The World's Highest Skydive - Red Bull Stratos

The Red Bull Stratos mission is a team of Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian base jumper, along with over 100 support staff. The aim of this mission was jump from the edge of the world from a helium balloon and capsule, over 24 miles above the earth’s surface. This mission aimed to break the following world records:

1) The first human to break the sound barrier without the assistance of a vehicle
2) The highest skydive
3) The highest manned balloon flight
4) The longest time in freefall

On October 14^th 2012, 3 of these 4 world records were broken when the Red Bull Stratos mission finally launched.  The original date was planned for October 9^th, but this was called off due to weather conditions; however when the weather conditions finally became favourable for launch on October 14th, Felix Baumgartner began his accent up to a record breaking 24 miles, or 120,000ft above the earth’s surface. After pressurizing his suit and stepping out onto the ledge of the pod, Felix Baumgartner gave a quick salute, and then jumped.

At first the free fall seemed to be going smoothly, however soon he began spinning uncontrollably – something that could lead to death if continued due to the blood rushing to his head. However Felix’s extensive training came into play and he quickly managed to regain stability and stop the spin.

Next came another problem - the visor on the suit that Felix was wearing began to fog up. This meant that he had almost no vision, and subsequently no idea what speed he was falling at, or what his altitude was because he could not see his watch where this information was available. He had the obvious problem that he did not want to pull his parachute before he had broken the speed of sound, or before he had broken the time for the longest time in free fall; however he did not want to pull his chute too late either.

Felix Baumgartner finally deployed his parachute after a time of 4 min 19 sec in free fall and landed in the New Mexico Desert, this time falls just shy of the record of 4min 36sec. Even though this was not achieved, Felix did gain the accolade of becoming the first man to go supersonic in free fall, and did so by 100 mph over the speed of sound - a giant step in further aeronautical design as experts were previously unsure of what would happen to the human body at this speed. He also broke the ‘Highest manned balloon flight’ as well as ‘the highest skydive’.

This incredible achievement was watched by over 7 million people worldwide, and the video of the events have been watched back on YouTube by countless million more, demonstrating the public’s avid fascination of such a dangerous, yet important space stunt.

“When you’re standing there, on top of the world, you become so humble. You do not think about breaking records anymore or collecting scientific data, the only thing you want is to come back alive to your girlfriend and family”. Felix Baumgartner, 2012.

Module 2: Features of a Pendulum (SHM)

These are some more revision sheets that I have made. These ones are on the features of a pendulum which comes under Simple Harmonic Motion in Module 2 of the OCR Physics A G484 course. including all the relevant equations and relationships. Hope this helps, let me know if you don't understand any of it.

Module 2: Simple Harmonic Motion

Some more revision sheets for you all, this time on Simple Harmonic Motion, which comes up in Module 2 of the OCR Physics A G484 course.

Module 2: Satellites (Gravitational Fields)

Another revision sheet but this one is on Satellites which comes under Gravitational Fields in Module 2 of the OCR Physics A G484 course. This revision card describes the features of geostationary and low - level satellites and we as giving equations derived from Kepler's 3rd Law.

Module 2: Gravitational Fields

These are a set of revision card for the topic of Gravitational Fields which comes up in Module 2 of the OCR Physics A G484 course. This explores various sections including Newton's Law of Gravitation, gravitational field strength and Kepler's 3rd Law. The last image is an extension for the 2nd image (I'm sure you can match the title's up).

Hope these help!

Module 2: Circular Motion

This is a revision sheet I made for Circular Motion which is in Module 2 of the Physics A G484 course. I hope this helps people with their revision, let me know if you have any questions about it.

Module 1: Newton's Laws and Collisions

This is a revision sheet for Newton's Laws of Motion and Collisions. It explains what elastic and inelastic collisions are, as well as describing momentum and impulse. This topic appears in Module 1 of the OCR Physics A G484 course.

What Causes Our Weather Here in the UK?

Every day we experience the weather and the effects that come with it, whether it’s the grey clouds and drizzle we so often see, or the rare occurrence of hot sun with clear blue skies. But as you become drenched in the April showers, or get thrown about in gale force winds; just take a moment to think; what is actually causing these natural phenomena’s to take place?

What Causes Our Rainfall?

Rainfall is one of the most common weather types in England, and one that I’m sure has ruined many hours of carefully perfected hair-dos, but why do we seem to get rain so much more than any other country? Well, it’s all to do with things called jet streams which criss-cross the earth at around 20,000ft above its surface and are basically narrow bands of very strong westerly winds. The UK is at just the right latitude that the polar jet stream passes right over it, and because of this, areas of low and high air pressure are formed, which in turn create similar patterns in sea pressure.

These changes in sea pressure affect the movement of winds and cause a common weather feature called depressions to form. Depressions are regions of low pressure which produces rainy and windy weather, and is the main cause of the miserable and changeable weather we so often see in the UK. Quite simply, a depression forms when a large mass of cold air meets a large mass of warm air, with the cold air usually coming from Polar Regions and the warm air from the Tropics. Heavy rain and strong winds form where these two air masses meet because the warm air rises over the cold air and condenses to form rain clouds.

How about our Snowfall?

We have explained the cause of the wet and wind that we are so used to in the UK, but how about snowfall? It may not be such a common occurrence, but still... why do we get it?

As we have already found out, the majority of the UK’s weather is determined by the polar jet stream, which brings us wet and damp weather in the form of depressions. However during winter, the oceans are normally much warmer than the land because they take longer for them to change temperature, and because of this, an area of high pressure forms above them and this interferes with our usual jet stream position.

