Various Physics Questions

[HemlockGrey]

I'm preparing to write a sci-fi story and am currently designing the universe. However, middle-school science ciriculum falls woefully short when it comes to physics, so I have a few questions, most of which I assume(from reading material present on the message boards) are fairly basic.

First off, how many megatons to a gigaton, how many gigatons to a teraton, etc.? What's the difference between a gigaton and a gigawatt? Are there any sort of 'benchmarks'? i.e. just how powerful is 200 GT? And is an 'isoton' just a Treknoterm, or does it have a real meaning? I know that a joule is a measurement of force, but how does it relate to the measurements above?

I know what antimatter is, but what is an 'antiproton'? Which one has a higher yield, and why? When someone says something like a 'negatively charged proton' what the hell are they talking about?

[Darth Wong]

I'm preparing to write a sci-fi story and am currently designing the universe. However, middle-school science ciriculum falls woefully short when it comes to physics, so I have a few questions, most of which I assume(from reading material present on the message boards) are fairly basic.

Unfortunately, judging from your questions, I doubt you are capable of properly interpreting the answers. I don't mean to be insulting, but I think you need to learn some more basic physics before trying to investigate such matters, because the answers will fly right over your head.

First off, how many megatons to a gigaton, how many gigatons to a teraton, etc.?

"Mega" means 1E6. "Giga" means 1E9. "Tera" means 1E12. Do the math.

What's the difference between a gigaton and a gigawatt?

A gigaton is a measure of energy: 4.2E18 J. A gigawatt is a measure of power: 1E9 W.

Are there any sort of 'benchmarks'? i.e. just how powerful is 200 GT?

A 200GT asteroid impact would wipe out an entire nation in a flash and cause global environmental effects.

And is an 'isoton' just a Treknoterm, or does it have a real meaning?

It is just a Treknoterm. A linguistic breakdown means that the most likely definition is "one ton", but ultimately, it's not really meant to be decipherable.

I know that a joule is a measurement of force, but how does it relate to the measurements above?

A joule is not a measurement of force. The SI units of force are Newtons.

I know what antimatter is, but what is an 'antiproton'?

Correction: you obviously don't know what antimatter is if you don't know what an antiproton is. The definition of antiproton will be obvious if you know what antimatter is.

Which one has a higher yield, and why?

This question betrays an inability to understand the answer.

When someone says something like a 'negatively charged proton' what the hell are they talking about?

They're trying to describe an antiproton in terms you will understand.

I know you might take this as a put-down, but you're obviously trying to run before you can walk. Learn to walk first.

[Master of Ossus]

These are the SI prefixes, their conversion factors (using exponents), and their symbols. These prefixes are constant for different units of measurement (meaning that I could also use them to express joules, or grams, or something similar). There are, therefore, one thousand megatons in a gigaton and one thousand gigatons in a teraton.

10E24 yotta Y
10E21 zetta Z
10E18 exa E
10E15 peta P
10E12 tera T
10E9 giga G
10E6 mega M
10E3 kilo k
10E2 hecto h
10E1 deka da

10E-1 deci d
10E-2 centi c
10E-3 milli m
10E-6 micro µ
10E-9 nano n
10E-12 pico p
10E-15 femto f
10E-18 atto a
10E-21 zepto z
10E-24 yocto y

A gigawatt is a measure of power (joules/second). A gigaton is a measure of mass, but it can also be used to measure energy. When it is used in this sense, it is equivanent to the amount of energy converted when a gigaton of TNT is detonated. A gigaton almost always represents more power than a gigawatt, except when it takes place over a TREMENDOUSLY long time.

An anti-proton is a form of antimatter. I have never heard anyone talking about a negatively charged proton, except to describe in very basic terms what an anti-proton is.

[NecronLord]

I'm preparing to write a sci-fi story and am currently designing the universe. However, middle-school science ciriculum falls woefully short when it comes to physics, so I have a few questions, most of which I assume(from reading material present on the message boards) are fairly basic.

First off, how many megatons to a gigaton, how many gigatons to a teraton, etc.? What's the difference between a gigaton and a gigawatt? Are there any sort of 'benchmarks'? i.e. just how powerful is 200 GT? And is an 'isoton' just a Treknoterm, or does it have a real meaning? I know that a joule is a measurement of force, but how does it relate to the measurements above?

