Category Archives: Physics

High and Low Tides with a Bit of British Humor

Posted on February 9, 2023 by 88bw

High and low tides can pose great challenges and dangers to nature lovers, especially those who enjoy being close to the water. I was originally searching how spring/neap and high/low tides might affect erosion rates; while scouring the Internet, I found this article from the UK (Lancaster Guardian) that details how these tide patterns actually […] Continue reading →

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Retrogrades

Posted on February 8, 2023 by araceal

Have you ever thought about why planets in our night sky sometimes appear to be moving backwards? Well, this phenomenon is known as retrograde motion. It is not as strange as it sounds. Retrograde occurs when a planet is moving in the sky and appears to be moving backwards from our perspective on Earth –  […] Continue reading →

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“The Fault in Our Stars”

Posted on January 17, 2023 by Alex Diefenbach

One of my favorite topics in science since I took AP Chemistry has been the concept of entropy. (So much so that I’ve adopted it as my internet pseudonym to allude to my tendency to catalyze social controversy wherever I go.) Entropy was the first abstract concept that I encountered; we didn’t have a perfect […] Continue reading →

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Black Holes

Posted on April 17, 2022 by alexbawa

If you’re like me, you’ve heard plenty about black holes, but your only real understanding comes from a couple Interstellar screenings. The movie does a pretty great job being accurate, but even the excessively brilliant characters don’t know whats going on behind the scenes. This blog is an exploration of the phenomena, equal parts for […] Continue reading →

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Black Holes: A great mystery of the universe

Posted on April 17, 2022 by alexlitt

Black holes are one of the greatest mysteries of our universe. However, using just a few concepts that we have learned in class, we can understand the basic constructs of black holes. A black hole is the result of a single point in space containing extreme mass (this point is called a singularity). Similar to […] Continue reading →

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Blog #6: Enceladus’s Tiger Stripes

Posted on April 17, 2022 by nadiamcglynn

The Cassini Spacecraft revealed dramatic geysers spewing from Enceladus’s tiger stripes, horizontal, nearly parallel fissures near the moon’s south pole, in 2006. It was believed that these may have been caused by “cryo-volcanism” (icy volcanos!), but new research suggests that it may be caused by the changes in the eccentricity of Enceladus’s orbit over 100 […] Continue reading →

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Interstellar Travel using Warp Drives

Posted on April 4, 2022 by isaiandrade01

Perhaps the most challenging obstacle between humans and interstellar travel is the distance it would take to traverse the light-years of distance to even the closest stars. The closest star to Earth, besides the Sun, is known as Proxima Centauri, at about 4.25 light-years. For reference, the fastest a human spacecraft has traveled was a […] Continue reading →

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Solar System Formation and Coincidences

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Brian

Our solar system has many characteristics that can seem like odd coincidences. Why are all of the planets in the same orbital plane? Why are their orbits all nearly circular instead of being more eccentric? Why do they all orbit in the same direction around the Sun? The nebular theory of solar system formation, asContinue reading “Solar System Formation and Coincidences” Continue reading →

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Blog #4: Coronal Mass Ejections

Posted on March 22, 2022 by nadiamcglynn

Coronal Mass Ejections are ejections of solar wind and plasma from our Sun’s corona. The blast from a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), carries about a billion tons of material away from the sun at speeds ranging from 250 km/s to almost 3000 km/s. (NOAA) If they are directed toward Earth when they are ejected from […] Continue reading →

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The Future of Fusion

Posted on March 22, 2022 by alexbawa

While stars are powered by nuclear fusion, nuclear reactors here on Earth have yet to make that leap. Fission is our only readily available source of nuclear power, but it is significantly less lucrative than its counterpart. The difference is the process, which combines two isotopes of hydrogen to trigger an energy release instead of […] Continue reading →

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