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Biman Basu
The more perfect the sphere is, the more balanced it will be, offering greater accuracy due to the predictability of its flight. But more than the shape it is the air pressure inside that is important. How far a football goes when kicked depends on its bounce, which in turn depends on the ball and the surface it hits. Balls with air inside, such as footballs, bounce very poorly if they are not pumped up no matter how hard the surface they hit. This is because a low-pressure ball gets deformed a lot when kicked with the boot sinking into the leather surface. This wastes a lot of energy, which is converted into heat and lost to the bounce. A properly inflated ball doesn't deform much when hit, so little energy is lost bending its skin and the bounce is more. With a pumped-up ball, the kinetic energy of the boot is changed to potential energy stored in the air molecules inside the ball at the instant the boot hits it. Quick as a bounce, the potential energy is released on rebound and turns into the kinetic energy of a rebounding ball, which goes much farther than a poorly inflated ball.
3. Balancing a bicycle
Bicycle, or the bike, is a common mode of transport in cities and villages alike. In both biological and mechanical terms, the bike is extraordinarily efficient. In terms of the amount of energy a person must expend to travel a given distance, it is the most efficient self-powered means of transportation. From a mechanical viewpoint, up to 99% of the energy delivered by the rider into the pedals is transmitted to the wheels. But you can't balance on a bike standing still; if you try you'd fall down. To keep the bike balanced you have to keep it moving. Why is it so? Different principles of physics are involved here. If you were on a stationary bike it'd be stable as long as the vertical line from its centre of gravity falls within its base. But in this case the base is extremely narrow only a few centimetres wide. So even a slight tilt would bring the line dropped from the centre of gravity out of the base, making the bike unstable. Now, suppose you find the standing bike leaning to the left; your natural tendency would be to lean to the right to counterbalance the lean. But in moving the top of your body to the right, you'd be actually pushing the bike to lean more to the left, according to Newton's 3rd law. So it'd be almost impossible to stop the leaning bike from falling when it is standing still. On a moving bike, however, rotational momentum makes the bike easier to balance. By slightly turning the handlebars right or left, you impart some of the rotational momentum of the front wheel to rotate the bike around its long axis, the direction in which it moves. That way you can counteract any
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tendency of the bike to topple to one side or the other and keep it balanced. The faster it moves, the harder it is to make the body of the bike change direction and you have much more time to make slight adjustments in body position to prevent the bike from falling over. That's why a moving bike is stable.
Biman Basu
with coloured pigments. The reflection and absorption of light on a red flower produces a red colour due to the pigments present in the petals. Some colours in nature are produced by the break-up and interplay of white light. The sky appears blue because molecules of air scatter blue colour more than the other colours. Sunsets appear red because the light from the Sun passes through a thicker layer of the atmosphere which scatters away most of the blue colour leaving only the red/orange colours that reach our eyes. The colours of rainbow are produced by break-up and total internal reflection of sunlight by raindrops in the atmosphere. The colour in oil films are produced by an entirely different process called "interference of light" which is due to waves of light interacting with each other. If the crest (peak) of one wave meets the trough (low) of another they cancel each other a process called "destructive cancellation". When the crest of one wave meets the crest of another they reinforce each other and become stronger a process called "constructive reinforcement." When diffused white light strikes an oil film on water it is reflected from both the top surface as well as the bottom surface of the film. The film being very thin and of non-uniform thickness, light reflected from the two surfaces undergo constructive or destructive interference when seen from different angles. But since white light is made up of several wavelengths, only light of a particular wavelength or colour undergoes destructive interference when reflected from certain regions of the film; the rest of the colours reach the eye. As a result we see bands of colour in the film. The same principle applies for colours seen on soap bubbles.
6. Ink dropper
Most of us have used a dropper to fill ink in a pen, pour a few drops of reagent in chemistry lab, or put medicine drops in the eye. A typical dropper consists of small glass tube with a narrow tip at one end and a rubber bulb at the other. To fill ink or medicine in the dropper we squeeze the rubber bulb and dip the narrow tip in the liquid. The liquid fills the tube when the bulb is released. The dropper comes in handy when we need to measure only a few drops of a liquid. How does it work? How does the liquid fill the tube? Well, it's the atmospheric pressure that does the trick. The rubber bulb is made of elastic material and so if the bulb is squeezed and then released it regains its shape because of its elasticity. But after squeezing the bulb if we close the narrow tip with a finger, and release the bulb it doesn't regain its shape. What actually happens is that when we squeeze the bulb air inside it is driven out, and when we release the bulb after closing the tip with a finger air cannot come back in. Atmospheric pressure acting from outside does not allow the bulb to regain its shape.