I know what antimatter is, but what is an 'antiproton'? Which one has a higher yield, and why? When someone says something like a 'negatively charged proton' what the hell are they talking about?

100megatons to a gigaton100 gig to tera etc.

200gt is the equivelent to 200,000,000,000tons of tnt detonating
an isoton in reality is the energy given by one ton of tnt

http://www.onlineconversion.com/energy.htm

anti-proton is basically anti-matter

a negatively charged would be a synthetic particle created by a guon flipping machine, and would be useless, it's trekkie bull to my knowlage.

[NecronLord]

admittedly an inexplicable guon flipper (i've got to put that in a fic somewhere)

[HemlockGrey]

I know you might take this as a put-down, but you're obviously trying to run before you can walk. Learn to walk first.

No, no, I understand, no offensive taken. Thanks anyway.

[HemlockGrey]

The 'thanks' was extended to everyone. My science teacher last year was...incompetant(along with a number of other adjectives) and described a joule as a measurement of force, and said something along that the lines that 10 joules = 1 Newton.

[Wicked Pilot]

My science teacher last year was...incompetant(along with a number of other adjectives) and described a joule as a measurement of force, and said something along that the lines that 10 joules = 1 Newton.

I commend you for your interest in science. If you're interested in learning about this stuff on your own time I'd suggest you pick up Fundamentals of Physics Sixth Edition by Halliday, Resnick, and Walker. It is an absolute outstanding text book. Giving it a read would go a long way towards you interest.

[Master of Ossus]

The 'thanks' was extended to everyone. My science teacher last year was...incompetant(along with a number of other adjectives) and described a joule as a measurement of force, and said something along that the lines that 10 joules = 1 Newton.

Whaaaaaaaaat? My science teachers sucked ass, but I don't even think they would say something like 10 joules=1 Newton.

[Luke Starkiller]

Um, that textbook is what I used in my physics class for first year engineering at university. It does explain the concepts well, but I doubt it would be apropriate for a middle school student

[Shrykull]

10E24 yotta Y
10E21 zetta Z

zeta, where did you learn that? I didn't know about it. Avery Brooks, captain Sisko does those IBM commercials, and he said "Long ago information was once measured in kilobytes, then came megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes, petabytes and exabytes, with all this information flying back and forth on the web we will soon arrive at yotta bytes, how big is that? 10 to the 24th power, he didn't mention zeta bytes.

10E-1 deci d
10E-2 centi c
10E-3 milli m
10E-6 micro µ
10E-9 nano n
10E-12 pico p
10E-15 femto f
10E-18 atto a
10E-21 zepto z
10E-24 yocto y

what exactly do these extremely small increments measure, as far as length is concerned nano is a billionth of a meter and is used to measure length of atoms and molecules, what about the smaller ones? And how long is planc (sp?) length?[/quote]

[Master of Ossus]

Nanometers and even picometers are used in measuring small bacterium, and other microscopic cells. They are too big, usually, for measuring atoms and sub-atomic particles.

I learned of the zeta prefix from my high school/college chemistry classes. I'm pretty sure a search for something like "SI prefixes" or "scientific prefixes" will give you access to all of this information, as it almost certainly exists on the web, somewhere.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

My science teacher last year was...incompetant(along with a number of other adjectives) and described a joule as a measurement of force, and said something along that the lines that 10 joules = 1 Newton.

I commend you for your interest in science. If you're interested in learning about this stuff on your own time I'd suggest you pick up Fundamentals of Physics Sixth Edition by Halliday, Resnick, and Walker. It is an absolute outstanding text book. Giving it a read would go a long way towards you interest.

That's an awesome textbook. Unfortunately, it's probably a couple orders of magnitude beyond the level of comprehension of the basic middle school student.

[Master of Ossus]

Sorry, I didn't see the last part of your question. A Planck length (whose name was also bestowed upon Planck's constant), is equivalent to about 1.6E-35 meters. It is a unit of measurement for sub-atomic particles, and is to my knowledge the smallest length that exists to scientists. IIRC, it is at this length that macroscopic ideas of gravity, space time, and our laws of physics cease to govern the behavior of particles, and quantum theories must be used to predict behavior. This is TINY. Far, FAR smaller than even sub-atomic particles like protons and neutrons.

