Month: December 1996

Does the air pressure of a basketball and the hardness of the floor surface have…

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Does the air pressure of a basketball and the hardness of the floor surface have an effect on the height of the bounce? — BB, West Unity, OH

Yes to both questions. When a basketball collides with the floor, the ball’s kinetic energy—its energy of motion—is temporarily stored as elastic potential energy in two objects: the ball and the floor. The fractions of the collision energy stored in the basketball and the floor depend on how far each of them dents—the more one dents, the larger the fraction of the collision energy it receives. How well the basketball rebounds from the floor depends on how much of the collision energy returns to the ball during the rebound. Some of the stored energy in each dented surfaces is converted to thermal energy and is lost from the bouncing process. A hardwood floor is very springy and returns its share of the collision energy efficiently. A properly inflated basketball is also very springy. Thus when a firm basketball bounces on a good hardwood floor, it bounces well. But if the basketball is underinflated, its surface bends too far so that it receives most of the collision energy and internal friction in the ball’s skin wastes most of that energy. The ball bounces weakly. And if you try to bounce the ball on a soft carpet, the carpet dents easily, receives most of the collision energy, and wastes most of it as thermal energy. Again, a weak bounce.

How can MRI pictures show slices through an object? And how do you get an image …

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How can MRI pictures show slices through an object? And how do you get an image from using a magnet?

MRI images show where hydrogen nuclei (protons) are located in a person’s body. Protons are magnetic particles that have only two possible states in a magnetic field: aligned with the field or aligned against the field (also called “anti-aligned”). This limited range of alignments is the result of quantum physics. Normally, the protons in a person’s body are equally divided between aligned one way and aligned in the opposite way. But when a person is placed in a strong magnetic field, the protons in their body tend to align with the magnetic field and the distribution of aligned and anti-aligned protons shifts. There are then somewhat more aligned protons than anti-aligned protons.

Once there are more aligned protons than anti-aligned protons, it becomes possible to flip them about. Flipping these protons from aligned to anti-aligned takes energy and this energy can be provided by a radio wave. But not just any radio wave will do: its frequency must be just right in order to provide the proper amount of energy or the proton won’t flip. When the right radio wave is provided, some of the aligned protons will flip to become anti-aligned. This flipping of protons can be detected by a sensitive radio receiver.

By placing the person in a non-uniform magnetic field and by adjusting the frequencies and timings of the radio waves, an MRI device can determine where protons are located in the person’s body to with a few millimeters. A computer records where the protons are and then displays information about them as cross sectional images. For example, the computer can display a dense concentration of protons as white and a region with few protons as dark. MRI is particularly good at imaging tissue because tissue contains lots of hydrogen atoms and their protons.

What is the chemical formula for glass?

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What is the chemical formula for glass? — GL, Birmingham, AL

Glass isn’t a simple molecule that can be represented by a normal chemical formula. It’s a network solid in which the atoms are joined in one gigantic non-crystalline structure. In effect, a piece of glass is a single enormous molecule. Window glass is called soda-lime-silica glass and consists mostly of silicon, oxygen, sodium, and calcium atoms. Silicon and oxygen are considered to be network-forming atoms and bind to one another in long atomic linkages that form the backbone of the glass. The sodium and calcium atoms are added to terminate the linkages. This network termination softens the glass, lowers its softening and melting temperatures, and generally makes the glass easier to work with. Harder glasses such as lead “crystal” replace the sodium and calcium with other materials (e.g. lead oxide) that don’t weaken the glass as much and produce harder or stronger glasses. Pyrex cookware contains boron instead of sodium and calcium, and is a borosilicate glass.

How do lasers work?

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How do lasers work?

Lasers use systems with excess energy to amplify light. These systems, typically atoms or atom-like structures in solids, are in excited states—they have more than their minimum amounts of energy. An excited system can get rid of its excess energy in many different ways, but certain systems tend to emit the excess energy as photons—particles of light. While an excited system will emit a photon spontaneously if you wait long enough, it can also duplicate a passing photon if that passing photon has the proper characteristics. Most importantly, the excited system must be naturally capable of emitting the passing photon spontaneously—the passing photon’s wavelength and travel path must be such that the excited system is able to duplicate it.

This duplication effect makes it possible to amplify light. When a single photon passes by a number of identical excited systems, those systems may duplicate the photon many times so that many identical photons emerge. This phenomenon is the basis for laser amplifiers. When one of the photons emitted spontaneously by the excited systems is deliberately sent back and forth through those systems with the help of mirrors, the laser amplifier becomes a laser oscillator—it both initiates and amplifies the light. The light that ultimately emerges from the laser oscillator or amplifier differs from normal light because the laser light consists of many identical photons. They all have identical wavelengths (colors) and follow identical paths through space. They also exhibit dramatic wave effects, particularly interference.

When light hits an object, how do we recognize the color?

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When light hits an object, how do we recognize the color? — CM, Levering, PA

White light is a mixture of various light waves with different wavelengths and thus different colors. When white light hits an object, some of the light waves are absorbed while others are not. The light that isn’t absorbed may pass through the object or it may be reflected in a new direction. The light that you observe coming from the object is this transmitted or reflected light. If the light that you see doesn’t include the same mixture of wavelengths that first hit the object, you won’t see this light as white. Instead, you’ll see it as colored. If the light you see contains mostly long wavelengths of light, you’ll see it as red. If the light contains mostly short wavelengths of light, you’ll see it as blue or violet. The wide range of colors that objects have comes from subtle differences in the wavelengths of light they absorb. However, when an object is illuminated with colored light, the light that it transmits or reflects may be altered. After all, it can’t transmit or reflect a light wave that never hit it in the first place. Even variations in “white” light can affect an object’s color—makeup looks different in incandescent “white” light than it does in fluorescent “white” light because those illuminations contain different mixtures of light waves.