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If, instead of closing the tip after squeezing, we dip the tip in a liquid and then release the bulb, atmospheric pressure acting on the liquid forces it into the tube and also allows the bulb to regain its shape. Once in the tube the liquid won't come out by itself because atmospheric pressure holds it back. But we can bring the liquid out of the tube in controlled drops by gently squeezing the bulb.
8. Ironing clothes
Cotton clothes are more comfortable than clothes made of synthetic fabrics. But cotton fabrics have one disadvantage -- they crumple easily. Especially after washing and drying cotton clothes become so wrinkled that you can't wear them without ironing. But you can't iron a cotton shirt or cotton kameez
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without wetting it first, using a dry iron. Why do you need to wet cotton fabric before ironing? Polyester and nylon are synthetic fabrics that become soft below 100C and can be ironed smooth at a low temperature. Cotton fibre is made of cellulose, which cannot be softened by heat. In cotton fibre the cellulose chains are held together by weak attractive forces called "van der Waals" forces. When cellulose absorbs water this attractive force becomes weak and the fibre becomes soft; now it can be reshaped into any form, which it retains after drying. In fact that is what happens when wet cotton fabric dries -- the fabric retains its wrinkled shape. And that is why we need to wet cotton clothes before ironing. When water is sprayed on the dry garment the fibres become soft and can be stretched smooth. When the hot iron is moved over the wetted cloth with pressure the wet fibres in contact with the smooth bottom of the iron dry and set with a smooth surface, free of any wrinkles. In modern steam irons steam rather than water is applied on the cloth, and produces the same result.
9. Javelin throw
Javelin throw is a popular athletic event in which a metal or metal-tipped spear is thrown for distance. The men's javelin is about 2.6 metres in length and weighs 800 grams; the women's is about 2.2 metres in length and weighs 600 grams. Modern day javelins are made out of aluminium or graphite composite. Two major aerodynamic forces -- lift and drag -- act on a javelin in flight. Lift is the force that keeps the javelin in the air, and drag is the force that opposes the javelin's flight. Drag works against the javelin at any angle of flight but it is the greatest as the angle of attack increases and more of the javelins surface area is exposed. These two forces act on the javelin in a spot know as the 'centre of pressure', which is not fixed but can shift in relation to the centre of gravity. When the centre of pressure is in front of the centre of gravity the javelin remains tip up. When the centre of pressure moves behind the centre of gravity the javelin tips down. So to reach the greatest distance the thrower has to strike a balance between the two. The key objective in javelin throwing is to throw as far as possible without crossing the foul line. There has been much debate over what is the ideal angle to throw the javelin at. Although no there is no consensus any angle between 34-36 degrees is considered appropriate in calm conditions, but the appropriate angle can shift anywhere from around 30 degrees to around 40 degrees depending on wind conditions. Throwing at a lower angle, by exposing less of the javelin to air pressure, can reduce the drag, while still enjoying an increase in lift.
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Although the throwing angle is important, it is not the only factor that determines the distance of throw; there are three variables that determine it. These three variables are the height of the throw, velocity at the release, and angle of release. Velocity at release is the perhaps the most important factor in javelin throwing.
Biman Basu
If you have ever seen a pucca house under construction you'd have noticed that the foundation of buildings up to four storeys are usually made much broader than the wall thickness. Do you know why is it so? Well, the foundation is made broader to make the load-bearing area as large as possible. As a result the weight of the building is distributed evenly over a wide area and the building does not 'sink' into the ground. All this has to do with how much force is transferred per unit area to the load-bearing surface -the more the surface area over which the force is distributed the less is the pressure experienced. We have many such examples -- the camel's feet, fibreglass moulded seats, etc., where a larger area of contact reduces the pressure experienced. If we look at the footpad of the camel we'll find it is quite broad, which considerably reduces the force acting on the ground per unit area. As a result the camel's feet do not sink in the soft sand. Although hard, a moulded fibreglass seat feels comfortable because its contours almost match our body contours and thus greatly increase the area of contact and reduce the pressure points. The same is true of the track on which a heavy battle tank moves; it also distributes the heavy weight of the tank over a large area and the force per unit area experienced by the ground is reduced considerably. As a result the heavy tank can move over soft ground without sinking. The story of sadhus lying on beds of nail without feeling pain can also be explained by the same principle. Although a single nail would easily pierce through the skin because the entire weight of the sadhu's body would act on a single point, when several dozen nails are used the pressure felt at each point of contact would be much less because of the large number of contact points. Similarly, if you prick a balloon with a sharp pin it will burst. But if you make a 'bed' of several dozen pins and press the balloon against it the balloon won't burst. Here, too, when several dozen pins are used, the applied force is distributed over a large number of pin tips each of which is insufficient to pierce the rubber membrane of the balloon.
