Category Archives: math

Snails on a triangle

Posted on February 2, 2013 by

This post got its spark when I read this These challenging physics problems found by @MrHonner are awesome. mrhonner.com/2013/01/24/cha…— John Burk (@occam98) January 30, 2013 John had also mentioned the list in last week’s Global Physics Department meeting, and I … Continue reading →

Posted in math, mathematica, teaching | 3 Comments

Gyroscopic precession

Posted on May 26, 2012 by

There have been some interesting things on the interwebs, lately, about rotation, gyroscopes, precession, and helicoptors (all of it brought to my attention, or literally done by, Derek Muller of Veritasium fame). It got me thinking about the modeling I’ve done … Continue reading →

Posted in fun, math, mathematica, physics, teaching | 6 Comments

Turntable spriograph modeling

Posted on March 24, 2012 by

I was inspired this weekend by this video by Robert Howsare: I’ve seen things like this before and I wanted to explore how to model this in Mathematica. It was fun to explore and it really drove home some ideas … Continue reading →

Posted in math, mathematica, physics | Leave a comment

More brute force probability

Posted on September 2, 2011 by

Last night a tweep of mine posted this: How many ways can I rearrange the letters ABCDEFGH so that no letter is in its original position? What a deceptively simple question!— R. Wright (@r_w_wright) September 01, 2011 I thought about … Continue reading →

Posted in fun, math, mathematica, twitter | 14 Comments

Linear dielectrics (recursion approach)

Posted on August 25, 2011 by

I’ve been prepping for my fall course, Advanced Electricity and Magnetism for juniors and seniors, taught out of Griffiths great book. One of the topics that I want to deal with better this time around is electrostatics in materials (chapter … Continue reading →

Posted in math, mathematica, physics | Tagged | 5 Comments

When not to cancel common factors

Posted on July 22, 2011 by

Today I was helping some students of mine get ready for my final. These are science teachers who are in an alternative licensure program for physics. We were talking about the equations for the resonant frequencies in various systems and … Continue reading →

Posted in math, physics, teaching | 6 Comments

Brownie nuts probability

Posted on July 2, 2011 by

I don’t like nuts. I really don’t like them in brownies. What I want is a way to tell if a particular brownie has nuts in it just by looking at it. That’s what this post is all about. If … Continue reading →

Posted in fun, math, physics | 2 Comments

Brute force probability

Posted on June 10, 2011 by

Earlier this week, a twitter bud of mine posted the following (WordPress is supposed to embed the tweet on the next line but it’s not working right now – let me know if you know why and I’ll fix it): … Continue reading →

Posted in math, mathematica, twitter | 4 Comments

Wave Pendulum Analysis

Posted on May 27, 2011 by

Thanks to both Frank Noschese and John Burk, I’ve been reminded recently of the very cool wave pendulum demonstration apparatus: What I wanted to figure out was how the inherent nonlinearities in pendula would affect the analysis of the motion. … Continue reading →

Posted in math, mathematica, physics | 18 Comments

>leaf update

Posted on November 1, 2009 by

>It appears that one lawn bag holds between 40,000 and 50,000 leaves. The boys have renegotiated for $1/bag from now on. They’re not dumb, those two. here’s the description of the project

Posted in math, parenting | Leave a comment