No matter how complex and great technology might get, it’s good to know that it will always revolve around physics.
I spent some time to make a list of many inventions and some of the key areas of physics applied in making them a reality. Lets go;
1. SATELLITES
Source: www.spacetoday.org, 2013
a) Escape Velocity: to calculate the velocity needed to shoot a satellite out of space and into the right orbit safely.
b) Relativity: this should be a worthwhile fact to know that the time in a satellite moves at a different speed from the ones we use here on earth. Hence, a good knowledge of relativity is applied here to make the timing accurate.
c) Photoelectric Cells and Accumulators: the satellite gets to stay in orbit for like decades; so energy is an important demand to it like every other machines built by man. Hence, wide photoelectric panels are installed to it to trap energy from sunlight and save it in accumulators.
d) Electromagnetic Waves: signals from the satellite, are sent to receiving terminals on earth and vice-versa by the use of Electromagnetic waves. Of course, its obvious to know that wires can do this job now.
2. AEROPLANE, JETS AND ROCKETS
a) Combustion and Thrust: the energy needed to power jets, airplanes and rockets currently all comes from safe and organized combustion. The pressure from the combustion of fuel is also applied properly to provide accurate and calculated thrust to elevate the body. Thrust on the other hand is in compliance with newton's third law of motion.
b) Pressure: the safety of the passengers in a plane or an aircraft is dependent on the accurate calculation and application of pressure, especially in the cabin. If the cabin pressure is not kept at a safe level, the airplane can shrink/burst like a water-can and the passengers can suffer breathing problems and its likes.
c) Streamlining: this is a cool way of reducing pressure when a body is moving through fluids. The design of spacecrafts cannot be completed without applying it.
d) Electromagnetic Waves: air 'vehicles' send information to their ground base and other aircrafts through the application of radio waves or by means of other types of electromagnetic waves. Radars and Radar guns are also used to track them.
3. MOBILE PHONE, TABLETS AND COMPUTERS
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A Computer Motherboard
(Source: content.hwigroup.net, 2013) |
a) Electricity and Insulators: Electricity is the main ingredient in making of electronic devices. The small stuffs you see on the integrated electric panel are used to manipulate electric currents in terms of resistance, capacitance, and path and duration of flow. The Processor and RAM of your today phones and combustion are made from semiconductors like silicon, and conductors as well.
b) Radio Waves: Mobile phones and computers send and receives radio waves for communication. Other components like the BLUETOOTH, WiFi, NFC, etc are receivers and transmitters of waves.
c) Electromagnetism: Some components you see installed in modern devices like Tilt Sensors, Gyroscopes, etc are made from electromagnetic sensors: they can detect change in magnetic flux.
d) Quantum Theory and properties:The next generation of computers are the quantum computers (check out the Google, D-WAVE quantum Computer) - they apply quantum properties like quantum entanglement, multi-verse and more to store and process information and data respectively.
4. CAMERAS
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| A Carl Zeiss Lens and A Sony Camera |
a) Light: a good knowledge light and its properties is needed in the making of cameras, especially, the well established fact that it travels in a straight line.
b) Lenses: Lenses are used to interfere with light rays and manipulate the nature of the formed image. they are applied in camera lenses to zoom and focus.
c) Photoreceptors: Autofocus programming and Sensors uses light sensors to work.
5. CARS
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A Lamborghini Aventador Tron Version
(Source: hdwallpapersarena.com) |
a) Laws of Motion: the well established laws of motion are very much applied in the making of cars, especially the third law. The forces the tyres exert on the road is effected back on the car, causing it to move.
b) Friction: The Tires and braking systems of cars uses friction and its laws to work. A car tyre is designed to possess more friction in order to effectively and efficiently convert rotational motion to translational motion. And to bring the car to a halt, the brake pads exerts friction on the wheels.
c) Combustion and Pressure: The motion of the cars starts from moving pistons in the engine. The motion of the pistons is gotten from explosion pressure of fuels in the engine. Also Carburetors and Injectors works by the use of vacuum pressure and pressure increase.
d) Heat Transfer: The Radiator(s) in a car works on the principle of heat transfer by conduction, convection and radiation. Without this, the engine can melt down.
e) Aerodynamics: this is a key factor in modern car designs. The shape of the car must be in such a way the it moves freely through with less drag.
6. CRANES AND ELEVATORS
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A Hydraulic Crane
(Source: image.made-in-china.com, 2013) |
a) Hydraulics and Pressure: the pascal pressure principle is fully used in the making of hydraulic engines and machines in order to lift heavy loads with relatively less input energy.
b) Tension: also, those calculations you do one stuffs like "...find the tension on the road" ain't for nothing; they play a great role in the making of cranes and its specs sheet.
c) Strength of Materials: the ability of the materials used in building cranes and elevators to withstand pressure is so important to the makers and users. Physics is applied here to ensure that safety is ensured.
d) Torque and moment: furthermore, to make worker easier, torque is utilized. Since more distance of the effort makes it easier to lift the load, hydraulic elevators and wrenches usually have long shafts- thanks to physics calculations.
7. AIR CONDITIONERS AND REFRIGERATORS
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| A Samsung® Air-Conditioner |
a) Heat Transfer: cooling is simply the removal of heat from a body. A good knowledge of heat transfer and cooling by quick evaporation is used in the making of cooling systems.
b) Carnot Cycle/Laws of Thermodynamics: thermodynamics is a branch of physics that deals on heat and work and its set laws plays a great role in the design of cooling systems. It makes it clear that for heat to be taken from a colder region to hotter one, work must be added to the system.
c) Compression and Electricity: The way work is added to a cooling cycle to obey the laws of thermodynamics can vary depending on the type of refrigerator in question but the most common type is the vapour-compression cooling systems that uses electro-mechanical compressors. Anyway, the main idea is finding a way to make fluids flow through tubes and physics has the answer.
