophic events in the universe to our knowledge. This specific hypernova gave off approximately 570 billion times more light than our sun at its peak. However, after further research and images from the Hubble Space Telescope it was determined that the source of this light was coming from the center of a nearby galaxy, where black holes reside. That is why it is now suspected that this burst of light and energy is actually coming from a star being engulfed by a black hole. This specific supermassive black hole is determined to be between 200 million to 3 billion times the mass of our sun. Where the light is coming from is a low-mass star that has been caught in the gravitational pull of the black hole at the center of its galaxy. One of the giveaways to researches that this is a star being swarmed by a black hole and not a supernova is the fact that this event has been heating up at a constant and very high temperature while supernovas eventually begin to cool overtime. This can be explained due to the presumed idea that this star was ripped apart into multiple pieces before being swallowed by the black hole instead of just being pulled in as a whole. This black hole was rotating so rapidly that it tore the star apart when usual black holes would engulf the star in one piece. This evidence is now helping scientists understand tidal disruptions even better than before.

http://www.space.com/34994-brightest-supernova-shredded-by-black-hole.html

The Science of a Golf swing

As I’m sure most would agree with me on this, Golf is a fun game but it can get under your skin sometimes especially when you are shanking balls left and right. I am speaking to you from personal experience because I am a horrible golf player but I still do enjoy getting out on the course on a nice sunny day and stroking a few off the tee. There are many things involved with the science of any swing which can result in a beautiful tee shot straight down the fairway, or a shank right into the woods.

Scientifically, hitting a golf ball requires 3 physics concepts: Torque, Centripetal Force, and the Double Pendulum Effect. The Double Pendulum refers to two different pendulums involved in the swing; one being your arms when you swing and the other being your wrists. When you feel you hit it perfectly, as what professionals feel most of the time, this double pendulum effect was executed properly. Centripetal force is the second concept, and it is created when you anchor your lower body and pull your wrists inward while your golf club swings outward. The bigger the circle of the swing from beginning to end, the less centripetal force is needed to continue to rotate the golf club, this results in the ball going farther. Torque may be the most important factor to a big tee shot. Torque is force times distance. Torque is the thing occurring throughout your swing when you are rotating your shoulders and twisting your hips as you come down to strike the ball. The more torque you put behind your swing, the farther and faster the ball will go.

It is easy to understand how challenging it can be to get that perfect shot that goes far and right down the fairway. For example if you screw up something in the double pendulum effect this may result in the ball going left or right and a bad shot. If you don’t exert much torque it will result in a weak shot. So next time you get out on the golf course, try and think about these physics concepts which make up a golf swing and put it down the middle of the fairway!

Kevin McCarthy

Gold In A Fold !

Every four years multiple countries come together to either watch or participate in the most amazing set of sports known to man. I am talking about the Olympics, the most competitive group of athletes; the best of the best each country has to offer. Each athlete displays courage and tenacity greater than any other competition on average. Practice does not necessarily make perfect. But they want to be better than perfect to be considered a gold medalist.

When watching the Olympics, I give my undivided attention to gymnastics. Gymnastics hold a special place in my heart because I was a gymnast for four years. When I was a young gymnast, I was so fascinated with the skills of Olympic gymnasts and the mechanics of each event. At a young age I did not know that it was the physics of gymnastics that so fascinated me.

Gymnastics focuses on multiple exercises that help that while learning them help build your flexibility, strength, courage, and pain tolerance. Gymnastics is an amazing sport. Its events covers the uneven bars, the floor exercise, beam, and the vault. Each of those events has a lot of physics to negotiate while executing them. I am sure Isaac Newton would have a field day explaining how his laws of motion applies to the events in modern gymnastics. In today’s modern gymnastics, coaches and gymnasts alike regularly consult physicists in order to perform those flips and different tricks to please the crowd. Every gymnast have to have a conscious or subconscious understanding of physics.

Let’s examine one of the events in gymnastics; the uneven bars. Gymnast move in a circular motion around the lower bar to help them build up enough kinetic energy to transfer their body to the upper bar and back to the lower bar and then again to the upper bar. This leads to their finish called the dismount where they transfer all of that circular motion to another circular act in the form of a flip, In this routine they are using many forces to perform each part of the event. The gymnasts use the twisting force known as torque where they swing their mass back and forth until they have enough kinetic energy to transfer their body to the upper bar. Because of the laws of thermos dynamics that transfer of energy siphons the gymnasts forward momentum so she has to use her mass again in a swinging motion to build up enough kinetic energy to make a complete rotation around the upper bar. This motion of the gymnast is governed by the law of the conservation of angular momentum. The force of gravity and centripetal force are part of the law of angular momentum and keeps the gymnast’s motion around the bar. As the gymnast’s mass and the acceleration of gravity build more kinetic energy in each rotation of the gymnast around the bar, once she senses she has enough energy to perform her final task of the event she times her release of the bar in her upward motion to make several flip without the aid of the bar until the acceleration of gravity and drag slows momentum and she prepares to stick her landing. Her maximum kinetic is transferred to potential energy as she comes to a stop. An object at rest tends to stay at rest until an outside force acts upon it and an object in motion tends to stay in motion until and outside force acts upon it. These laws of inertia are the base line laws that governs a gymnasts routines. They are the bookend laws of each event. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction is one master law of motion that all the other laws of motion are derived, becomes the referee to each motion the gymnast uses when executing her routine in the uneven bars.

Source:

Physics behind gymnastics
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How hard is it to hit a Major League Baseball?

Looking at something so difficult that failing 7 out of 10 times you are still considered good at it.

In the MLB the pitcher releases the ball at about 90 feet away from the batter. If he releases the ball at 90mph that leaves the batter just .4 seconds to read and decide whether he wants to try to hit the ball or not. Not only is that an extremely short amount of time but it also takes the human brain .1 seconds to process the image of the ball and .15 seconds to swing the bat. That leaves only 150 milliseconds to decide to swing at the pitch or not.

While being seemingly impossible there are a few things that help give the batter a better chance to hit the ball. One is Eyesight. The average baseball player has 20/12 vision. Some even approach the believed limit of sight of 20/8. This gives the batter an advantage only if he knows how to see pitches. The batter can then also predict how the ball is going to move before he actually sees the movement. Different pitches in baseball can be distinguished by the design that appears on the ball. Below is what a baseball looks like in perspective of the batter depending on which pitch is thrown.

Not only does a batter aim to make contact with the ball but they also have to account for the shape of the bat. Bats are rounded which can cause the ball to be aimed too low or too high to leave the park. The part of the bat hitters try to make contact with the ball is known as the “sweet spot”. Located about 6.5 inches from the top of the bat, failure to make contact with this point can still result in a hit but will cause a painful sting on the batter’s hand. This sting comes from the bat being thrown out of circular motion with the batter. This also allows for the most energy to be transferred to the ball.

Another thing a batter can do is called “choking up” on the bat. This is when a batter grips his hands higher on the bat giving his more mobility and less mass to swing around on the bat. By using newton’s 2nd law (F=MA) there is less mass to swing which in turn increases Acceleration when the same force is applied. This often makes it easier for them to make contact with the ball by creating a faster swing.