Questions tagged [physics]
Use this tag for questions about the physical nature of reality and in particular claims that are strictly about the field of physics. Please use specific tags if the question is about other sciences such as chemistry. Also consider to add [electromagnetism] and [radiation] if appropriate.
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Can some people beat roulette wheels using "visual ballistics"?
In the past, people beat roulette wheels using machines that measure ball speed and predict where the ball will land. That is discussed in the question Is it possible to gain an edge in roulette ...
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Did Richard Feynman say that if all of mathematics disappeared, physics would be set back by exactly one week?
The following quip is often attributed to the physicist Richard Feynman:
If all of mathematics disappeared, physics would be set back by exactly one week.
See for example Quote Master, quotefancy, ...
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Do antistatic car-straps reduce static shocks from cars?
There is a line of anti-static rubber straps sold for cars which attach to the chassis of the car and dangle down to the road. It is claimed that they allow static electricity to drain off, preventing ...
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Has a room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor been synthesized? [closed]
On July 22nd, 2023, a preprint paper, The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor was submitted to arxiv.
It has the potential to be the most groundbreaking discovery of the 21st ...
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In the event of a siren warning the public of a gas leak, is it actually advisable to listen to the radio when smelling gas?
The Finnish website pelastustoimi advises to listen to the radio in the event of smelling gas.
If you are already indoors and smell gas
put a wet cloth in front of your mouth and breathe through it
...
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Does rotating a soda can on a table prevent it from fizzing over when opened?
In this scene from Season 6 Episode 7 of Better Call Saul, the character Howard Hamlin shows that one can stop a shaken soda can from exploding when opened by first rotating it vertically while it is ...
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Did Richard Feynman say that anyone who claims to understand quantum physics is lying or crazy?
Theoretical physicist, Richard Feynman is often attributed with the quote
Anyone who claims to understand quantum theory is either lying or crazy.
Example of the claim.
Is this apocryphal, or did ...
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Can we determine for sure if the Sun revolves around the Earth?
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson was the most recent (and final) rebbe of Chabad.
In 1975 he published a series of correspondence with a scientist about whether the Sun revolves around the Earth and ...
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Was an invisible electrostatic wall generated at a plastic tape factory in August 1980?
Amasci.com reported in 1996:
David Swenson of 3M Corporation describes an anomaly where workers encountered a strange "invisible wall" in the area under a fast-moving sheet of electrically ...
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Is there any possibility that CERN's Large Hadron Collider run 3 can be devastating?
When I was a kid, there was a lot of discussion on electronic media channels that the run of CERN's Large Hadron Collider would lead to black holes. At that time, the president of India, APJ Abdul ...
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Has Newton's Third Law of motion been "debunked" and are there discrepancies in formulas of variation of mass with velocity?
An Indian "scientist" who is called Ajay Sharma, allegedly found proof that Newton's Third Law of motion isn't applicable to every situation, and therefore it's declared false, or at least ...
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Is the Glitch In the Matrix subreddit on Reddit real stories? [closed]
Here is the subreddit
reddit.com/r/glitch_in_the_matrix
Here is a fairly recent example of a story posted to that subreddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix/comments/qdainf/...
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Does Reversing Ceiling Fan Direction Improve Energy Efficiency?
There is an often cited statistic in the HVAC field that reversing the ceiling fan direction can save 10% on heating bills due to air circulation.
I would imagine that this is somewhat true due to the ...
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It is feasible to produce energy at 2ct/KWh using alpha-, beta- and gammavoltaics?
At Tuesdays COP26 session called Economics of Climate Change a company called Infinite Power proposed a carbon neutral way to provide baseload for electricity grid. Their technology claims work by a &...
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Do sparks from a cigarette lighter fix dead zones on touch screen?
There are many forums posts and videos on the "lighter trick" which fixes touch screens dead zones (at least temporarily) such as The YouTube video Nokia Lumia Touchscreen Dead Zone Fix With ...
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Did ancient Hindu texts describe the existence of photons as early as 3100 BCE?
BooksFact.com is a popular Vedic blog (17K YouTube followed, 3K FB followers). In 2014, they published an article that claims that the Bhagavata_Purana was written 5100 years and contains a ...
