Tag: Scientific Illustration
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Geometry of the Motion of a Free Prolate Gyroscope (and the Power of Magnets)
How should I spin the story of the gyroscope this time? Imagine, you have a wonderfully crafted elongated ellipsoid from wood (shaped like a rugby ball). You built some apparatus that make it spin fast about its major axis. Probably you can make it spin with your bare hands – or you ask a tentacled…
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Osculating Circles Revisited
Every squiggly line could be an image of the meandering trajectory of a particle. At each instant, the path has a direction and a curvature. Curvature can be represented by the circle that fits the curve best – the osculating circle. In a two-dimensional world, the osculating circles would lie flat in the same plane…
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Aharonov-Bohm Effect
It is often called the simplest example of topology impacting physics (Topology like “the shape of space”, like coffee mugs being donuts!). Charged particles move under the the influence of electric and magnetic fields. The concept of fields was once introduced to replace action at a distance: If one charge tugs on another, it does…
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Mass Shell
Space and time are rotated into each other. Momentum and energy are as well. This rotation in four dimensions is of an unusual, hyperbolic kind. Which is the source of all so-called paradoxa in special relativity. Best to avoid thinking of clocks, rulers, trains, and observers. Just stick to the geometry. When a classical particle…
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Dreaming of a Magnetic Field
Do you feel the magnetic field? Do you dream of of it? I sure do! … having completed this project: These are the flow lines of the magnetic generated by a circular current loop. They look almost like ellipses, embracing an (almost) torus. Each field line encircles the tiny current loop in the center. The…
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Circles to Circles (2025)
Allow for a repost of sorts! I am looking back, revisting my just completed series Circles to Circles! Here are just the images and the links to all the blog posts with more physics, mathematics, and (sometimes) poetry! Six differently positioned circles, six different points of view. An attempt at showing the beauty of math…