Wow, I Just Love When Science Is Put To Practical Use!

Wow, I just love when science is put to practical use!

Pun on ‘Doppler Shift’.

I love it when people take up Physics concepts and incorporate them into the realms of everyday life.

The Doppler effect (or Doppler shift) is the change in frequency of a wave for an observer moving relative to its source.

It is commonly observed in sound. When a car is approaching you, the pitch (frequency) of the car increases and when it recedes, the pitch decreases. right? This is the Doppler Shift in action.

Or to put it in TBBT verbatim - “ Neeeeoooowwwww!”

The Doppler Shift works with light exactly the same as with sound! Just as sound seems higher or lower in pitch as the object is moving towards or away from you, light appears higher in frequency (color) when the object is moving towards you, and lower in frequency/color when moving away from you. The order of colors/frequency of light that we can see is:

Lower Frequency Higher Frequency

red - orange - yellow - green - blue - violet

So a far away object moving quickly away from you would appear more reddish than if it were standing still. The same object moving quickly towards you would appear more bluish than if it were standing still.

PC : Dean Johnson

More Posts from Mrvmt and Others

mrvmt

9 years ago

Wow, huvudmaskinen får jobba hårt när jag tittar på dessa. Kommer genast till funderingen över hur många varv den innesta behöver snurra för att alla skall vara tillbaka på start igen. Häftigt, ser skevt ut när varannan form är svart som bakgrunden. :) Riktigt bra jobbat med sidan och de du skapat i Geogebra!!

Distorted epicycloids and hypocycloids rolling inside other distorted epicycloids and hypocycloids.

Interactive versions with distorted and non-distorted versions, and the math behind it: http://www.malinc.se/m/RollingHypocycloids.php

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mrvmt

8 years ago

I’ll Post More Here: Instagram.com/nathanwpyle

I’ll post more here: instagram.com/nathanwpyle

Take a deep breath.

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mrvmt

7 years ago

Wow, This was really intresting

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mrvmt

9 years ago

This somehow reminds me of: http://www.derekhugger.com/merlot.html Hope you like it.

Breathe.

The Strobe Light Conundrum

The post - Illusion of Perception obviously confused a lot of people since I have been getting a lot of requests to explain it again.

Let me try it again with another animation.

The setup

The illusion of falling droplets is created by a pump which is pushing out the water droplets at a fixed rate. ( call it X ) - Does NOT change.

Changing the frequency of the strobe light ( call it Y ) is the integral part of the illusion.

The flow is similar to that of your shower head. The water droplets are continuously falling down. With the strobe light, we are just illuminating the droplets at different instances of time.

When X = Y —> The droplets appear stationary.

Imagine yourself to be sitting on top of the hose and watching every drop fall through. Whenever the droplet of water is about to leave the hose, the light flashes. This renders the droplet as stationary.

Let us call the distance between the droplets as L.

When Y > X — > The droplets appear to move up.

Now, the strobe light flashes a little too quickly than the rate of the drop falling. This gives us the illusion of droplets moving up since you are flashing the light before the droplet has traversed the distance L.

When Y < X — > The droplets appear to move down.

Now, the strobe light flashes a little slower than the rate of the drop falling. This gives us the illusion of droplets moving down since you are flashing the light after the droplet has traversed the distance L.