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Did Newton "invent" Physics to perform better spells? [closed]
I know Atomic Robo is not exactly an authority on real history, but there's also some truth and interesting details intermingled. How true is the statement "Newton invented Physics so he could ...
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Has non-TSI solar output increased over the past century in ways the IPCC climate models ignore?
Prof. Nir Shaviv, an American-Israeli astrophysicist, who argues against Anthropomorphic Global Warming, wrote (6 years ago):
As an astrophysicist, I see that the scope of solar effects considered by ...
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Does glass allow UV-A rays to pass while blocking UV-B rays?
According to ThoughtCo (and many other sites):
Glass that is transparent to visible light absorbs nearly all UVB.
This is the wavelength range that can cause a sunburn, so it's true
you can't get a ...
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Do atoms exist, or are they just fable? [duplicate]
A self-published religious tract Χξς by Wayne Ellis Pyron Jr. contains a number of extraordinary claims.
On the first page he claims to be Buddha and also the god of the Old Testament.
On the second ...
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Is ice that makes a cracking sound safer to walk on than ice that doesn't?
There is a saying in the Netherlands, "Krakend ijs breekt niet". Which translates to something like "Ice that makes cracking sounds does not break".
When looking it up online, I ...
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Does Kasardevi, India, have an enormous geomagnetic field because of the Van Allen Belt?
An online magazine says this about Kasardevi:
What makes the place what it is, is its positioning on the earth’s Van Allen Belt. Simply put, the region surrounding the Kasar Devi Temple has an ...
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How could a glass pane and a piece of cloth survive an explosion?
The Tilma of the Virgin of Guadalupe is purported to have survived an explosion from dynamite placed inside a bouquet of flowers in 1921. It is commonly purported that this is a miracle, so I was ...
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Does UV light harm books?
This Life Hacks answer recommends UV-C lamp to disinfect books from SARS-COV-2. But
UV light is one of the main destroyers of books. While UV light can kill viruses, it is not guaranteed. – ...
user16959
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Did George Biddell Airy write a paper "On Certain conditions under which a Perpetual Motion is possible"?
George Biddell Airy was an English mathematician. He was Astronomer Royal from 1835 to 1881
According to the Bessler Wheel web-site (a site dedicated to investigationg perpetual motion machines, Airy ...
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Did chemist Glenn Seaborg claim the Oklo reactor was man-made?
The Oklo mine in Gabon is thought to be the site of the only natural nuclear fission reactors.
An Instagram video posted by Instagram user matrixdisclosure claims it was actually man-made.
Nobel ...
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Have Divine Particles spontaneously appeared in an Indian Ashram?
The Spiritual Research Foundation have some reports of a phenomenon that they have investigated:
Ms. Kalyani Gangan, who was there, recollects:
“On 5th July 2012 at 7.30 pm, I entered H.H. Dr. ...
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Do 4K displays use more power, because it is hard for the backlight to shine through those super tiny pixels?
I was watching Linus reviewing the 2020 MacBook Air and he said about the competing laptops that 4K was pointless on a 13" laptop and that it just hurts the battery life, because it's harder for the ...
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Is it possible for time on Earth to randomly stop?
On the Glitch in the Matrix subreddit, there are many examples of time stopping.
Here is an example:
Something felt really weird, my parents were like frozen up (not moving completely) my dad had ...
user53407
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Can using black glue coating on an umbrella block 99.99% of UV-A and UV-B radiations?
I read on https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07XP321LY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (mirror):
Black glue umbrella is the newer version sun umbrella instead of silver glue ...
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Do photons have friction?
In the book 1998 biography, A Beautiful Mind, by Sylvia Nasar, John Nash is said to have entered Einstein's office to discuss his ideas that photons have friction.
Nash had an idea about "gravity, ...
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Can electricity be obtained from neutrino radiation, like a solar cell?
Power Technology magazine published a 2019 article *Neutrino energy: harnessing the power of cosmic radiation.
It describes a new energy technology - making solar panels, but for neutrinos instead of ...
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Does aluminum foil safeguard your credit card from RFID attacks?
Evidence against
Does Aluminum Foil Stop Identity Theft?
