I’ve decided to start a new column on my blog that I will run every week and update on Saturday. The title of the “column” is “Ask a Physics Major” and the way you participate is by asking me a physics question. It can be anything related to physics. If it is an extremely difficult question, you might get a really short answer that wont make you really happy- but for the most part I plan on giving you the best answer from a physics standpoint.
Good questions would be something that can be calculated. Since this is a new column, I will let you first throw me out some questions and then we can tweak what questions are good and what questions are not as good as we go along. If it is a question that I can answer using MatLab, Maple, Mathematica, or any combination of those programs - chances are I will enjoy it because it will give me a chance to throw up some cool looking graphs for all of you to enjoy.
The question:
“A piston of radius a is mounted so as to radiate on one side of an infinite baffle into air. The piston is driven at a frequency such that lambda = Pi*a. Compute and plot the relative axial intensities produced by the piston from its surface to a distance of r=3*a. Over what range of distances is the divergence approximately spherical?”
might not be the most interesting, but I could sure give you a cool graph.
If this series is fun - maybe I can enlist the help of a certain Electrical Engineer I know to run a column called “Ask an Electrical Engineering PhD student”, and a certain other plant geneticist to run a column called “Ask a Plant Geneticist” (or whatever title she actually has)
November 10th, 2005 at 1:11 am
Is this new section in case sears or microsoft comes to your blog? They’ll think you’re really smart.
November 10th, 2005 at 1:31 am
Sears is already taken care of. I doubt a MS recruiter has the time to browse through blogs - so I doubt they will ever visit me. It’s more for fun so I have a chance to solve problems for people now that I’m at the point in my physics career that I can solve just about any problem.
I’m also running it on a Saturday - the day that they are least likely to be checking my blog. (And the day I’m most likely to have time to spend solving funny problems)
Oh - just don’t ask me relativity questions.
Oh - and if it involves an electron I’m afraid your question might be ignored ;P
November 10th, 2005 at 8:22 am
If I were a college student — I would be tempted to put up one of the questions that was due in a week that I could not figure out.
=-)
November 10th, 2005 at 10:37 am
I never promised a “correct” answer in that case