Science trivia

*hehehe* Have a headache yet? :p

Anyway. Back to the topic.

Q: Can light travel slower than the 'speed of light'? (c = 3 x 10 to the ninth meters per second :D) And, if you want another, what is light?
 
Light is composed of perpendicular vibrations, one in an electric field, one in a magnetic field. As to light traveling slower than the so-called 'speed of light' - I believe that the speed at which light travels varies slightly depending on the medium through which it travels. Also, although gravity does not directly change the speed of light, it effecively does, by making it take longer to go from point A to point B through bending. And then there's the black holes. Don't black holes actually condense the space around them so that the light would actually be traveling through more space if it passed near a black hole?

Q: Name the four types of particles which cause the four fundamental forces.
 
Photons, (electromagnatisam);
Gluons, (Strong force);
I'm really not sure which particle causes the weak force. :eek:
If there is a particle that causes the gravitational force, it is the graviton. Otherwise, gravity is simply the curvature of spacetime.

What is Hawking radiation?
 
Pretty much. But there's more to it than that. :D

Wikipedia said:
...A more precise, but still much simplified view of the process is that vacuum fluctuations cause a particle-antiparticle pair to appear close to the event horizon of a black hole. One of the pair falls into the black hole whilst the other escapes. In order to preserve total energy, the particle which fell into the black hole must have had a negative energy (with respect to an observer far away from the black hole). By this process the black hole loses mass, and to an outside observer it would appear that the black hole has just emitted a particle.
Click to expand...

So nothing ever does come out of a black hole – but a black hole can 'evaporate' by this process.


Hm. I looked it up; and you're right, it is the pion. I looked up gluons,and apparently they 'participate in strong interactions'. I just remembered something wrong, I guess. :eek:


I think it's your turn for a question...
 
I FINALLY FOUND SOMETHING DERN DIDN'T KNOW!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

*clears throat* Where were we?

Ah yes, the typs of telescopes. You're right, one is the Newtonian reflector; the other two are refractor and Schmidt-Cassegrain. The refractor was the earliest type of telescope - it was the type Galileo used, I believe - the Newtonian came next, and the Schmidt-Cassegrain is fairly modern. In a refractor telescope, you look straight through the lenses at whatever it is you're viewing. In a reflector, the light comes in through the front, hits a curved mirror in the back, hits an angled mirror in the middle, and comes out through the side, where you put the lens and your eye. In a SchmidtCassegrain, the light comes in through the front lens, hits a curved mirror in back, and hits a mirror in front again, which bounces it back to the eyepiece in back.

So now you know. :D :p

Q: How many electrons are in the first 5 orbits of an atom?
 
s2, s2, p6, s2, p6. (That's including the type of orbital. ;))

Olorin said:
I FINALLY FOUND SOMETHING DERN DIDN'T KNOW!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
Click to expand...
Hey! That was meeeeeeeeean! *pouts*

:p

If you want to find something I don't know – just ask me anything from Biology. *shudders*
 
None, unless it's the strange fish that has one...I forget it's name. :p


Um – can I ask what the different families of leptons are, or is that one of the the 'impossable' questions that aren't allowed?
 
When a star runs out of hydrogen to fuse, it can no longer support itself and collapses, releasing most of its mass and a huge amount of energy in doing so.

Q: What is the weak force?
 
This is one of the things I don't know. *sigh* I have a vauge idea, but I don't really know. Anyone else?

*bumps thread*
 
I don't really know what the weak force is either, I was hoping you would. :D

My science textbook, when it got to the four Fundamental Forces, said something like, "The weak force is really very similar to the electromagnetic force, so we'll just stick to the electromagnetic force here." I was kinda frunstrated at that... although I did manage to find out that the weak force has something to do with controlling radioactivity. *shrugs*
 
What a great thread! :)

(BTW, we're not allowed to look stuff up to answer these questions in a science book or something right?)

The weak nuclear force or weak interaction does have to do with radioactivity. It is actually the interaction responsible for converting a neutron into a proton. Well, the full reaction is: neturon --> proton + electron + anti-electron-neutrino. It also is responsible for things like the Higgs Mechanism and its carrier particles are the W and Z vector bosons, but I cant really give a good explanation of what these things are without making a waaay too long post. Did that help? :)

And Dernhelm, no one answered your question about the different families of leptons. (I'm assuming you mean the flavour?) And that would be electron (with the electron, positron, electron-neutrino and anti-electron-neutrino), muon (muon, anti-muon, etc.), and tau.

Okay, here's a question: How many quarks are inside of a proton? (And BIG bonus points if you can say what they are called and what their electromagnetic charge is :) )
 
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