Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation — as well as a number of other relations in such diverse fields as electric, magnetic, light, sound and radiation propagation — conforms to the inverse square law. This law states that intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source. Newton’s law provides that any […]
Gauss and his demagnetization circuit
Carl Friedrich Gauss was a brilliant mathematician whose insights and writings laid the groundwork for much of what is known today concerning number theory, algebra, differential geometry, orbital mechanics, matrix theory and numerous other topics. Electronics students are familiar with the gauss as the cgs unit of magnetic flux density. It is defined as one […]
Gravitational waves and their measurement
According to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, gravity as a phenomenon is strikingly different from electromagnetic radiation. Gravity can be completely described as a distortion of time/space in the region of a body that has mass. The greater the mass, the more distortion. Gravity is a comparatively weak force, far more feeble than magnetic or […]
Calculating pi
Pi (the Greek character is π) is the symbol we use to designate the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Ancient people, among whom there were many master builders and surveyors, seemed quite interested, and they expended considerable mental energy in attempting to calculate its value. They endeavored also to “square the circle” […]
Schrödinger’s equation and the half-dead cat
Erwin Schrödinger was born around the time of the Michelson-Morley Experiment, but he was pre-eminently a twentieth-century theoretician. He lived until 1961, witnessing during his life gigantic upheavals in science, culture and world politics. He is well-known today for his quirky yet profoundly provocative Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment. It depicts the paradox of a cat […]
Basics of lasers
Optical lasers all operate according to the same fundamental principles despite the fact that there is considerable variation in the details, particularly in regard to scaling. Small, hand-held laser pointers may be energized by single AAA dry cells while the largest lasers are huge machines powered by nuclear reactors. All lasers consist of resonant cavities. […]
What does antimatter matter?
There are two types of quantum mechanical particles, fermions and bosons. Bosons comprise what is commonly called energy, and fermions are matter. Einstein theorized, and it was later verified by observation, that matter translates into energy in accordance with the formula E = MC2 where C is a constant equal to the nominal speed of […]
Cold fusion and the conversion of mass to energy
Albert Einstein’s famous equation, E = MC2, was contained in his 1905 Special Theory of Relativity, presented in a paper succinctly titled On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. The motivation was to reconcile certain inconsistencies between Isaac Newton’s classical view and James Clerk Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism. A further aspiration was to account for the […]
Numbers for engineering: Complex numbers,
rational numbers, and primes
Engineering involves a lot of math. And engineers sometimes get so involved in manipulating numbers that they forget some of the principles underlying the numerical manipulations they take for granted. So here’s a quick review of some fundamentals behind several classes of engineering equations. First consider complex and imaginary numbers. The square root of a […]
Basics of linear, switching, bench
and external power supplies
Modern power supplies are generally divided into two types, linear supplies and switching supplies. Linear supplies may contain a transformer that outputs the required voltage(s) and a rectifier such as a full-wave diode network to produce the desired dc. Additional circuitry provides whatever filtering and/or regulation that is appropriate. A simple, minimal power supply is […]