# All Questions

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### Would a considerably big asteroid be disintegrated by the Earth's Roche limit?

If there was a big asteroid with a diameter of say 50km+ in a collision course with the Earth (not orbiting), would it disintegrate into smaller chunks due to the Earth's Roche limit, or the time it ...
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### Is it possible to clearly receive weak signal from space?

Imagine there is communication satellite on geostationary orbite. It transmits signal in a defocused beam, "illuminating" whole Earth hemisphere it's floating over. For example, signal is ...
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What's a good book (or other resource) for an advanced undergraduate/early graduate student to learn about symmetry, conservation laws and Noether's theorems? Neuenschwander's book has a scary review ...
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### The workings of the Hall effect?

I want to ask about the workings of the Hall effect. Why do the electrons come to rest on the edge of the wire? The magnetic field pushes them up, and the electric field pushes them forward. Shouldn't ...
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### Is it possible to build up holography in a closed manifold, i.e., in a manifold with a mathematical boundary?

I was wondering about the AdS/CFT correspondence basics. It is constructed on the idea of conformal compactification, in which a open manifold $M$ is homeomorphic related to a closed one $N$ through a ...
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### What low-level process drives a frequency-doubling crystal?

I was reading about second-harmonic generation (SHG) crystals (or frequency-doubling crystals) used to produce green laser light from IR. What low-level process in the crystal is actually driving ...
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### What is the relation between General Relativity and Newtonian Mechanics?

What is the relationship of General Relativity and Newtonian Mechanics? Namely, which laws does GR replace of Newtonian Mechanics, and which laws of Newtonian Mechanics are incorporated into it. Or is ...
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### Electrostatic potential of a proton

I have been working on a quantum mechanical problem regarding the ground state of the Hydrogen atom. It appears that the best way to solve the underlying problem is to modify the electrostatic ...
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### Massless Thirring Model in 1+1 Dimensions

In Coleman's paper, "Quantum sine-Gordon equation as the massive Thirring Model" (link to Phys Rev D article), he pointed out that the massless Thirring Model is exactly scale invariant. More over, ...
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### Push a box in a plane with friction. How to deal with the rotation?

Suppose I have a box (say, length-1m, width-1m, height-0.5m) on the plane with friction. I can apply a horizontal force in on the surface of the box. If the force doesn't pass through the center of ...
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### Are magnetic hysteresis losses relevant to alternating currents flowing in a wire?

Say we have an AC in a magnetically lossy material, like iron. Because of iron's relatively high permeability, skin effect will be more pronounced than it is in say, copper, so this iron wire isn't so ...
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### Why are some things attracted to you but others repelled by you in rotating reference frames?

Note that my understanding of general-relativity is rudimentary. If I understand right, it means that basically any reference frame can be considered stationary, but there may be random gravitational ...
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### Equivalent temperature: laser and cell containing Rb

What's the meaning of "equivalent temperature" related to a cell containing rubidium and crossed by laser?
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### Does the action and Lagrangian have identical symmetries and conserved quantities?

From the book Introduction to Classical Mechanics With Problems and Solutions by David Morin, page 236 states: Noether's Theorem: For each symmetry of the Lagrangian, there is a conserved ...
731 views

### Surface charge in a wire?

The image above shows the distribution of the surface charge in a current carrying wire. The surface charges distributes themselves to make sure the field inside the wire is always perpendicular to ...
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### Rolling in 3D using Torque, Angular Momentum/Velocity

I'm stuggling to get a simulation working correctly. Below you can see what I am attempting to do. You can also view it here. Can you spot where I'm going wrong? (Calculated at start) 1) Inertia ...
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### Why doesn't gravity speed up light?

We know that gravity speeds up a body; for instance, a meteor which enters the earth gets constantly accelerated up by earth's gravity. And from relativity we know that light bends near a massive ...
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### Electric field in a wire?

The electric field in a wire is parallel to the wire's surface (it is always pointing "to the front"). If the electric field did not point in this direction, surface charges would build up and ...
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### How is matter stored in black hole?

A black hole engulfs the matter nearby, how does it store the mass inside? We know that matter is composed of particles, does a black hole store the mass in massive particles? Or can we assume that ...
548 views

### Derive Schwinger-Dyson equations in Srednicki

On page 135 in Srednicki he defines the functional integral $$Z(J) = \int\mathcal{D}\phi\,\exp\Big[\mathrm{i}\big(S+\int\mathrm{d^4}y \,J_a\phi_a\big)\Big], \tag{A}$$ where $S$ and $J_a$ are the ...
279 views

### Use Equations 1 and 2 to eliminate $T$ and show the expression for $f$ is given by [closed]

I am not quite understanding what needs to be done but I am assuming that I must combine the two equations and get rid of the variable $T$ in order to make this equation of $f$ below: (Note:These ...
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### Effects of microwaves on optical properties of human eye [closed]

I have read a long series of paragraphs on wiki. Previously I thought that microwaves are not harmful to living beings but Wiki does not claim this explicitly. while doing an experiment in my college ...
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### Resistor connections [duplicate]

I can't figure out what kind of connection it would be if i put resistors like this Can someone please explain how they are connected, like is R1 and R2 in series and R4 and R5 in series and then I ...
330 views

### Ambiguity in number of basis vectors [duplicate]

The dimension of the Hilbert space is determined by the number of independent basis vectors. There is a infinite discrete energy eigenbasis $\{|n\rangle\}$ in the problem of particle in a box which ...
56 views

### Microwaves and metal poles

I have an experimental setup like so: And if one looks closer at the lens, there are metal poles near the bottom of the lens (the extensions of the stands beyond the clamps) that are obstructing the ...
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### How are symmetries precisely defined?

How are symmetries precisely defined? In basic physics courses it is usual to see arguments on symmetry to derive some equations. This, however, is done in a kind of sloppy way: "we are calculating ...
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### Work done by isothermal expansion from two different viewpoints

Consider an adiabatic system as follows. It consists of a gas in a container and a piston. Initially, the system is at equilibrium and the gas inside it occupies a volume $V_i$ at a pressure $p_i$ ...
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### Does there exist a single plate capacitor(conductor)?

Does there exist a single plate capacitor(conductor)? if yes How will you define the capacitance and potential(difference) of such conductor?
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### Water in vacuum (or space) and temperature in space

So, water in vacuum will boil first and then freeze. I don't know how the freeze happens. As pressure lowers to zero, what happened to freezing point? (I know heat taken by vapor, and the water cool ...
278 views

### Superposition theorem

Is superposition theorem applicable for circuits having semiconductor components like diodes, transistors, etc.?
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### Parallel Plate Capacitors

I was wondering what would happen to capacitance if the plates are not parallel (above/below each other) or if the plates are not the same size. Thanks.
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### Potential energy of the human body if all its atoms were split

I am working on a sci-fi story in which a character has control over matter on the atomic level (think Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen). In thinking up potential tragedies for this character I thought, ...
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### What is a phrase for testing for a certain result? [closed]

Is there a word or phrase for when someone is testing for a certain result thereby skewing his findings?
How can the speed of sound be calculated for temperatures below 0 °C (down to -40 °C)? Does the calculation $v=331\ \frac{m}{s} + 0.6 \frac{m}{s°C} \times T$ still hold (where T's unit is ...