[Datana]

If you're interested in learning about this stuff on your own time I'd suggest you pick up Fundamentals of Physics Sixth Edition by Halliday, Resnick, and Walker. It is an absolute outstanding text book. Giving it a read would go a long way towards you interest.

I used this book back in AP Physics in high school. Excellent book, but it requires a good deal of basic knowledge before it can be used. Unfortunately, the book the "standard" physics class used was a one-off text written by the teacher (who also taught the AP class, coincidently) and published by the school district (though it was very well written), so wouldn't be accessible to most folks. All of the middle school science books I read I remember primarily for their uselessness in physics, so a high-school level text would be best for the beginner to the subject.

[Patrick Degan]

Two additional works for your consideration:

Asimov's Guide To Science by Issac Asimov. Very much pitched to the layperson and the junior adult, it will give you a good grounding in key concepts and won't swamp you with equations. This one may still be in print and available at your local bookstore.

A Step Farther Out by Jerry Pournelle. Granted, the guy may be a militaristic buffoon as a SF writer, but here he talks about basic scientific and technological concepts, and any equations located within are fairly simple. A bit dated (it was written in 1979) and preachy in spots but nonetheless a good book to have on hand. This one is out of print, but you may be able to find it in used bookstores.

In addition, and I don't think this can be stressed too much: read actual science fiction. You also want to learn how to write as much as you want to learn science to make your stories believable and compelling in the human dimension as much as the scientific. Get yourself involved with the giants of the genre: Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson, Fredrick Pohl, Robert Silverberg, Stanislaw Lem, Issac Asimov, Joe Haldeman, Harlan Ellison, A. E. Van Vogt, Iain Banks, Brian Aldiss, and H.G. Wells. You also want to read classical literature as well: the Horatio Hornblower novels, George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, William Golding's Lord Of The Flies, Richard Cormer's The Chocolate War, J.D. Salinger's Catcher In The Rye, John Knowles' A Seperate Peace, anything by Hemmingway, Faulkner, or Mark Twain. The Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. And T.H. White's The Once And Future King and The Book Of Merlyn.

Get a feel for the words; how they come together and how they're wielded by a writer. Get to know how writers made the decisions they did at the keyboard or the pen and learn how a story is constructed. You also need to mix classical literature with science ficiton, if for nothing else than to know what other forms of writing are about.

From your description of being in middle school, I'd guess you're about 12 or 13. So I'd start off with the Hornblowers, Holmes, White and Twain, and from there move on to Chocolate War, Animal Farm, and A Seperate Peace. The heavier stuff can wait another two years or so.

At some point, pick up a copy of Strunk And White's The Elements Of Style to help learn how to write.

From the example of your "science" teacher (probably the intramural basketball coach who's teaching a class on the side), your middle school doesn't seem to be worth a scoop of slime. Instead, you've decided to learn on your own. Excellent. I always did better teaching myself than learning from teachers and it sounds like you've reached the same conclusion.

Go for it.

[Shaka[Zulu]]

nice to see there are still those who are not afraid to be a 'rogue intellectual asset'

[Wicked Pilot]

Begun, this science student rebellion has.

[Shrykull]

Sorry, I didn't see the last part of your question. A Planck length (whose name was also bestowed upon Planck's constant), is equivalent to about 1.6E-35 meters. It is a unit of measurement for sub-atomic particles, and is to my knowledge the smallest length that exists to scientists. IIRC, it is at this length that macroscopic ideas of gravity, space time, and our laws of physics cease to govern the behavior of particles, and quantum theories must be used to predict behavior. This is TINY. Far, FAR smaller than even sub-atomic particles like protons and neutrons.

Um, Mike was saying that absolutely nothing violates laws of physics even quantum stuff like zero point fields, where one particle is +1 the other is -1, so they add up to zero, energy is conserved, it's in the myths section in the myths concerning general science.

[sgiathach]

Cyril: I have a little book, "Collection of Formulae", preserved from school days, which contains most of the stuff you need to know. See if you can get something like that.

