questions and answers (Essay Sample)

Answers to Physics Questions Student’s Name Department Course Professor Date Answers to Physics Questions Pseudoscience Example Pseudoscience refers to theories, beliefs, or statements that ascertain to be scientifically true but lack scientific truth. Normally, they are characterized by disagreeing, unfeasible claims that depend on biased confirmations. Usually, it lacks openness to judgment by other experts as well as systematic practices in hypotheses development (Hansson, 2013). Pseudoscience can sometimes be dangerous such as in medical treatment where one may forget important medical treatment leading to serious illness or death and for the contagious disease, it may put the lives of others in danger of being infected too. In racial and ethnic groups, it has led to racism and genocide. Let us look at autodynamics as a pseudoscience. In the 1940s, a scientist called Ricardo Corazon came up with a theory, which he named autodynamics with the intention that it replaces the already existing Einstein’s theory of special relativity (SR) and general relativity (GR) (Carezani, 1999). For some reasons discussed below, it never gained any status as a possible alternative model within the physics community making it become a pseudoscience. It ascertained that the equations of Lorentz transformation are incorrectly developed to describe relativistic effects, which in return, would invalidate special relativity, general relativity, and Maxwell’s equations (Carezani, 1999). Its amended equation that was proposed was to result in the decrease in mass of a particle because of changing the velocity of the particle with kinetic energy (mass taken to be zero while kinetic energy to be equal to the rest mass at ‘c’). Most of the conclusions on autodynamics are based on the exchange between mass and energy of the particle. It claims that the neutrino does not exist, there exist some additional particles which are not yet discovered by any scientist, and that there is the occurrence of more decay modes for the muons and interaction modes for the energetic atomic nuclei. Later, an experiment carried out by Noyes to compare the predictions of SR and AD confirmed that values calculated by SR were nearing the observed values but Corazon argued about the irrelevance of applying the experiment to compare the two theories as AD make use of decay cases only while Noyel’s electrons gained energy from the external medium. There has been no attempt to make an argument or discuss experimental data that feature their basic claims. It is also clear that special relativity in pure form is mathematically conformable. Literature supporting autodynamics has errors including the Lorentz contradiction as it is used incorrectly between a stationary observer and a moving object. Reference frames can also be measured, a contradiction to the autodynamics claim. All these above claims make it clear that autodynamics is not in agreement with the common experience a confirmation that autodynamics is simply pseudoscience. Measurement Measurement is the way of assigning values to quantities. In the past, there was no specific way to compare quantities. This was associated with several difficulties thus; scientists came up with a standard uniform way of measurement, which they called the international system of units. The seven basic quantities were all assigned a standard unit as below. Length (metre), time (second), amount of substance (mole), electric current (ampere), temperature (kelvin), luminous intensity (candela) and mass (kilogram). The two components of a measurement statement are magnitude and unit. Magnitude is the numerical value assigned to an object. It is the significant digits or number, which can be either positive or negative depending on its relationship with two or more independent variables or entities. It is used to show the amount or quantity of a substance that is present. Examples are numbers 1 to 10. Units are the values of variables. They are normally defined and adapted by law than used as the standard for measurement of similar items. Examples are the meters, seconds, kilograms among others Speed and Velocity Speed is the magnitude of the rate of distance covered by a moving object with time. From this definition, one can derive its formula as distance covered divided by the time taken to cover this distance. Velocity is defined as the rate of change of displacement of a body. It is calculated as the change in displacement divided by the time taken. The similarity between Speed and velocity is that both two are used to represent ways of measuring the change in position of an object relative to its speed. Their SI unit is the same that is meter per second from the SI unit of distance/displacement, which is meter, and SI unit for time, which is seconds. For a straight-line motion, the speed and velocity are found to be equal. The difference between speed and velocity is that speed is defined from a distance while velocity is from displacement with time. Speed is a scalar quantity implying that it only represents size while velocity is a vector quantity, therefore, representing both the size and direction. Work and Power The amount of energy that is required to displace an object from one point to another through the application of force is known as work. To calculate the work done, we find the produ...