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running motion in air is called, stops the forward rotation of the jumper's body that he gets when he springs into the air. Just before taking off, as the jumper plants his foot on the jumping board, the motion of his lower body stops for the fraction of a second when his foot is in contact with the board. But his upper body continues to move forward, which makes him start to rotate forward around his centre of gravity. If no corrective action were taken, this rotation could send him toppling over and fall facedown into the sand. This is prevented by the hitch-kick. During the hitch-kick, jumpers hold each leg straight as it moves backward and bent at the knees as it comes forward. This difference in leg position causes the jumper's lower body to move forward. Similarly, the jumper's arm movements during the hitch-kick push the jumper's upper body backward. These body motions, which appear as running in air, neutralize the takeoff rotation and allow the jumper to maintain an upright posture and get into a better position for landing.
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Note that the natural frequency of the swing is not influenced by the mass of the person in it. In other words' it makes no difference whether a swing has a large adult or a small child in it. If the swing is pushed, or pumping is applied at the natural frequency of the swing it would resonate and its amplitude would increase during each back and forth cycle.
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Usually, surfaces of machine parts that appear smooth and polished, have irregularities -- little bumps and scrapes that can be so small that they show up only under a powerful microscope. When two such surfaces in close contact move in opposite directions these minute irregularities get caught on each other and act to oppose the movement. That is friction. The job of a lubricant is to fill up those tiny irregularities and allow the two surfaces to slide over each other smoothly. A wide range of substances solids, liquids, and greases are used as lubricants, depending upon the purpose for which they are used. Lubricating oils are easy to apply but cannot be used in places where they can flow out. For applications such as fan bearings, and pump bearings and moving car parts, grease is used. Grease lubricants have several advantages over oil lubricants because they require less maintenance and do not need stringent sealing of the lubricated parts. Solid lubricants include substance such as graphite, molybdenum disulphide, Teflon, and boron nitride. They are useful for conditions where conventional lubricants are inadequate such as in applications where a sliding or reciprocating motion is involved; at high temperatures where liquid lubricants typically would not survive; and under extreme contact pressures.
16. Remotes
In cities many of us use remote controls for switching on and changing channels on the TV, to operate a VCD or DVD player, to control an air conditioner, or to lock or open cars. But all remote devices do not work in the same way. For instance, remotes used for TV, VCR, DVD players or air conditioners have to be pointed at the device being controlled. If the remote is pointed away it doesn't work. But a car remote control works even if it is not pointed at the car. Why this difference? Remotes are primarily wireless devices, which use some kind of electromagnetic waves to control a gadget kept at a distance. TV, VCR, DVD player remotes and remotes used for air conditioners use a narrow beam of invisible infrared waves for operation. The remote has an electrical circuit that produces pulses of infrared waves from a light emitting diode (LED) fixed at the front end of the remote device. The LED has a reflector or a lens to produce a narrow beam that can be directed at the gadget being controlled. The remote also has several buttons for different channels and other operations. When you press a button on the remote, a specific connection in the circuit is completed. The chip in the remote senses that connection and knows what button was pressed. It produces a Morse-code-like pulsed signal specific to that button. The transistors amplify the signal and send them to the LED,
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which translates the signal into infrared light. The sensor in a TV, VCR, DVD player, or air conditioner can see the infrared light and react appropriately. Since the infrared beam is highly directional the gadget can respond only when the beam is directed at its sensor. That is why it is necessary to point the remote at the gadget being controlled. Car remotes used for locking and unlocking car doors from a distance use high-frequency (300 or 400 MHz) radio waves. The small unit attached to the key chain is actually a small radio transmitter. When you push a button on your remote, you turn on the transmitter and it sends a digitally coded radio signal to the receiver fitted in the car, which is tuned to the frequency that the transmitter is using. Once the car receiver senses the correct digital code it provides power to the actuator that unlocks or locks the doors. Since radio waves travel in all directions, a car remote need not be pointed at the car.
