Category Archives: Physics

How Spherical is the Sun?

From what we know about planets like the Earth and its properties, we may expect the Sun to also experience a bulge, causing its shape to deviate from a perfect sphere. It turns out that the Sun isn’t a perfect sphere, but it’s pretty close to one. If fact, with the help of instruments onContinue reading “How Spherical is the Sun?” Continue reading

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Spring and Neap Tides

Many are familiar with the concept that the Moon creates high and low tides on Earth, but few know that the Sun also plays a role in the process. Tides are formed from the gravitational forces of the Sun and Moon pulling on the Earth differently in different places due to variations in distance. TheContinue reading “Spring and Neap Tides” Continue reading

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Ultraviolet Catastrophe

While we discussed in class the importance of blackbody spectra continuous spectra, there is an important historical footnote in understanding where the famous blackbody curve arises from. Physics in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s predicted the wavelength-intensity relationship to be I α 1/λ^4, using a derivation based on classical statistical mechanics. This relationship closelyContinue reading “Ultraviolet Catastrophe” Continue reading

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What Causes Tides?

Have you ever been fishing? If you have, you probably know that your success partially depends on whether the ocean experiences a low tide or a high tide. But do you know the science behind what causes tides? Below is a quick and simple explanation why. Tides are caused by differential gravity. We know fromContinue reading “What Causes Tides?” Continue reading

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How Gravity Affects Light

Gravity exerts a force on photons, even though it has no mass. This can distort the things we see if the light that reaches us is being distorted by gravity, as seen in the picture at the top of this post. The confusing aspect of this is that gravity affects this light even though theContinue reading “How Gravity Affects Light” Continue reading

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The Basics of Our World

The Standard Model consists of 17 elementary particles that fit into a mathematical and theoretical framework that explains matter and forces. Since last century, the model has been able to not only explain, but also to predict existences of undiscovered particles. The particles are categorized into two groups: fermions and bosons. Fermions make up matter.Continue reading “The Basics of Our World” Continue reading

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Gravity in Space

An intriguing phenomenon that took millennia for the modern human to explain is gravity. First explained by Sir Isaac M. Newton, gravity as a force as a function of mass is a difficult one for many to wrap their heads around. The reason many non-scientists struggle to understand the basics of gravity is because itContinue reading “Gravity in Space” Continue reading

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I love physics

Hello and welcome to my blog! I hope to fill this website with interesting topics about physics and astronomy. My name is Khalil Greene and I am a student at Vanderbilt University. My major is physics and I plan to minor in astronomy so that I can go to graduate school and become an astrophysicist.Continue reading “I love physics” Continue reading

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String theory – the other way of interpreting our universe

The string theory is a very interesting idea that propose another totally different way of thinking what made up our universe. Although this theory is very arguable because it can never be tested in our labs so that a lot of physicist do not like this theory, but it indeed gives a very unique prospective … Continue reading String theory – the other way of interpreting our universe Continue reading

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Blog 7: Culmination of a Semester in Astronomy

Because of this class my view of the solar system has changed. From a young age I knew the order of the planets and even some basic facts about each of them. What I did not know, however, was how much more there was to know not only about our solar system, but about the … Continue reading Blog 7: Culmination of a Semester in Astronomy Continue reading

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