Why does a helium balloon in a car seem to defy Newton’s laws? When you accelera…

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Why does a helium balloon in a car seem to defy Newton’s laws? When you accelerate forward suddenly, the balloon moves forward and when you brake, the balloon moves back. Is that because the air inside the car compresses when you accelerate? — CT, Charlottesville, VA

Since the air in the car is denser than the helium balloon, the air’s motion dominates the helium balloon’s motion. When your car accelerates forward, the air’s inertia tends to move it toward the back of the car-the accelerating car is trying to leave the air behind. The balloon moves forward in the car to give the air more room near the back of the car. When you stop suddenly, the air in the car continues to coast forward and accumulates at the front of the car. Again, the balloon moves backward in the car to give the air more room at the front of the car. You’ll see exactly this same effect if you watch an air bubble in a bottle of water as you drive the bottle around in a car.

How does a CD player work?

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How does a CD player work? — NL, Dearborn, MI

A CD player uses a laser beam to determine the lengths of a series of ridges inside a compact disc. Infrared light from a solid-state laser is sent through several lenses, a polarizing beam splitter, and a special polarizing device called a quarter-wave plate. It’s then focused through the clear plastic surface of the compact disc and onto the shiny aluminum layer inside the disc. Some of this light is reflected back through the player’s optical system so that it passes through the quarter-wave plate a second time before encountering the polarizing beam splitter. The two trips through the quarter-wave plate switches the light’s polarization from horizontal to vertical (or vice versa) so that instead of returning all the way to the laser, the light turns 90° at the polarizing beam splitter and is directed onto an array of photodiodes. These photodiodes measure the amount and spatial distribution of the reflected light. From this reflected light, the CD player can determine whether the laser beam is hitting a ridge or a valley on the disc’s aluminum layer. It can also determine how well focused or aligned the laser beam is with the aluminum layer and its ridges. The player carefully adjusts the laser beam to follow the ridges as the disc turns and it measures how long each ridge is. The music is digitally encoded in the ridge lengths so that by measuring those lengths, the player obtains the information it needs to reproduce the music.

Is it possible to make a black bulb that absorbs light rather than emitting it?

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Is it possible to make a black bulb that absorbs light rather than emitting it? — KD, Pflugerville, TX

Not unless you will consider a black hole to be a black bulb. For a “bulb” to absorb light that isn’t heading toward the bulb, that bulb will have to attract the light toward it. Since light has no electric charge, the only force that the bulb can exert on light is gravitational force. While a black hole’s gravity is strong enough to attract and ensnare light, it wouldn’t make a very practical bulb. However, it is possible in certain circumstances to add light to previously existing light and, in doing so, create a dark shadow that wasn’t present before. This process is called interference, where two light waves cancel one another in a particular region of space and prevent any light from reaching a certain spot. But this cancellation is difficult to achieve, except with lasers, and doesn’t occur everywhere in space—the light doesn’t vanish, it just gets redistributed. Overall, the idea of a black bulb is just not realistic.

How are luminol and fireflies related?

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How are luminol and fireflies related? — JH, Minneapolis, MN

There are a few molecules that can be chemically oxidized to produce new molecules that then spontaneously emit light. The chemical reactions that occur in these special molecules leave the resulting new molecules electronically excited—their electrons are in states that have more than the minimum allowed energies. As these energetic electrons subsequently shift to states with less energy, they release some of that energy as light.

In a firefly, the molecule that is being oxidized is called luciferin. It’s combined with oxygen and the important biological energy storage molecule ATP (adenosine triphosphate), assisted by a catalyst protein called luciferase. A series of reactions then occurs, culminating in the formation of excited decarboxyketoluciferin. This molecule emits a photon of green light and becomes normal decarboxyketoluciferin.

Luminol, a molecule used in many cold light products, is a somewhat simpler molecule that is much easier to synthesize commercially than is luciferin. When it’s oxidized with hydrogen peroxide and potassium ferrocyanide, it forms an excited molecule that emits a photon of blue light. This blue light is often shifted to green or orange with the help of a fluorescent dye. The dye absorbs the blue light and uses its energy to emit green or orange light. This material is commonly used in light sticks and glowing necklaces or toys.

Why is the sky blue? – Z

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Why is the sky blue? – Z

As it passes through the atmosphere, sunlight can be deflected by a process known as Rayleigh scattering. When sunlight passes through any material, its light waves cause electric charges in the material to jiggle back and forth. That’s because light waves contain electric fields and electric fields exert forces on electric charges. When the charges in a material jiggle back and forth, they may emit light. In this case, the material can absorb the sunlight for an instant and reemit it in a new direction. This process, whereby jiggling electric charges in a material absorb a light wave and reemit it in a new direction, is Rayleigh scattering.

Rayleigh scattering is extremely inefficient in particles that are much smaller than the wavelength of the light, so that visible light can travel through miles of molecules in the atmosphere before it experiences significant Rayleigh scattering. But blue light has a shorter wavelength than red light and thus experiences Rayleigh scattering more often than red light. As a result, the atmosphere tends to send the blue portion of sunlight off in every direction. Thus when you look at the atmosphere, it appears blue.

A reader (TAC) points out that the above explanation would seem to imply that the sky should appear violet, since violet light scatters more strongly than blue light. But the spectrum of sunlight peaks in the green—sunlight contains more green light than blue light and more blue light than violet light. The sky combines these two effects together (more green light but better scattering of violet light) and acquires an overall blue appearance.