This is an outlandish, drive-you-crazy book that poses all kinds of questions about fizz-icks !
The older and more observant you are, the better the book -- because you've notice these phenomena and want to know the answer.
For example --- the very first question:
why does chalk squeal on the blackboard?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Why are directions for making a cake in Denver --- different than in EIU?
I never meant them to be taken too seriously.
Some you will find easy enough to answer.
Others are enormously difficult, and grown men and women make their livings trying to answer them.
But even these tough ones are for fun. I am not so interested in how many you can answer as I am in getting you to worry over them.
What I mainly want to show here is that physics is not something that has to be done in a physics building. Physics and physics problems are in the real, everyday world that we live, work, love, and die in. And I hope that this book will capture you enough that you begin to find your own flying circus of physics in your own world. If you start thinking about physics when you are cooking, flying, or just lazing next to a stream, then I will feel the book was worthwhile. Please let me know what physics you do find, along with any corrections or comments on the book. However, please take all this as being just for fun.
Jearl Walker
My grandmother's house
Aledo, Texas, 1977
Chapter 1:
Hiding under the covers, listening for the monsters
(in other words, this chapter is about SOUND).
1.1 Squealing chalk
1.2 A finger on the wine glass
1.3 Two-headed drum vibrations
1.4 Bass pressed into records
1.5 Whistling sand
1.6 Booming sand dunes
1.7 Chladni figures
1.8 Pickin' the banjo and fingering the harp
1.9 String telephone
1.10 Bowing a violin
1.11 Plucking a rubber band
1.12 The sounds of boiling water
1.13 Murmuring brook
1.14 Walking in the snow
1.15 Silence after a snowfall
1.16 Ripping cloth
1.17 Knuckle cracking
1.18 Snap, crackle, and pop
1.19 Noise of melting ice
1.20 An ear to the ground
1.21 Voice pitch and helium
1.22 Tapping coffee cup
1.23 Orchestra warmup and pitch changes
1.24 Bending to the ground to hear an airplane
1.25 Culvert whistlers
1.26 Music hall acoustics
1.27 Acoustics of a confessional
1.28 Sound travel on a cool day
1.29 Silent zones of an explosion
1.30 Echoes
1.31 The mysterious whispering gallery
1.32 Musical echoes
1.33 Tornado sounds
1.34 Echo Bridge
1.35 Sound travel in wind
1.36 Brontides
1.37 Shadowing a seagull's cry
1.38 Lightning without thunder
1.39 Submarine lurking in the shadows
1.40 Cracking a door against the noise
1.41 Feedback ringing
1.42 Foghorns
1.43 Whispering around a head
1.44 End effects on open-ended pipes
1.45 Getting sick from infrasound
1.46 Noisy water pipes
1.47 Piles and ripples of a Kundttube
1.48 Pouring water from a bottle
1.49 Seashell roar
1.50 Talking and whispering
1.51 Shower singing
1.52 A shattering singer
1.53 Howling wind
1.54 Twirl-a-tune
1.55 Whistling wires
AND IF YOU DONŐT BELEIVE HIS ANSWERS TO THE PHENOMENA ---
THERE ARE 1632 science REFERENCES TO CHECK HIM OUT
FOR EXAMPLE:
Bibliography
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