The Edison Institute predicts that there will be at least 19 × 10[superscript 6] all-electric vehicles (EVs) in use by 2030. This will produce significant effects on our transportation system and its energy requirements. Investigating these effects is an ideal activity to show the relevance of physics. How efficient are EVs in using energy? What…

With the rapid spread of high-speed railway technology, there is a resurgence of interest in trains and railways. The main propulsive engine for railways was the steam engine for over a century, which gave way to the diesel and electrical engines. The steam engine was crucial to the birth and development of the railway industry, and understanding…

The Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville, are often depicted as lone geniuses, secretly assembling the first successful powered aircraft far from civilization at Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. There is a germ of truth in the popular story, but only a germ. The brothers succeeded while so many other experimenters failed not because…

When we travel in a train moving at a certain velocity, we observe the stationary objects outside are moving backwards. These stationary objects seem to move due to a relative velocity. Consider that the stationary object outside the train is a man standing on the stationary floor watching a woman moving on a train. The woman on a train will see…

During every moment of our lives, we are surrounded by radiation from natural and manmade sources. Our bodies contain radionuclides from which we receive radiation. Radionuclides are found in the foods we eat and in the ground we walk on. We receive cosmic radiation from space. Radionuclides are also found in the airborne particles we breathe. The…

This May marks the 80th anniversary of the "Hindenburg" disaster. On May 6, 1937, the German passenger zeppelin "Hindenburg," hovering 300 feet in the air and held aloft by seven million cubic feet of hydrogen gas, burst into flames while preparing to dock at the Naval Air Station in Lakehurst, NJ (Fig. 1). Amazingly, the…

Most two-wheel motorcycle riders know that, at highway speeds, if you want to turn left you push on the "left" handlebar and pull on the "right" handlebar. This is called "countersteering." Countersteering is counterintuitive since pushing left and pulling right when the front wheel is not spinning would turn the…

Students have been taught that atmospheric temperature drops linearly with altitude, up to approximately 15 km. However, even after completing an undergraduate degree program, most students have only memorized such information and have never had the experience of measuring it. Students often assume that experimental tasks must involve the use of…

While it has been demonstrated how air resistance could be analyzed by using mobile devices, this paper demonstrates a method of how to determine the drag resistance coefficient "c" of a commercial automobile by using the acceleration sensor of a smartphone or tablet. In an academic context, the drag resistance is often mentioned, but…

I report an innovation that provides a compelling demonstration of rocket propulsion, appropriate for students of physics and other physical sciences. An electrical spark is initiated from a distance to cause the deflagration of a combustible vapor mixed with air in a lightweight plastic bottle that is consequently propelled as a rocket by the…

"How does an aircraft fly?" is one of the most frequently asked science questions by young pupils. The lift on airplane wings also makes a great example of the application of the Bernoulli principle while teaching fluid mechanics in introductory physics and engineering courses. The topic is of great interest and is therefore covered in…

Given that transportation is an essential topic in any Physics and Society or Energy course, it is necessary to have useful statistics on transportation in order to have a reasoned discussion on this topic. And a major component of the transportation picture is the automobile. This paper presents updated transportation statistics for American…

November 10, 2015, marked the 40th anniversary of the sinking of the "S. S. Edmund Fitzgerald," a Great Lakes bulk cargo freighter that suddenly and mysteriously sank during a severe winter storm on Lake Superior. A year after the sinking, Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot wrote and recorded the ballad "The Wreck of the 'Edmund…

A television advertisement and a website present an interesting question: can rail company CSX "really" move a ton of freight 468 miles on a gallon of fuel, or is the claim preposterous? Let us examine the claim, first by understanding what is meant, looking at their data, and then converting units to examine the claim quantitatively.

Those who come to Cambridge soon learn that the fastest route between Harvard and MIT is by the subway. For many students, this short ride is a quick and easy way to link physics and calculus. A simple, homemade accelerometer provides all the instrumentation necessary to produce accurate graphs of acceleration, velocity, and displacement position…