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If you have ever seen athletes at the start of a sprint event you may have wondered why they crouch low with their hands touching the ground and feet firmly set against what look like inclined foot pads. The inclined footpads are 'starting blocks' which are used by the athletes to get off to a good start in a race. By starting from a crouching position, and pushing against starting blocks the sprinters are able to accelerate better. Early sprinters used to dig holes in the track in which to place their feet when starting, to get an extra push at start. Track coaches have been striving for years to develop some kind of technique to improve their sprinters' performance. Research has produced some staggering advances, but none has had a more significant effect than the starting block, especially after the advent of synthetic track surfaces, where digging holes was out of question. Blocks were introduced in the late 1920s and were first used at the 1948 Olympic games in London. Starting blocks are usually made of aluminium and have a centre rail and slotted angles to firmly grip the blocks. They are made adjustable to four different angles and are fitted with special thick rubber to take in spikes of the athletes boots. But merely using starting blocks cannot improve the performance of a sprinter unless the blocks are set properly and the sprinter takes up the right posture. Technically, the distance between the front block and the starting line should be two foot-lengths of the athlete. The rear block is to be placed another foot length behind the front block. Spacing can be adjusted based on comfort, existing strength levels, etc. For best start, the front knee angle should be between 90 and 110 degrees, while the rear leg angle should be between 120 and 135 degrees.
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is reduced but air flow on the other, shiny side would be fast. As a result, according to Bernoulli's principle, the air pressure on the shiny side is reduced and the ball would swerve towards the shiny side. By shining the ball on one side, and carefully positioning the seam, which runs around the ball, bowlers can make it curve through the air as it approaches the batsman. Bowlers are allowed to polish the ball by rubbing it with cloth (usually on their trouser legs) and applying saliva or sweat to it. Any other substance is illegal, as is rubbing the ball on the ground. It is also illegal to roughen the ball by any means, including scraping it with the fingernails or lifting the seam.
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apparent force, equal and opposite to the centripetal force, that draws a rotating body away from the centre of rotation; it is caused by the inertia of the body. Centrifugal force can be explained in terms of Newton's laws of motion. As the car changes direction the passenger's inertia resists acceleration and change in direction, keeping the passenger moving with constant speed in the same direction. But since the car turns it appears that the passenger is being pushed against the side whereas actually the passenger does not move toward the side of the car; instead, the car curves in to meet the passenger. Although considered a fictitious force, centrifugal force has many applications. Centrifuges and ultracentrifuges are used in science and industry to separate substances by their relative masses. Centrifugal governors use spinning masses to regulate the speed of an engine by controlling the throttle. Centrifugal force can be used to generate artificial gravity in space stations. The oblate shapes of the planets Jupiter and Saturn are explained as due to centrifugal force created by their rapid spins.
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Rubber tyres offer good grip on the on the road because of friction that arises due to adhesion between surfaces. Increase in contact area between two surfaces increases the frictional forces. If an elastic material like rubber is used the real contact area further depends on the load pressing the two surfaces together. If the surface is grooved, as in a tyre with treads, the increase in contact area with load is much more compared to a surface without grooves. The design of the grooves and ridges of the tread affect the amount of the deformation, and hence, the friction or grip on surfaces. Besides increasing road grip, treads also cool the tyre while running at high speeds, and provide a safe margin of rubber before the complete tyre wears out. In wet conditions they provide ducts through which the water is squeezed out. This in turn helps the tyre have better grip on wet roads.
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voltage and current remains constant, stepping down the voltage increases the current flowing through the circuit several folds, which is essential for welding.
