Bae claims to have solved these problems by integrating an optical cavity into a laser that traps the beamed photons, thereby amplifying their light pressure by 3000-times, while easing targeting with a centrally located laser in space.
An article in EE-Times describes how a new photon thruster has been demonstrated by placing a cavity around an [...]
Archive for September, 2007
Photon thruster
Posted in physics on September 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Puzzling again
Posted in physics, try this at home on September 15, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
The Lunchtime! crowd is at it again with another puzzler/brain teaser/new-age company interview question about marbles and stairs. Spoilers included in the comments so only read the initial post if you actually want to puzzle over it.
New blog name
Posted in physics on September 6, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
A quick google blog search revealed I was nowhere near as clever as I thought for naming this blog clevertitlehere. To remedy this I’ve elected to call this publication The Daily Photon. Being a physicist I just had to use up an envelope for some quick math. The Daily Photon implies one photon every 24 [...]
Final ruling on Juggling riddle (for now)
Posted in experiments, physics on September 4, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
As referenced earlier, some of us have been going over the physics of an old riddle. There were a few bits of information lacking from the theoretical analysis so far, although basic kinematics covers most of what you need. For the rest, it turns out, we can follow the work of Claude Shannon famous for [...]
Juggling forces
Posted in bad science, experiments, physics, try this at home on September 2, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
What started as a pretty informal online chat about an old riddle has led to several risky video-experiments and an even shakier theoretical analysis. I find the discussion to be a good example of how physics tends to be more about choosing your simplifying assumptions than about answering real-world questions. It’s also good for a [...]