8. MICROPHONES AND SPEAKERS
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| Wireless Microphones and Speakers |
a) Sound Waves: yeah, Sound waves are obviously the chief here. The microphone works by taking in mechanical sound waves, converting them to varying electric currents and reproducing these currents as sound again by the help of the speakers. Read more here.
b) Electricity: is very much needed here to transmit the sound and to work on them on devices like the amplifier.
c) Electromagnetic Waves: has made things better, wireless speakers and microphone can be made by transmitting the sound in the form of EM waves. Stuffs like your bluetooth earpiece, wireless home theatre, etc are the works of physics.
9. TELEVISIONS AND OTHER DISPLAY SYSTEMS
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| An LG® Plasma TV |
a) Cathode Rays: Cathode rays and CR tubes started the evolution of televisions. Although this is fading out in modern televisions due the energy they drain, i think it should be good to mention them.
b) Electromagnetism: The manipulation of images on the screen of a television can
c) Plasma and States of matter: Modern Television technology uses plasmas and the ability of materials to control the movement of light through to form images. Plasma TVs uses the fifth state of matter to produce images (Read about the 5 states of matter)
d) Lights and Lenses: To get the image to your eyes, light is needed greatly. Light makes it able for the user to dim or brighten images displayed.
10. TOUCHSCREEN TECHNOLOGY
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| The Super-Slim Apple® Ipad Air with a Capacitive Touchscreen |
a) Electricity: all touchscreen has sensors that are made from integrated circuits. The whole idea is to sense the difference in a quantity like electric current or wave property due to touch.
b) Capacitors: Capacitive touchscreens are currently the touchscreen technology invoke. They work by developing charges on the screen and sensing the amount of charges conducted away by your touch. They are very sensitive since they do not need to be depressed and responds to few materials like your finger.
c) Sound Waves: is used in Acoustic types of touchscreens. This form of touchscreen technology measures changes in sound waves generated along the screen layers. Also any material can be used on them but they ain't as sensitive as capacitive touchscreens.
c) Resistors: are used in the making of resistive touchscreens that tracks touches by change in electrical resistance with length. They are the cheap and can be operated with anything that can course depression.
11. LASERS
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| A LASER Gun and Beam |
a) Quantum Physics: lasers are the products of good knowledge in quantum physics and the fact that electrons emit radiant energy when they drop to a lower energy level.
b) Reflection: lights from lasers are amplified by continues reflection before they are allowed to leave the chamber they are produced.
c) Electricity: agitation of gas atoms in a laser is achieved by the use of electrical heating.
12. LIGHT BULBS
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| An Incandescent Bulb and A Fluorescent Lamp |
a) Electrical Heating and Resistance: resistance, like friction, generates heat and this heat can get so intense that it can make a material (eg. tungsten) glow.
b) Cathode Rays: are useful in the making of low energy bulbs. The fact that electron beams can cause certain surfaces to glow is harnessed in the invention and making of low energy bulbs, example, fluorescence lights.
14. BUILDINGS
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| The Burj Al Arab |
a) Tension/Stress and Strain: From the foundation to the beams and bars of every building, the main focus is to manage forces acting on each member and it can be achieved without physics.
b) Properties of Materials: the mechanical properties of materials are generated from those simple physics experiments you do like moment, load-extension, etc.
c) Stability: no one wants a building that would collapse, so stability is a key concentration in making building, especially tall ones and when they know that the building would be exposed to harsh weather conditions.
d) Streamlining: houses might not be moving through fluids, but fluids moves over it in form of wind. Hence, the knowledge of streamlining is inputted in design the structure of the building, to avoid it been pulled down by winds. In the building of the Burj Al Arab, care was taken to design it to allow wind blow over it smoothly.
15. CLOCKS AND WRISTWATCHES
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| A Rolex® Watch |
a) Expansivity: The length of the balance wheel of mechanical watches has to be maintained at different temperatures, and this is done by the use of compensation curbs which are usually bimetallic strips. This arrived from the topic, expansivity you do as a beginner in physics.
b) Motion Transfer: watches has different link mechanisms which transfer motion. The speed and torque transferred from one to another is moderated with physics calculation during the making of the watch engine.
c) Electricity: modern watches nowadays, uses integrated electronic circuits, display and processors to work. All from physics.
16. MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
a) Sound Waves: of course this is very obvious but lemme throw in more light: Musical instruments just do the work of producing sounds waves with different frequencies and overtones called notes. A continuous producing of notes in an organised manner is music or beat.
b) Interference of waves: When you combine different sound producing instruments, they interfere to form just one wave pattern which gets more complex with the number of instruments involved.
17. SHIPS AND SUBMARINES
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| A Cruise Ship and A Submarine |
a) Properties of materials: ships, especially submarines must be built with materials with special properties that balances between weight and hardness to avoid cracks. They must be tested and the experiments used for this tests, are no far from what you do in school.
b) Pressure: A submarine for example can shrink due to excessive pressure from the deep sea if care is not taken. Hence, the makers ensure that the pressure inside is safe for the humans and good enough to provide balance to the one outside the ship. The depth of a submarine is controlled by pressure too.
c) Thrust: newton's laws of motion comes into play again here - the thrusters of the ship or submarine are design to push against water; the reaction is then motion.
d) Archimedes Principle: definitely the king in this field is this principle that a body must displace its own weight of a body in which it floats. All ships and water vehicles, must stick to this law.
The list can keep going on till next year...
Come on guys, any physicist in the house? You can add to the list or contribute to the ones here already.
Physics is everywhere.
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