Some sources say that if you actually have an RFID-enabled credit card, aluminum foil does the same job, if not better, than an expensive RFID-...
user16959
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Is the water used in coal burning power plants "never returned to the environment"?
According to a Duke University press release titled Replacing Coal with Gas or Renewables Saves Billions of Gallons of Water:
Water consumption – the amount of water used by a power plant and ...
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Does wetting a beer glass change the foam characteristics?
Many bars rinse a beer glass immediately before serving. I've consulted with bartenders and Google, and there's some confusion about it. Some sites claim it reduces foaming.
Another perk is that ...
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Did the British navy fail to take into account the ballistics correction due to Coriolis force during WW1 Falkland Islands battle?
In Natural History magazine article, Neil DeGrasse Tyson claims the following:
The military normally knows all about the Coriolis force and thus introduces the appropriate correction to all missile ...
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In a lightning storm, is it safer to stand near a beech tree than near an oak tree?
According to a German folk wisdom, in a lightning storm one should avoid oaks and seek out beeches.
German Wikipedia on Volksweisheit:
„Buchen sollst Du suchen, Eichen sollst Du weichen“
Meaning
...
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Is Feynman's claim about the history of measurements of the charge of the electron after Millikan accurate?
In a 1974 speech Richard Feynman famously described an example of confirmation bias in science:
One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and ...
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Is the Infinity MG10 a working generator that consumes no fuel?
Infinity Sav are a company pushing a product, the MG10 which is available for pre-order which, they claim, can generate electricity without consuming fuel - i.e. is a free energy machine.
The ...
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Do wooden building fires get hotter than 600°C?
After the recent Notre-Dame de Paris fire, there has been a heavily re-posted tweet going around in response to an earlier claim that a golden cross did not melt or deform - due to an act of God.
...
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Can light travel at 30x the speed of light? [closed]
The claim seems to be that the researchers can make light travel faster than the speed of light.
Is this true? How does it even make sense?
It’s in Nature so presumably there’s something in it, but ...
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Has the laser at Magurele, Romania reached a tenth of the Sun's power?
This month the laser at Magurele, Romania became the most powerful laser in the world, according to various sources.
Related: Is the laser built in Măgurele, România, the most powerful in the ...
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Does cutting paper dull a knife quickly? [duplicate]
This question is a follow-up to "How to test the sharpness of a knife?", my answer to it, and the comments my answer generated. Charlie Brumbaugh wanted to know how to tell when he is done when ...
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Does Heads Up Texas Hold'em have more possible hands than atoms in the universe?
In the Vice (HBO) clip AI Poker Bots Are Beating The World's Best Players, it is claimed (at 2:00), that Texas Hold'em has "more possible hands than atoms in the universe".
..this competition ...
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Can ridges on the bottom of shakers be used to help with dispensing?
From https://twitter.com/LipBitinANNAmal/status/1078840770864529408 156,700 Retweets 376,681 Likes (probably not the original author):
How old were y’all when you found out the ridges on the bottom ...
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Do lipid droplets in our skin create a laser?
The home page of Dr Jack Kruse, who claims to be a neurosurgeon and "optimal health educator" contains the following paragraph:
There is a deep connection between thermodynamics in biology and the ...
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Does turning the lamp in my classroom off and on use more energy than it being turned on for 30 minutes?
My physics teacher regularly said to our class:
Turning these lights [pointing to the ceiling of the classroom] off and on uses more energy than
leaving them on for 30 minutes.
Is this true?
I ...
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Does General Relativity bring "Cosmic Time," which is the same for all frames-of-reference?
In a recent podcast, the philosopher William Lane Craig said that while Special Relativity taught us to doubt whether any given clock is, or whether it could be, an absolute measure of time, General ...
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Is redefining the kilogram useful for drug development and nanotechnology?
With the redefinition of kilogram currently underway, I see recent online articles claiming that a precise definition of the kilogram is critical for drug development and nanotechnology. E.g. BBC.com
...
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Does the Wowfixit screen protector harden phone screens?
The WOWFIXIT web-page offers a product where you wipe a liquid over your phone screen and polish it.
They claim the result will make your protect your phone screen from scratches:
One of the many ...
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