Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and problems for Physics

Native American Literature

The Notion of the Indian

Indian / Native American - Stereotypes - Homogenizing / great diversity (over 500 tribes) - Othering - A non-presence, a void to be occupied.

The American Indian Movement

«Red Power» Influenced by the black civil rights movement - Pan-Indian identity - Occupation of Alcatraz Island (1969) «Trail of Broken Treaties» - march on Washington, 1972 - Native American Demands the 20-point proposal

Native American Literature

Originally oral cultures: myths and rituals, songs, poems, narrative tales, legends, parables. Oral works translated into English by ethnologists. First novels: John Rollin Ridge’s The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta (1857); Wynema, by Sophia Alice Callahan (1891).

Literary

What is Force?

Force is a push or pull that can deform an object or change its state of rest or motion.

Types of Forces

• Contact
• Non-contact
• Instantaneous
• Constant

Formula of Force

F = m • a

Difference Between Force and Weight

Weight is a force. Everything on Earth is pulled down towards the ground by gravity. The weight of an object is how hard gravity pulls down on it.

Larger objects get pulled more strongly, so they weigh more than smaller objects. When scientists want to talk about how much stuff is inside something, they talk about mass.

Causes of Force

Forces arise when two or more bodies come into contact. For example, when there is a crash or when you push a door.

Bodies, even if they are not in contact, exert a force on others. For example, the... Continue reading "Understanding Force, Motion, and Newton's Laws" »

Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion

Johannes Kepler deduced three fundamental laws of planetary motion:

• First Law: Elliptical Orbits – Planets orbit the Sun in ellipses, with the Sun at one focus.
• Second Law: Equal Areas in Equal Times – A line segment joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time. This implies a planet's speed varies as it moves around its elliptical orbit, moving faster when closer to the Sun.
• Third Law: Harmonic Law – The square of a planet's orbital period is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit (P² ∝ a³). This law relates the orbital period of a planet to the size of its orbit.

Galileo Galilei: Key Astronomical Discoveries

Galileo's significant contributions... Continue reading "Foundations of Celestial Mechanics: Key Discoveries" »

The Gothic Novel

Origins and Conventions

Gothic literature, a movement that focused on ruin, decay, death, terror, and chaos, and privileged irrationality and passion over rationality and reason, grew in response to the historical, sociological, psychological, and political contexts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Although Horace Walpole is credited with producing the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, in 1764, his work was built on a foundation of several elements. Walpole’s novel was wildly popular, and his novel introduced most of the stock conventions of the genre:

• An intricate plot
• Stock characters
• Subterranean labyrinths
• Ruined castles
• Supernatural occurrences

While it may be comparatively easy to date the beginning... Continue reading "The Gothic Novel: Exploring the Dark Side of Human Nature" »

Earth, Moon, and Space: Key Concepts

1. Day and night are caused by:

   d. Earth's rotation on its axis.

2. Earth's rotation takes about:

   c. 24 hours.

3. One complete revolution of Earth around the sun takes about:

   c. one year.

4. Earth has seasons because:

   c. Earth's axis is tilted as it moves around the sun.

5. When the north end of Earth's axis is tilted toward the sun, North America will experience:

   d. more direct rays and longer days.

6. In the Southern Hemisphere, the summer solstice occurs when the sun is directly overhead at:

   b. 23.5° south latitude.

7. An equinox occurs when:

   a. neither end of Earth's axis is tilted toward nor away from the sun.

8. Because the moon rotates once for each revolution around Earth,

   c. you never see the far side of the moon.

9. The phase of the moon

Transformation: na transformació is called a vector x a vector x 'in a way that the correspondence is one to one.
Vector: Vectors are oriented segments with direcció n respect n mod aplicació point or size or module, which can apply various operations.
Consistency: The congruences are transformations that do not change the dimensions of a figure in the background. Such transformations are called isometries movements or in the plane
Translation:He said that figure was applied translational motion if all points of the same description line segments parallel, equal and the same direction. It is called translational plane (or space) to any transformation which makes each point P corresponderun point P 'such that the vector PP' has a LENGTH... Continue reading "Geometric Transformations: Definitions, Isometries, and the Golden Ratio" »

Extrasolar Planets

An extrasolar planet is a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun. There are two general ways of learning about a distant object: directly, which means by obtaining images or spectra of the object, and indirectly, which means by inferring the object’s existence or properties without actually seeing it. There are two major indirect approaches to finding and studying extrasolar planets:

1. Observing the motion of a star to detect the subtle gravitational tugs
2. Observing changes to a star’s brightness that occur when one of its planets passes in front of the star as viewed from Earth.

Planets exert gravitational tugs on their star, causing the star to orbit around the system center of mass. Gravitational tugs: we can detect a... Continue reading "Discovering Extrasolar Planets: Methods and Significance" »

What is Cosmology?

Cosmology Defined

Cosmology is the study of the origin, present structure, evolution, and density of the universe.

The Cosmological Principle

The cosmological principle is the basic assumption that physical laws are true everywhere in the universe, not just on Earth.

The Expanding Universe

Galactic Recession

We observe galaxy clusters receding from us, which implies that the universe is expanding. Galaxies farthest from us are moving away the fastest; the farther the distance, the faster the speed.

Hubble's Law

Hubble's Law states that a galaxy’s velocity of recession (v) is directly proportional to its distance from us (d). The formula is v = Hd.

The Hubble Constant

The Hubble constant (H) is a crucial value that gives the rate at... Continue reading "Cosmology Fundamentals: The Big Bang, Hubble's Law, and the Universe's Fate" »

The Proton-Proton Chain: Powering Low-Mass Stars

The proton-proton chain is the series of nuclear reactions by which low-mass stars, including our Sun, fuse hydrogen into helium. This process is crucial for stellar energy generation.

Gravitational equilibrium and energy balance work together as a natural thermostat, maintaining the Sun’s core temperature and fusion rate at a steady level.

Unraveling the Sun's Energy Source

Early scientific theories proposed that the Sun's energy came from chemical reactions or gravitational collapse. However, these theories were disproven:

• Chemical burning: Ruled out because it cannot account for the Sun’s immense luminosity.
• Gravitational collapse: The conversion of gravitational potential energy into heat as