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It is rightly said that things that burn never return. Fire is a great destroyer. A badly managed fire can raze buildings and burn down hundreds of hectares of forestland in no time. While prevention is the best course, once a fire starts the best option is to extinguish it as fast as possible, and there are few substances as efficient in killing fire, except electrical or oil fire, as water. Although water is not directly used to extinguish oil fires the foam used to extinguish such fires is mostly water-based. What makes water such an efficient extinguisher of fire? For a fire to occur, there must be available oxygen, a supply of fuel, and enough heat to kindle the fuel. Therefore, the three basic ways of extinguishing fire are to smother it, to cut off the fuel supply, or to cool it below the flammability temperature. Fires involving solid materials, such as wood, paper, straw, textiles, coal, etc., are the most common types of fire and the best way to control such fires is to bring down the temperature of the burning material quickly, which water does most efficiently. The property that makes water an efficient fire extinguisher is its capacity to absorb large amounts of heat. In fact, water has the highest specific heat capacity of any known chemical compound, as well as a high heat of vaporization. That means, water absorbs the largest amount of heat per gram for every degree rise in temperature and also for reaching the boiling point and thus cools fast and puts out a fire.
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wire. The unique property of the drum coating is that the charge can be reversed by exposure to light. When the "print" command is given to the printer, a tiny laser beam "draws" the letters and images to be printed as a pattern of electrical charges an electrostatic image on the charged drum. At the regions where the laser beam strikes the positive charge on the drum is neutralised and the characters imprinted on the drum gets a negative charge with respect to the rest of the drum. When a positively charged toner is applied on the drum it sticks only to the negatively charged areas; that is, the characters imprinted by the laser beam on it. The toner pattern is the transferred to paper, which is then heated to fix the toner permanently. Thus in a laser printer the laser does not actually do the printing, but only "draws" an electrostatic image which is turned into visible characters on paper by the toner.
29. Is it vertical?
In any building construction work the walls have to be perfectly vertical. This is necessary to ensure that the load falls vertically on the ground. A wall tilted from the vertical would collapse under load if not supported on the tilted side by buttresses. But how does one ensure the verticality of a wall? Masons do it using a simple device called the "plumb line". The plumb line employs the law of gravity to establish what is "plumb"; that is, what is exactly vertical, or true. The plumb line is basically a conical metal weight attached to a string which hangs vertically in Earths gravitational field if let free. When freely suspended, the hanging string is directed exactly toward the Earth's centre of gravity and can be used as a vertical reference line. The line has in every point the same direction as that of the force of gravity of the Earth; thus, an object dropped on the surface of the Earth tends to follow this line. To use the tool, the string is fixed at the point to be plumbed. The weight, or bob, is then allowed to swing freely; when it stops, the point of the bob is precisely below the point at which the string is fixed above. When the plumb line is suspended from a wall under construction the bob should just touch the lower end of the wall if the wall is perfectly vertical. The plumb line is also used to transfer points from a height on to ground. Of course, the transfer can be done without using a plumb line, by mere eyesight if the observer looks vertically straight down, but that is not always possible. Any shift in the eye position from the vertical would introduce a parallax error and the point marked on the ground would not be directly below the point at a height but away from it.
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The spade is a common gardening implement used for a variety of purposes. The spade consists of two parts; the blade, of plate-iron, and the handle, made of tough wood. The wooden handle ends in a crosspiece, usually forming a kind of loop for the hand. The blade consists of two parts; the plate, by which the soil is cut and carried, and the tread, which is a piece of strong iron fixed on the upper edge of the blade, to receive the impulse of the foot of the operator. Spades are manufactured of different sizes, and usually with a flat blade. In gardening, a spade is used to dig or loosen ground, or to break up clumps in the soil. It is sometimes considered a type of shovel. A spade is used as a lever of the first class and also as a lever of the third class. When it is used as a digging tool, the load acts at the end of the flat blade, the middle of the blade acts as fulcrum and the force of the hands acts on the handle at the other end. Depending on the size of the blade and the handle a spade can give considerable mechanical advantage, which can be used for extracting dead or cut tree stumps from the ground. When a spade is used lift soil or rubble, the spade acts as a lever of the third class -- the load acts on the blade, the handle acts as fulcrum and the hand holding the middle exerts the force to lift the load. Although the mechanical advantage of a third class lever is always less than 1, for least effort the lifting force should be applied as far away as from the fulcrum; that is, the lifting hand should be placed as near the blade as possible.
