All Questions

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How would you prove $E = -\vec{\nabla} V$ from the electric potential's line integral?

Basically, we were given an equation: $$V_1 - V_2 = \int_{r_1}^{r_2}\vec{E}\cdot d\vec{r}$$ where $\vec{E}$ is the electric field distribution and $d\vec{r}$ is the displacement vector of the charge. ...
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Why are the laws of thermodynamics “supreme among the laws of Nature”?

Eddington wrote The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in ...
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The origin of contact noise?

I was trying to measure the noise of a device with metal probes. I was not sure whether I should trust the results because I was told contact noise might contribute to some degree. I am a little ...
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Velocity vector for constant acceleration in newtonian mechanics

If the acceleration vector of an object remains constant, is there no change in the direction of the velocity vector? The question applies to any movements in classical physics.
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Didn't Newton's Corpuscular theory fail to explain reflection?

In 1637 Descartes gave the corpuscular model of light and derived Snell's law. This Corpuscular model of light was further developed by Isaac Newton in his famous book entitled OPTICKS and because of ...
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Who first verified Coulomb's Law for atoms?

Who first verified Coulomb's Law for atoms? Was it Rutherford's experiment?
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How to calculate velocities after collision?

I'm currently writing a program for a particle simulator. One of the requirements is that the particles collide in a realistic way. However, I don't know how to calculate the final velocities. For ...
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What aspect of quantum mechanics forces probabilities to be (conventionally, at least) central?

I understand how to compute probability distributions and expected values and such from quantum states, but a lot of treatments of QM make it look like this is what the wavefunction is essentially ...
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Are communications between computers faster by electrical signals via copper cables or electromagnetic signals?

Assume that there are two computers which are connected with a copper cable, e.g. Ethernet. Also, there is a radio connection between them, e.g. AM radio, in order to exchange data. When we try to ...
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How can steel shavings get magnetized while hole tapping?

I was tapping a hole yesterday with my uncle into a piece of soft steel. (A tap cuts threads on the inside of a hole, to accept a machine screw or bolt.) The tap was NOT magnetic! As I finished boring ...
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Could Dark Matter form black hole?

Some people speculate that the mysterious dark matter in the universe could be tiny black holes. But on the other side, could dark matter particles attract each other by gravity and finally form a ...
A shopper pushes a 7.5-kg shopping cart up a 13 (degree)incline. Find the magnitude of the horizontal force, F, needed to give the cart an acceleration of 1.41 m/s$^2$. I ask this because the ...
I am looking at Wikipedia's article on deriving the Schwarzschild solution. In the section "Simplifying the components", it says, On the hypersurfaces of constant $t$ and constant $r$, it is ...