Physics 1010-048 Project

Salt Lake Community College

Submitted By: Amelia Jack
October 29, 2012

Star Identification
Name
Acrux

Distance from
Earth in Light
Years
321

When Its NowVisible Light

Left The Star
1691

Size Compared
to the Sun
14 X Larger

Luminosity
Compared to
the Sun
25,000 X More
Luminous

Delta Crucis
Epsilon Crucis

364
228

1648
1784

9.5 X Larger
35 X Larger

5,600 X More
330 X More

Equation Analysis
1)
E = mc2
E means Energy and is a variable.
m means Mass and is a variable.
c means the Speed of Light and is a constant .
2)

The value of c is 299,792,458 meters per second.

3)
Mass and energy are related in that when you increase the mass,
the energy also increases.
4)
It is true that if you can change mass into energy, a little bit of
mass could produce a lot of energy. According to the equation, mass is
multiplied by the speed of light squared, even a very small amount of
mass can produce a very large amount of energy because the speed of
light squared is a massive number.
5)
d = gt2 /2
d represents distance an object falls when released from rest with no
air resistance.
g represents the acceleration of gravity at the Earths surface.
t represents the time the object has been falling.
Objects fall at the same speed regardless of their weight. Nowhere in
the equation is the weight of an object represented. Therefore, it
makes no difference in the speed at which it falls.
6)
v = gt
v is the velocity of a falling object if released from rest with no air
resistance.
g is the acceleration of gravity at Earths surface.
t is the time the object has been falling.
Objects fall at the same speed if there is no air resistance and weight
doesnt matter. Just like in the previous equation, there is nothing
representing weight and it therefore has no influence on the velocity of
an object.
7)
I think the reason why it took us so long to realize that heavy
objects do not naturally and under all conditions fall faster than lighter
objects because people did not fully understand other forces that
werent as visible. Air resistance, for example is what makes it seam
2

like certain objects fall more slowly than other. However, air resistance
wasnt a fully understood or accepted concept for most of history.
8)
The physical property of mass that compensates for the
difference in applied forces is its shape and how that shape
encounters air resistance.
9)
In theory, if you lower the temperature in the environment
surrounding a heat engine, you can achieve 100 % efficiency.
Mathematically, the lower the number of TCold, the higher the efficiency
percentage will be.
10) In practice, friction is always present in all engines and 100%
efficiency is not possible. With the Second Law of Thermodynamics, we
know that even without friction, only some of the heat input can be
converted to work, not all of it.
11) In theory, raising the internal temperature could possibly give
you 100% efficiency in the machine because the higher the number of
THot, the greater the efficiency.
12) In practice, however, you could never get the temperature high
enough to create a 100% efficient engine. Again, the Second Law of
Thermodynamics tells us that invariably, some heat will be lost. Not all
of it can be used for work.
13) It is not possible to build a car that is 100% efficient using any
kind of burning fuel. This is because there will always be some heat
lost as the fuel burns. In the efficiency equation, there is always a
difference in temperatures and 100% is not achievable, no matter how
hot or how cold you make the internal and external environments.
A Law of Physics
Newtons Third Law of Motion states that whenever one object exerts a
force on a second object, the second object exerts an equal and
opposite force on the first. This means that there are two forces at
work, an action force and a reaction force. Newtons Third Law of
Motion is often stated this way: To every action, there is an equal and
opposite reaction. In any interaction, both the action force and reaction
force are present and they act equally on each other. For example, a
person swimming in water pushes on the water and the water pushes
back on the person, moving them through the water.

Often, these forces need friction to be able to act upon each other. For
example, tires on a road push on the road, and the road pushes back
on the tires. Feet walking on the ground push on the ground and the
ground pushes back. If in either situation, the ground were covered in
ice, both the tire and the feet would be unable to move because the
required friction would be missing. However, the action and reaction
forces are still present and are equally pushing against each other.
Fermis Paradox
A paradox is a statement or group of statements that leads to a
contradiction or a situation, which, if true, defies logic or reason.
Fermis Paradox refers to the absence of evidence for extraterrestrial
(alien) life in the universe. It is a paradox because there is a high
probability of the existence of alien life, but there has been no
evidence found for any. There are billions of stars like our sun in the
galaxy that are much older than our sun. Some of these suns most
likely have planets like our Earth orbiting around them that could
conceivably develop intelligent life like us. We have begun exploration
in space, and it would make sense that other alien life would do the
same. Yet, we have not encountered any alien life, or any evidence of
their civilizations.
It is possible that alien life forms are extremely far away and that is
why we havent encountered them yet. If we were to develop a means
of travel that could reach such distances, we may encounter them.
It is possible that any close alien life existed billions of years ago, and
they are no longer around to encounter.
It is also possible that the planet they lived on no longer exists; that it
was destroyed by a meteor, or by the alien life themselves.
It could also be that other intelligent life is developing, but is not at the
stage we are at and so we would not recognize it as being intelligent
yet.