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not upset body balance, although it would raise the centre of gravity of the body as whole, making it prone to fall. Carrying too much weight on the head also may be dangerous; it could cause cervical spinal cord injuries. On the other hand, carrying load on the shoulder or in hand puts strain on the body structure in the form of a bending force that the body has to counter constantly to maintain balance. This has also been proved in studies, which showed that hand carriage caused marked side bending of the trunk and poor posture. Carrying the load with the hands by the side proved to be the worst in terms of physiological efficiency. Carrying a bag on one shoulder, by putting constant stress, was found to lead to posture that might predispose to back pain.
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circuit at 220 V AC can be fatal. Hence a safeguard is provided in AC circuits in the form of a third conductor called the "earth". The main objective of earthing is to provide an alternative path for any leaking current to flow to the ground so that it would not endanger the user. The earthing of an electrical installation not only provides protection for persons against the danger of electric shock, but also maintains the proper function of the electrical system. The Earth always maintains a zero potential - it is neither positively nor negatively charged. So, when a faulty electrical circuit is connected to earth the leaking current can safely flow to the ground through the earth wire because it offers much less resistance compared to the body of the user, thus causing no harm. The 'earth' terminal of an electrical circuit is made up of a conducting wire connected to a metal conductor buried in the ground. All exposed metal parts of an electrical installation or electrical appliance need to be connected to this wire. This is done by using 3-wire conductors and a three-pin plug and socket. All electrical outlets with a 3-pin socket have an earth connection. In a 3-pin plug the longest prong, which is connected to the green wire, is the earth connection. The other end of the green wire is usually connected to the metal body of the electrical appliance. The earth prong is made longer so that in case of any current leakage the earth connection is established before the faulty gadget is connected to the mains and an accident can be prevented.
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be lifted if the pump is placed near the bottom of the well, submerged in water. Such a pump, called a submersible pump, can lift water from depths of more than 10 metres because they actually push the water up from the bottom of the well. A typical submersible pump is characterized by a long cylindrical shape that fits inside the well casing. The bottom half is made up of a sealed pump motor that is connected to the aboveground power source and controlled by wires. The pump itself is made up of a stacked arrangement of impellers that drives the water up the pipe to the plumbing system. Here, depending on the power of the pump, water can be lifted to almost any height.
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from the tiny bubbles, which then act like minute suction cups holding the tape strongly to the surface.
37. Potholes
Every year during monsoon the rains play havoc with city roads. After a few days of rain most city roads show up numerous potholes that keep growing in size as the days pass, making driving a nightmare for motorists. How do these potholes appear? The appearance of pot holes have something to do with the material road surfaces are built of, and simple physics. They appear only on asphalt roads but never on concrete surfaced roads, for the simple reason that in concrete the aggregates (stone chips) are firmly bound in a cement matrix, which is impervious to water. And concrete can withstand large compressive load without fracturing. But in an asphalt surface the aggregates are weakly
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bonded by asphalt, which deteriorates in contact with water, making the surface vulnerable to break up. A pothole usually begins as a tiny crack on the road surface. After rain, if water accumulates on the surface, water seeps through the crack, and the asphalt below the surface starts losing hold of the stone chips, which come off gradually. The process is hastened when vehicles pass over the damaged surface. Water forced out of the treads of the tyres moving vehicles act as high-pressure jets, dislodging more chips out of the weakened surface and the pot hole becomes bigger and bigger. However, if rainwater is not allowed to accumulate on the road development of potholes may be prevented, as it is the combined effect of accumulated rainwater and action of moving vehicles that produce potholes on roads.
38. Screwdriver
Screwdriver is an essential ingredient of any toolbox. As the name implies, a screwdriver is used to drive a screw into a surface or take it out. Sometimes screws are inserted and fixed into threads cut in a surface, or used with a nut to fix things. But in all these actions the screw has to be turned to fix it or unfix it. Screwdrivers come in many sizes and the size of the screwdriver used would depend on the job to be done. A watchmaker can do with a very small screwdriver to fix tiny watch screws, but a carpenter would need a long screwdriver with a large handle for joining wooden pieces or fixing objects to wooden frames. A watchmaker's screwdriver would be useless for the carpenter and so would be a carpenter's screwdriver for a watchmaker. Why this difference? A screwdriver makes use of the lever principle for turning and fixing screws. The tip of the screwdriver fits snugly on the head of the screw to be driven. When the screwdriver is to be used, equal and opposing parallel forces, which form a couple, are applied to turn it. Turning the tiny screws used in watches needs very small force that can be applied by twirling the thumb and the forefinger. Here, the diameter of the handle of the screwdriver is very small and so is the lever advantage. But driving larger screws into wood needs much stronger force, which cannot be provided by a small screwdriver. Here a larger screwdriver with a thicker handle is required. A handle with a large diameter not only gives a much higher lever advantage than a watchmaker's screwdriver but also provides a stronger grip, making it possible to apply much stronger opposing forces to turn the screw.