When this newly created area of high pressure forms over the Atlantic, our usual jet-stream becomes blocked, and instead of flowing right over the UK as normal, it is actually deflected southwards slightly – allowing chilled air from the north to flood into its place – and where our usual Atlantic weather system meets the cold front from the north, snow falls. The UK was stuck like this for several weeks in 2010, which was the cause of widespread snowfall.

How About our Warm Weather?

So now all the cold, wet and windy weather is other with, how about the hot weather? This may seem like an even rarer occurrence in this country, but nevertheless it does happen.

The cause of these blissfully hot days and clear blue skies are from a weather phenomenon called anti-cyclones. These anti-cyclones are the opposite of depressions and are instead areas of high pressure where the air is constantly sinking, as opposed to rising in a depression, but why does this cause nice weather, and not bad?

Well, because this air is sinking instead of rising in an anti-cyclone, clouds aren’t formed which means that no rain can be produced, and the fact that there are no weather fronts also means that no wind can form. If an anti-cyclone was to form during the summer then would most likely bring warm weather with clear skies; while if in winter, then it would bring clear but cold days, with frosty nights. The weather will always be consistent and unchanging as long as an anti-cyclone is present.

So, there’s a quick introduction into the causes behind our country’s weather for you, and hopefully the next time you look out of your window, deciding what clothes to wear for the day and see the all-too familiar grey clouds forming above, you’ll know a little more about why it’s all happening. 

What Does the Large Hadron Collider Actually Do?

What Does The Large Hadron Collider Actually Do?

      Over the last year or so you’ve probably heard of the large hadron collider at some point, whether it’s because you have a particular interest in particle physics or even just if you just watch the news; but what actually is it, and what does it actually do…?

‘The Large Hadron Collider’ - bit of a strange name, what does it really mean? Well, a hadron is a composite particle made of quarks (extremely small sub-atomic matter) that are all held together by something called the strong force which is just one of the 4 fundamental interactions between matter. The best known types of hadrons are protons and neutrons. A collider is simply a piece of equipment that is used to accelerate elementary particles at each other.  

                 You may have some basic knowledge of what this Large Hadron Collider achieves such as “it fires small things at other small things to see what happens” and in its very basic form – Yes, you’re correct. But you may be lost in the details of what it is trying to achieve, and with the whole construction costing well over £4bn, you would expect it to be doing something useful, right?

      Short History:

            So, the Large Hadron Collider is situated in the town of Geneva, Switzerland and it is the most powerful particle accelerator ever to be made. The LHC was built by an organisation named CERN and this whole process of construction took around 10 years – with the grand opening being in 2008. The LHC lies in a tunnel which is 27km long, and as deep as 175 metres in most parts. The first successful attempt to fire beams of particles was completed on the 10^th September 2008, and on the 30^th March 2010, the team at CERN broke the world record for the ‘highest energy man-made particle collision ever’.

      What happens in the Large Hadron Collider:

      So, let’s work on our basic understanding from before: “It fires small things at other small things to see what happens”. In this basic understanding, the ‘small thing’ is something called a particle – a particle is simply a sub atomic mass which is one of the building blocks of everything around us.  These particles can take a few different forms such as an electrons, neutrinos and photons just to name a few.

The process of firing these particles together is the job of the team at CERN and it is what they have they been doing since its opening in 2008. They use something called a synchrotron (a fancy word for the equipment used to accelerate the particles) to collide opposing particle beams, this was built by a team of 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries around the world.

So once the beams have been fired, they travel around the course of the LHC and are constantly accelerating towards until they reach the speed of light – a universal speed limit for any object at 300,000,000 metres per second. If your thinking, ‘Why the value of 300,000,000’ then that’s a whole different topic (‘general relativity’ to be precise) and you don’t need to worry about to understand this at the moment.

                 There are 4 main, multi-purpose particle detectors at the LHC, these are called; ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LCHb. You may be thinking; ‘What is the purpose of these particle detectors?’ Well… When the particles hit each other, their energy is converted into many different particles, and these particle detectors keep track of the pieces that are created. By looking carefully at the data from these detectors, scientists can study what certain particles are made of and how the particles interact with each other.

     Purpose of the Large Hadron Collider:

     The main aim for the team at CERN who came up with the idea and built the Large Hadron Collider is to answer some of the fundamental questions that scientists have about the basic laws of the universe.

In a world where we are immersed in technological innovation and where scientists have the answer for so many problems, it may seem strange that they are still trying to understand basic laws – but, while the advancements in gadgets such as phones, computers and televisions seems almost unstoppable, the basic laws of physics are part of a much wider picture, and one that unifies everything around us – from the particles being fired at CERN, to the smartphone in your pocket.  

The accelerator’s experiments are designed to collide the particle beams together to try and recreate the conditions of the early universe, just after the ‘Big Bang’ – which is the fundamental event responsible for the creation of our whole universe. Where the LHC becomes incredibly useful is in answering these basic laws of physics , scientist want to learn more about particular topics that will have the greatest impact on our understanding of the universe, a few of these include:

-         

      -- The forces among particles

-       -- The structure of space and time

-       -- Where, and if the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics overlap – as there is very little understanding of this so far.

-       -- Physicists also want to find out more about the famous ‘God Particle’ or better known as the Higgs Boson Particle – the piece of matter which is responsible for all giving objects mass.

So, while it may be easy for sceptics to be negative about the Large Hadron Collider from both a price and purpose stance, the work that it conducts cannot not be denied to be any less than remarkable; not only because it applies to and affects every aspect of our life and the universe we live in, but because without it – how can we expect to explore and endeavour into the vast universe that surrounds us? Without the knowledge that the LHC provides, we would be restricted simply to planet Earth in our scientific evolutions, and with such a vast universe surrounding us… where’s the fun in that?