Wednesday, October 11, 2017

67% of Women Let This Man Take Their Picture. Would You?

October 11, 2017, at 12:34 p.m.

This man takes pictures of women for his blog, "People of New York," and it's quite sexy.

Sunday, April 16, 2017

Black Holes

A black hole is a celestial body in space that has such high gravity that not even light can escape. Little is known about them because scientists have a very hard time observing them. But, they do have an understanding on how they are created, their structure, and have an idea of what would happen if a human were to travel inside one. This said, they are very important to understand in our quest to understand the true nature of the universe.

            There are three main types of black holes, all classified by their mass. The Primordial Black Hole is the smallest. They have about the same mass as a mountain, but are packed into the size of an atom. The next size up is the Stellar Black Hole. As far as we know, the Stellar Black Hole is the most common type of black hole. The Stellar Black Hole has a mass of up to twenty times the mass of the Sun and an average diameter of about sixteen kilometers. The largest kind of black hole is called a Supermassive Black Hole. The mass of a Supermassive Black Hole is about one million times that of the Sun. These can have a diameter equal to that of our solar system, and for the most part, reside in the center of every galaxy.

A black hole has three main parts: The Singularity, the Event Horizon, and the Schwarzschild Radius. The Singularity of a black hole contains all the mass of the black hole at almost zero volume. This makes them nearly infinitely dense, which goes to create a gigantic gravitational force. The Event Horizon is the “point of no return” of a black hole. Once crossed, nothing can escape, even light. The Schwarzschild Radius is the radius of the Event Horizon. 

            A Stellar Black Hole is created when a star at least about two and eight tenths times larger than our Sun implodes. Normally, this occurs shortly after it begins to create iron in its core through nuclear fusion. This is because all other elements fused before iron release radiation as they are fused. Because iron doesn’t, it uses a lot more energy and builds up faster than previous elements. Eventually, the star will die, creating a supernova, and subsequently, a black hole.


            If a human were to enter a black hole, they would most certainly die. Once past the event horizon, time would appear to speed up around you. If you didn’t die from all the energy hitting you at superfast speeds from outside, you would be sucked in. You would experience Spaghettification. Going in feet first, the gravity at your feet would be hundreds of times stronger than at your head. In a supermassive black hole, you would be stretched kilometers long and nanometers thin. Eventually, your cells would be torn apart in the immense gravity, but by then, you would be dead.

Sources

Monday, January 23, 2017

Homemade Electric Motor


Over the course of 5 weeks, including over 24 hours of work, I made an electric motor with a couple nails, magnet wire, iron straps, copper, tape, lamp wire, screws, and a piece of wood. The motor’s ultimate goal was to pull a Matchbox car, in which it will attempt to do on Wednesday, January 24th. In my trials, the motor has spun at speeds between 10 rotations per second, and spinning fast enough that I was not able to count rotations.
            To build the motor, I first had to build the base magnet. I bent an iron strap into a U shape and wrapped 400 rotations of magnet wire around the base. Next, I took an iron rod and cut it to be 6 inches long. After that, I taped 2 nails cut to be 2.5 inches around the rod. I then wrapped 4 layers of wire around the two nails. This would be the armature. Next, I created a commutator out of tape and pieces of metal I had. After that, I soldered the ends of the wire from the armature onto the commutator. Finally, I assembled it.

            Once assembled, I created brushes out of lamp wire and attached them to the battery and the wire from the base magnet. When I started up the motor, it didn’t work the first time, the second time, or even the third time.
 

            When troubleshooting, I replaced the brushes, commutator, rewrapped the base magnet, and completely disassembled and later reassembled the entire project, until the motor spun.
Eventually, the motor finally worked, and for a while, it was fine. However, when I tried to test the motor with a car, the motor ceased to spin, even before I attached the car. At this point, I redid the commutator and redid the brushes. After this, the motor still wouldn’t spin, so I reset the polarization of the magnetic fields with the battery and wire. After I did this, the motor worked.

            During tests with a model car significantly heavier than what I will be competing with, the motor took 8 seconds to pull a car 4 meters with friction and other detrimental factors that will be eliminated in Breuckner Hall. I predict that my motor will pull the car 4 meters between 2 and 4 seconds.