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Since the American brothers Orville and Wilber Wright flew their first heavier-than-air machine in 1903, air travel has come a long way. In its first powered flight, Wright brothers' "Flyer", which flew on propeller power, remained in air only for 12 seconds, and covered a distance of about 40 metres. Today's jet airliners can fly much faster than any propeller-driven aircraft and can remain in air for more than a dozen hours, covering more than 12,000 kilometres non-stop. Jet aircraft can also fly at much higher altitudes than propeller-driven planes can. How do they work at altitudes where air pressure is less than one-fifth at sea level? Let's find out how. A propeller-driven aircraft makes use of Bernoulli's principle both for lift and forward motion. The aerofoil shape of the wings makes the air over the top move faster than the air under. Slower air has more pressure, so there is a net upward thrust on the aerofoil, which produces lift. The blades of a propeller act as rotating wings, and produce force through application of both Bernoulli's principle, generating a difference in pressure between the forward and rear surfaces of the airfoil-shaped blades. But a propeller's performance suffers as the blade speed exceeds the speed of sound. That is why aircraft with conventional propellers do not usually fly faster than Mach 0.6; that is, faster than 60 percent of the speed of sound. Unlike propellers, jet engines work well at high speeds and jet aircraft can fly at speeds greater than the speed of sound. A turbojet engine is a type of internal combustion engine. It works by first compressing incoming air with a series of fan-like blades. Fuel is then mixed with the compressed air and the mixture ignited. Finally, the high-energy gases and hot air is ejected at high speed out of the rear of the engine, which pushes the aircraft forward according to Newton's third law of motion. Most modern jet engines are actually turbofans in which a large fan attached to the front end of a turbojet engine is used to supply supercharged air to not only the engine core, but to a bypass duct, which increases the efficiency.
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Actually, glass isn't really 'cut' in the normal sense of the word, but is only subjected to a controlled break. Since glass has no crystalline structure it has no cleavage planes (like gemstones, for instance). Also, since glass is equally strong in any direction, you normally won't have to worry about direction of grain like carpenters do. To cut a sheet of glass you first create a fine crack on the surface by scoring with a diamond tip and then applying pressure in the opposite direction. When you bend a glass sheet, you stretch one surface while compressing the other and create a tensile stress on the stretched surface. If there is a crack on the stretched surface, glass breaks along the crack. By scoring the surface of the glass with a diamond stylus, you can create that crack and control exactly where that lapse in tensile strength will occur. Scoring disrupts the surface integrity along a thin line along which the break occurs. This happens because glass is brittle and cracks can travel through them easily. Once the crack starts to grow things go from bad to worse. The crack becomes sharper and the stress increase at the tip becomes larger and larger. The crack tip propagates through glass at roughly the speed of sound and results in a clean break.
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Being lightweight, a shuttlecock can be quickly accelerated to very high velocities by applying the same force that would accelerate a heavier tennis ball to a much lower velocity (F = m x a). With its bumper flying ahead of its feathers, the shuttlecock has dynamic stability. If it turns in any direction, air pressure immediately turns it in the opposite direction, thus maintaining its orientation and stabilising it during flight. This aerodynamic stabilising effect also flips the shuttlecock quickly after each hit and then keeps it flying bumper forward until the next hit.
42. Xeroxing
The Xerox machine is standard equipment found in almost all offices. It is used for making copies of documents including text and images. To make copies you have only to place the document to be copied face down on the glass sheet on the top of the machine and press a button. The machine does the rest and a copy of the document comes out from the side of the machine. How are the copies made? Xeroxing is a photocopying process, which makes use of a combination of photoconductivity a electrostatic charges. Light is used to discharge regions of a charged surface to produce a latent image, which is transferred to paper using a toner. At the heart of the photocopier is a drum made out of photoconductive material that is first charged positively using a corona wire. When an intense beam of light is moved across the paper placed on the copier's glass surface, the image of the document is focussed on the charged drum. Light reflected from white areas of the paper and falling on the charged drum neutralises the charge in those areas. Dark areas on the original (such as pictures or text) do not reflect light onto the drum, leaving regions of positive charges on the drum's surface intact. When negatively charged, dry, black pigment called toner is spread over the surface of the drum, the toner particles adhere only to the positive charges that remain, creating a temporary image of the original, which is transferred to a positively charged sheet of paper. The paper is then heated and pressed to fuse the image formed by the toner to the paper's surface. That is why the paper feels when it comes out the photocopier. Since the working of photocopiers depends mostly on static charges, high humidity affects the quality of photocopies produced.
