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Space Shuttle Experiment

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The Space Shuttle was an interesting exhibit with many fascinating attractions. There were a lot of connections between how the spaceship works and our class, electricity and magnetism. One of the main connections between these two were the tires on the space shuttle. The spaceship only used one set of tires per trip because it needed to have a lot of traction in order to stop the ship in time which means that they can not be reused. Throughout the trip however, the tires go through a lot of change. Once they escape the Earth’s atmosphere, they lose a lot of pressure. The air inside the tires could go through a phase change that would cause energy be created which in return energy is calculated by Q=mLf.
The next piece that helped me gain insight into how the physics of our class is used in the space program was a sample of the control room in NASA’s headquarters. I saw how they use infrared displays to check the spaceship’s surroundings. The infrared displays use multiple concepts from our class, including infrared spectrums and frequency. These infrared spectrums can be measured with K=2pi/흀. …show more content…

It was extremely cool to be able to observe this incredibly intricate feat of engineering and to be able to see what mankind is able to create through their knowledge of physics and engineering, among other subjects. The exterior of the spaceship is coated with ceramic tiles in order to protect the crew from the heat of leaving the atmosphere. Again, the entire ship will expand due to this extreme heat blast. Here, you not only have to take into account the thermal expansion, but you also have to account for volume expansion 흙V=βV0흙T. Towards the end of the exhibit, I learned that there are close to 2.5 million moving parts on the ship. Even though our Physics 20B class only touches on the basics of thermodynamics and electricity, many of the concepts we have learned are observable in the space shuttle

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