Who doesn’t like to get their mind blown by physics! It is always fascinating to find out about things that are amazing in nature. Let us take a look at a few of the top mind boggling physics facts.
Some Lesser Known Physics Facts
The quietest place on Earth
The engineers of Microsoft built a room known as an anechoic chamber to help in the testing of the new equipment they were in the process of developing, and in 2015 the room set the official world record for the most silent place. When the background noise level inside the room was measured, it stood at a low of -20.6 decibels. To put that in context for the layman, the whisper of a human being is around 30 decibels and the sound of their breathing usually is measured to be at just 10 decibels. It gets very close to the limit of what is possible to achieve without the creation of a vacuum. The noise produced by air molecules inside a vacuum colliding with each other at normal room temperature is approximately said to be around -24 decibels. This is an extremely unique and rare experience, when you are inside the chamber with the door closed. It has been found that when you stop your breathing inside the room, you can hear your heart beats and the blood flowing in your veins.
The color of the sun
There exists a common misconception that the color of the sun is yellow or orange or sometimes even red. In spite of being taught to draw the sun in yellow color throughout our entire childhood, the sun is actually a mixture of all the colors together. This is what technically appears to our eyes as white. This is easier to see in the pictures taken from space rather than from the naked eye. The rainbows are a light from the sun that is separated into the seven colors. Each color in the rainbow has a different wavelength. The color red is the longest and blue is the shortest. When we look at the sun at sunrise or sunset, basically when it is low in the sky, it appears to be yellow, orange, or even red. However this is only because the colors with short wavelength like green, blue and violet are scattered out by the atmosphere in a similar way to small waves being dispersed by large rocks along the shoreline. Therefore only the warm colors of red, orange and yellow get through the thick atmosphere to reach our eyes. When the sun is high in the sky, the shorter waves, mainly the blue waves are scattered. Hence, this also explains why the sky looks blue during the day.
The height of the Eiffel Tower keeps changing
The Eiffel Tower is a very aesthetically pleasing monument in Paris. It has been recorded that when the temperatures rise in the summers, the tower increases in size! This is a natural physical phenomenon known as thermal expansion. The increase in the heat causes an increase in the volume, which makes the Eiffel Tower a few centimeters taller. This heat expansion also makes the tower tilt a little away from the sun. The sun also only hits one side of the four sides of the Tower, thereby creating an imbalance of that side with the other three sides which remain stable. This causes the Eiffel Tower to tilt. Thus, the movement of the sun along the course of a clear day can make the top of the tower move in a more circular curve of an approximate of 15 centimeters in diameter. Also, when the cold weather of winter arrives, the metal structure shrinks and the tower can lose a few centimeters too.
The apple that hit Newton’s head
We all have heard the story of how gravity was discovered by Newton when he was sitting under an apple tree and an apple fell and hit his head. Most of us have always had the image of Newton with an apple bouncing off of his head. However there has been no official record of such a specific event occurring. The official evidence only says that he was pondering over the reason for apples to fall directly perpendicular to the ground while sitting under the tree, and that is when the realization hit him.
Physics is often regarded as uninteresting and very complicated by people. However, facts like the above ones can be related to by almost everyone, and therefore it brings them one step closer to the wide and fascinating world of physics.