Skill — Exploring limits and hypothetical scenarios to understand the dependence on parameters.
Featured in chapters
02·09·11·20
Linked atoms
116 linked atoms.
00b Metodo sperimentale
01 Cinematica
02 Forze e leggi di Newton
03 Piano inclinato e moto circolare
- What-if physics: zero gravity on a curve
- What-if physics: horizontal gravity
- Critical conical pendulum
- True or false on circular motion and inclined planes
04 Energia e lavoro
- Problem — Ball descending three tracks
- Problem — What-if physics: doubled gravity
- Problem — What-if physics: no energy conservation
- Problem — Stevin’s necklace
- Problem — Monkey and weight on a pulley
04b Oscillazioni e moto armonico
- Worked exercise — Pendulum on Mars
- Large amplitudes: correction to the period
- Problem — Amplitude and period of the swing
- Problem — Doubled gravity
- Problem — Pendulum clock and temperature
- Problem — Oscillation without damping
- Problem — Lead and cork pendulums
- Problem — Wet pendulum
- Problem — Non-isochronous pendulum
- Problem — Pendulum on the Space Station
- Problem — Resonance of the glass
- Problem — Rhythmic marching and bridges
- Problem — Damping and isochronism
05 Quantità di moto e urti
06 Centro di massa
- Airbag
- Shock absorbers
- What-if physics: instantaneously variable mass
- What-if physics: broken third law
- The hourglass on the scale
07 Dinamica rotazionale
- Problem — What-if physics: angular momentum not conserved
- Problem — What-if physics: invariant moment of inertia
08 Gravitazione universale
- Weightlessness on the ISS
- Black holes and the Schwarzschild radius
- r³
- What-if physics: doubled G
- The hollow Moon
- Tides — why two a day
- Planet between two equal stars — unstable equilibrium
09 Teoria cinetica dei gas
- Worked exercise — Hydrogen escape from the ionosphere
- Problem — Internal energy of helium, monatomic and diatomic
- Problem — What-if physics: doubled Boltzmann constant
- Problem — What-if physics: gas in five dimensions
- Problem — What-if physics: without molecular repulsion
- Problem — Pressure on a paper cone
10 Trasformazioni irreversibili e bilancio energetico
- What-if physics: gamma equal to 2
- What-if physics: without the first law
- The fridge in the room
- Morning fog
- Same temperature, different heat
11 Entropia
- Heat from hot to cold: proof
- What-if physics: entropy with opposite sign
- What-if physics: without the second law
- What-if physics: life and entropy
- Single-reservoir engine
- Challenge: Gibbs’s paradox
- Is ΔS equal to zero admissible?
12 Cicli e macchine termiche
- Problem — Carnot with three reservoirs
- Problem — Air conditioner and open window
- Problem — Carnot efficiency as T_f tends to zero
- Problem — An engine with efficiency greater than 1
- Problem — An engine that is too efficient
13 Forza di Coulomb ed elettrostatica
- Coulomb and Newton: two twins with an asymmetry
- Problem — What-if physics: all charges positive
- Problem — What-if physics: doubled constant k
15 Circuiti elettrici
- The circuit as a model
- The hydraulic analogy and its limits
- Problem — copper with zero resistivity
- Problem — network with tenfold voltage
- Problem — room-temperature superconductor
- Problem — boiling time of a kettle
16 Onde
- Accommodation of the eye
- Rainbow and dispersion
- What a wave carries (the leaf)
- Worked exercise — The cyclist and the acoustic mirror
- What-if physics: refractive index less than one
- What-if physics: sound ten times faster
- Image with a diverging lens
- The voice in the shower
- Longitudinal versus transverse waves
- Problem — The fish’s strange sky
- Problem — Ray diagram for an object beyond 2f (lens)
- Problem — Ray diagram for a concave mirror with p less than f
- Apparent depth of a coin
- Challenge — mi2 on a guitar string
17 Il campo magnetico
- Earth’s field ten times stronger
- Magnetic monopole
- Wire orientation for maximum and zero force
- Doubled vacuum permeability
18 Induzione elettromagnetica
19 Le equazioni di Maxwell e le onde elettromagnetiche
- Problem — What-if physics: ε0 doubles
- Problem — What-if physics: μ0 doubles
- Problem — What-if physics: without displacement current
20 Relatività ristretta
- Worked exercise — Condor versus rocket
- What-if physics, c multiplied by ten
- The low-velocity limit
- Reading the γ(v) graph
- Problem — Quantitative GPS
- Problem — Why no mass reaches c
- Problem — True or false: relativity
21 Introduzione alla meccanica quantistica
- The crisis that produced a new world
- Problem — What-if physics, h multiplied by ten
- Problem — What-if physics, reducing h and atomic volume
- Problem — What-if physics, a universe without Pauli