Questions tagged [everyday-life]
Concerns the application of the laws of physics to analyze common situations encountered in everyday life.
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Why does dry spaghetti break into three pieces as opposed to only two?
You can try it with your own uncooked spaghetti if you want; it almost always breaks into three when you snap it. I am asking for a good physical theory on why this is along with evidence to back it ...
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Where does deleted information go?
I've heard that, in classical and quantum mechanics, the law of conservation of information holds.
I always wonder where my deleted files and folders have gone on my computer. It must be somewhere I ...
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If temperature is amount of kinetic energy of particles, then how can there be a cold breeze? [duplicate]
When we put hands on A/C it gives cold winds. These winds have high kinetic energy but low temperature. How ? *don't confuse with A/C being heat pump , just an example, take antarctic blizzards. I can'...
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Why won't a tight cable ever be fully straight? [duplicate]
I posted this picture of someone on a zipline on Facebook.
One of my friends saw it and asked this question, so he could try to calculate the speed at which someone on the zipline would be going when ...
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Why is paper more frangible when it is wet?
My four-year-old daughter asked me why paper tends to fall apart when wet, and I wasn't sure. I speculated that the water lubricates the paper fibers so that they can untangle and separate more ...
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Are these sunglass lenses linearly polarized or what?
This is a difficult question to phrase, so please bear with me. I found some cheap sunglasses and pulled out the plastic lenses which are polarized. For clarity, I have labeled them as lens-1 and -2 ...
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Why does a ball bounce lower?
If a ball hits the floor after an acceleration then why does it bounces lower? I mean the Energy is passed to the floor then why does the floor give back less Energy?
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Why do objects appear smaller when farther away?
Why does the apparent size of an object change when it is farther away from me compared to when it is closer to me?
Can someone perhaps explain this through an optics perspective?
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Do we have theories about why gravity exists/how it works?
For years I have been very fascinated by the "mystery" aspect of gravity. Functionally, we understand it for our applications, but in my (limited to my 3 quarters of undergrad general physics) ...
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What pressure or tension occurs in a glass jar when I pour boiling water inside?
Sometimes it happens that when you pour a boiling water into a glass jar, it cracks. Since glass is very hard material and resilient to pressure, the tension must be very high. Is it possible to ...
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Why does deodorant always feel cold?
We all use deodorant and they always feel cold, why is that?
Is it because it is liquid inside the bottle and a gas when it is released?
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Increase in cloth's mass
When we iron our clothes does the mass of the cloth increase, since energy transformation and transfer happens, Einstein's energy mass relation comes to action and causes increase in mass.
Am I right ...
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Why does a mirror split my laser beam?
Last night my daughter was asking why a mirror "always does that" (referring to reflecting a spot of light). To help her figure it out, I grabbed my green laser pointer so she could see the light ...
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Why do beams of light (from torches or other directed sources) not extend to infinity?
When I'm in a dark environment, and I turn on a torch, I can see the beam of light from the torch. To the best of my understanding, the main reason why I can see the beam of light is that the light ...
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Why does the moon sometimes appear giant and a orange red color near the horizon?
I've read various ideas about why the moon looks larger on the horizon. The most reasonable one in my opinion is that it is due to how our brain calculates (perceives) distance, with objects high ...
logicbird