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third, and fourth. Some modern cars even go up to the fifth gear. What do these 'gears' mean and why changing gears is necessary? The car or bus engine can produce a certain amount maximum power depending upon the engine capacity, design and other factors. But a running vehicle does not require the same level of power at all times. It needs the maximum power when starting from rest or while climbing a gradient. On level a road, as the speed increases, less and less power is needed to maintain the speed. Changing gears allow the driver to transmit the required amount of power to the wheels. Internal combustion engines used in cars and other vehicles have narrow rpm ranges where power and torque are at their maximum. For example, an engine might produce its maximum power at 5,500 rpm. The transmission allows the gear ratio between the engine and the drive wheels to change as the car speeds up and slows down, while maintaining the engine speed at 5,500 rpm. To de-link the driving shaft from the engine during gear change the transmission is connected to the engine through the clutch. The transmission allows the 'gear ratio' between the engine and the drive wheels to change as the car speeds up and slows down, and at the same time to maintain an optimum power level. Gear ratio refers to the ratio between number of teeth of two meshing gears, which also decides the ratio of the speed or rotation of the two gears. In first gear the driving shaft rotates much slower than the engine shaft, which produces more torque at the drive wheel required for starting the vehicle from rest. As the vehicle speed increases, less and less torque is required to maintain the motion and change to higher gears helps increase the speed, as the gear ratio allows the drive shaft to spin almost at the rpm of the engine. In cars with automatic transmission the gear ratio is changed continuously as required.
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handle and mass of the head. Longer the handle or heavier the head, more is the energy delivered to the target. In the swing that precedes each blow, a certain amount of kinetic energy gets stored in the hammer's head, depending on its mass and the speed of its motion. When the hammer strikes, the head transfers its momentum to the target. To be most effective a hammer has to transfer its momentum fastest, which is why most hammers have hardened steel heads. Steel headed hammers are suitable for driving nails into wood or brick wall, or for breaking a piece of stone, or bend a sheet of metal. For really big projects such as driving wedges into wood and posts into the ground, a sledgehammer, with massive head and a long handle, is usually used.
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the vaulter and pole system rotates about the take-off box. At this point the initial kinetic energy of the run-up is transformed into potential energy of the vaulter above the ground. As the pole bends and recoils, the vaulter rotates about the shoulders, and then pulls up on the pole so as to pass over the crossbar feet-first. What a pole-vaulter would ideally want to achieve is to convert all of his/her kinetic energy into gravitational potential energy. In the real world, however, a 100 percent conversion is never possible because some of the kinetic energy gets converted into other kinds of energy, such as heat, friction, sound, and vibrations of the pole itself. Nevertheless, pole-vaulters are able to achieve dizzy heights and today, the world-record is over 6.15 metres.
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person carrying the load walks or runs the load and the pole oscillates vigorously up and down. Does using a flexible pole really help in any way? Whenever we walk our shoulder moves up and down in a rhythmic manner. If we carry load suspended from the ends of a rigid pole on our shoulder then during the upward motion of the body the shoulder has to apply a large force to lift the pole and its load. During the downward motion of the shoulder, however, the pole and its load simply rest on the shoulder. So there is a large fluctuation in the force the shoulder has to bear as we walk or run carrying the load, which makes it very tiring. But things change drastically if we use a flexible pole. If we walk or run with loads suspended at the ends of a flexible pole, the loads oscillate up and down, and as a result the force on the shoulder is smoothed out. This is because, when the loads at the ends move down the centre of the pole moves up and vice versa. The centre of pole also oscillates out of step with the shoulder when the shoulder moves upward the centre of the pole moves downward and vice versa. The net result is that the shoulder experiences a nearly constant force, which makes carrying the load less tiring. *****
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