# All Questions

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### Variation - Electric pressure on a sphere?

I solved the following question(Answer is correct): Find the force with which two hemisperical parts of a uniformly charged hollow sphere repel each other?(charge density: +$\sigma$) Answer: ...
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### Quantum computing and ambiguity

I do a bit of hobby programming and I often search the internet for little oddities that are fun to ponder over. I have read a few passages that try to explain quantum computing to the layman like ...
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### How to obtain ballistic transport in a device?

I would like to know the ballistic device characteristics and illustrations (if any) to understand how can we overcome the dependence of current on carrier mobility .
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### What if an asteroid the size of the moon hits earth?

Would we all perish due to excessive heat? Or would that be limited to the area near the impact while the people on the rest of the earth would die from other phenomena such as mega earthquakes, ...
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### Normal modes of the 2D double pendulum

I'm performing an experiment with a 2D double pendulum, and in part of it I want to investigate the normal modes of the double pendulum, where the pendula are not of equal length or of equal mass. My ...
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### Why does proton and electron attract each other? [duplicate]

Not that their charges are opposite! "+" & "-" are the signs we named them. By nature Why do they attract each other? And Why do they repel each other?
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### Mixed-Alloy materials

Short version: Is it a physical problem (crystal structure/grains/redox/etc.) or just a logistics problem (keeping the solutes from homogenizing, molten/solid/temperature related problems) that keeps ...
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### Why do rotations of a multicomponent state function take this form?

I am reading Leslie Ballentine's Quantum Mechanics, section 7.2, which is all about the explicit form of the Angular Momentum operators. I understand how he gets the form for the single component ...
264 views

### Light Deflection by a Black Hole

I think I've come across a paradox while studying general relativity. Wikipedia states that the deflection angle of light by a point mass is $4GM/(c^2b)$. ...
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### Why do we do partial and not covariant differentiation with $x^{\nu}$?

Why when taking the velocity vector we make $$u^{\nu}=\frac{d}{d\tau}x^{\nu}$$ and not $$u^{\nu}=\frac{\nabla}{d\tau}x^{\nu}$$ where in the last equation I meant the covariant derivative. Why?
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### How should semiconductors be understood? [duplicate]

In the chemistry setting, a doped semiconductor is a crystal lattice with holes/extra electrons in it. In the band/quantum mechanical picture, these holes/extra electrons can be seen as the amount ...
268 views

### Huygen's principle in curved spacetimes

Does Huygen's principle hold in even dimensional (2m+1,1) curved spacetimes, or are there certain necessary conditions for it to hold? In other words, if I have Cauchy data for a field satisfying the ...
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Though the mathematical concepts underlying quadratic air drag are quite straightforward (a single variable differential, just like the linear drag equation), my text book (and online text books) ...
173 views

### Turning a car on a perfect surface

Say you have a car with perfect wheels and a perfect surface with so much friction that it never skids. When the car is traveling forward, the wheels INSTANTANEOUSLY turn 90 degrees. Does the car ...
229 views

### What are the implications for the AdS/Cft program if AdS is unstable?

To my understanding recent progress in the study of the non linear stability of AdS spacetime suggest that $AdS$ might be unstable. If this is true, what are the physical and mathematical ...
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### GR exercise: falling particles on earth's surface

I'm having some trouble with Exercise 5.1 in Shapiro's BH,WD&NS book, which goes as follows: Consider two particles of mass $m$ at distance $r$ and $r+h$, such that $h\ll r$, on the same ...
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### target category of extended field theory

For a topological field theory to be a true “extension” of an Atiyah-Segal theory, the top two levels of its target (ie its $(n-1)^{\text{st}}$ loop space) must look like $\text{Vect}$. What other ...
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### How obtain conserved quantities in integrable models in accordance with Liouville's theorem, via Sklyanin Poisson algebra?

In classical integrable models, in the discrete case we have the Sklyanin algebra, $$\lbrace T_{a}(u),T_{b}(v)\rbrace =[r_{ab}(u,v),T_{a}(u)T_{b}(v)].$$ How to prove that the conserved quantities are ...
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### Why do physical bodies in the universe follow the law of physics ( or any rule/pattern ) ? [duplicate]

Why do physical bodies in universe are bound to follow a rule ( eg. laws of physics ) ? Is their any imaginary condition possible, where they stop following any rule. And everything becomes random ? ( ...
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### Adding matter to make galaxies bigger

What are the actual factors that play a role in the accretion of matter into galaxies? I read about Accretion Disks but I don't quite understand how they work yet.
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### Forces other than the fundamental interactions, e.g. friction

Forgive me for the silly question, but I just don't get it. I just completed an elementary course in mechanics, and I am curious to know what I am about to ask. We have, all year, dealt with many ...
296 views

### Diffusion and Drift currents in a PN junction

In a forward-biased PN junction, the potential barrier decreases, allowing more majority carriers from one side to diffuse to the other side where they are minority carriers. After they cross the ...
322 views

### Can Minkowski spacetime be redefined as a non-flat riemannian manifold?

Minkowski space time is defined in terms of a flat pseudo-Riemannian manifold. I have wondered if it can be redefined as Riamannian manifold and in the case what type of curvature would there appear. ...
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### Do we breathe air by creating a vacuum?

How do we suck air into our lungs, are we generating a vacuum?
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### Electron shells in atoms: What causes them to exist as they do?

I have seen similar posts, but I haven't seen what seems to be a clear and direct answer. Why do only a certain number of electrons occupy each shell? Why are the shells arranged in certain distances ...
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### I need to know how many pounds of force a 3 million pound object has moving at 1 mph [closed]

How many pounds of force does a 3 million pound object have moving at 0.1, 0.5, and 1 mph?
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### Amplitude decrease during geometrical spreading of a seismic pulse

I'm looking at amplitude decrease of a seismic pulse as a result of geometrical spreading. Starting with the energy contained in a unit area, $I = E / (4 \pi r^2)$, where $E$ is the original energy ...
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### Spaghettification while still in orbit

THIS POST does a pretty good job of giving an idea as to what the differences in forces becomes as you approach a black hole. For a small enough black hole, you would reach the dangerous tidal force ...
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### What does the $y$-axis represent in the atomic spectra and what is its significance?

The picture is an emission spectrum of Helium. The spectrum has sharp lines (peaks) at certain wave lengths characterizing it as helium. Agreed that it characterizes Helium as atomic spectral line ...
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### Can the compactified dimensions of M-Theory/String Theory become uncurled?

Is it possible for the curled dimensions described in superstring theories to become uncurled and open up. I have read that the big bang could have been the uncurling over 3 dimensions through ...
I'm sure this has caused many people headaches. First, is there a metric $(-+++)\leftrightarrow(+---)$ convention conversion chart where many common expressions are listed? Thank you in advance for ...
Consider a particle of mass $m$ in $6$ dimension. Its coordinate w.r.t. origin $\left(0,0,0,0,0,0\right)$ is given as $\left(x,y,z,\dot{x},\dot{y},\dot{z}\right)$. If we denote \$r = ...