Your questions seem to point at mass defect and energy conversion.
Thus, the most important terms in simple, layman definitions:

antimatter is matter with particles of reversed charge, e.g. your "negatively charged proton".
When an electron collides with a positron (or "anti-electron"), or a proton meets an antiproton, these particles are annihilated.
Their mass is converted to energy, cf. E=mc^2. You can easily calculate how much energy iis freed by this mass defect using the right constants.

If I remember my chemistry major course correctly, _all_ enthalpy (i.e. excess energy) is freed by mass defect, even electron (i.e. chemical) reactions.
Very rough rule of thumb: Fission is 1000 times more "efficient" as electron reaction; fusion is 1000 times stronger than fission, and annilhilation 1000 times stronger than fusion.

Corrections welcome -- I just typed this from memory without checking any books, so I may be off the mark here and there.

[Mr Bean]

Um, Mike was saying that absolutely nothing violates laws of physics even quantum stuff like zero point fields, where one particle is +1 the other is -1, so they add up to zero, energy is conserved, it's in the myths section in the myths concerning general science.

Actual to be fair while the Energy is *Given back it still somthing from nothing which on the surface aurgues with a few Physical Laws

Just put it this way at the Quantum Level anything is possible, Its just very improable

[HemlockGrey]

Er...wow. Thanks, everyone. Really appreciate it.

[oberon]

Cy, if you are still reading:

Force is mass times acceleration, where mass is a measure of inertia, or resistance to changes in motion;
Energy is the capacity to perform work;
Work is the integral of Force times distance from start to end.

For a couple benchmarks:

a food calorie is 1000 "real" calories, or one kilocarie. One calorie converts to 4.184 joules. A decent diet is around 1500-2000 kilocalories a day. A Big Mac has something like 500 or more kilocalories. Calories measure energy, which is released in the form of heat in digestion.

There is a T^4 distribution, I forget what the formula is, that is used in "black box" calculations to determine the final state of an object undergoing thermodynamic processes, and the concept of integrals lends a way of making that prediction without having to know all the details of any internal processes. To learn how integrals really work this way, I'd recommend a thermo book, or any old physics book will do, so you can practice and get a feel for how things work. I'd also recommend a calculus book, because you do need to know how to integrate in the first place. More on that later.

Both kinetic and heat energy are released in an explosion, and the duration of a process which releases energy leads to a concept of power, which is "how quick you can do work". Thus, power is "energy over unit time", so 1 watt is one joule per second (people in these boards may try to convince you that watts and joules are interchangeable ).

One megaton is 4.184e+15 joules; the exponent notation means to multiply by a 10 to the 15th power.

One important thing: never rely on memory. Internalize the concepts, but realize that if you can't decide if you mean 10^18 or 10^15, at least you can look it up--ONCE you grasp the basic ideas. I always forget if a megaton is one or the other.

Scientific notation goes in groups of 3, so mega, 10^6, comes naturally after kilo, 10^3; the next is giga, 10^9. You've seen this lots, the way we write millions and billions with groups of 3 zeroes separated by commas.

Since the consensus here seemed to be that you were not prepared to be asking these kinds of questions, and you did say "middle school", I'd recommend a calculus book before I recommended something by Isaac Asimov. I am leery of recommendations for "popular science" texts geared at the "layman". they have a wonderful way of piquing interest, but since you have that already, you need meatier material. No offence to the poster who suggested Asimov! The grounding one needs requires work, not a casual read with little to no retention. I took chaos courses before I read Gleick's lay text on chaos, and I was glad I did. If I had read Chaos first, I'd have some vague ideas of fractals and no idea how they got there, and that is worse than useless. I think something like that can make you seem smart in a conversation, but you would be unable to asnwer basic questions, such as "why as this important?" I am not going to comment on Asimov's book, since I haven't read it--I have no doubt it's an excellent book, but those are my reasons for saying I'm leery of lay texts. Calculus books are designed to help people understand work and energy, terms I have seen thrown about here with no definitions or compelling reasons to learn them. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, for you, a calculus book requires an understanding of two things: trigonometry, and functions. Another very important thing to pick up from calulus is the idea of limits--this is fundamental to the way we understand everything else! Once you can think in terms of limits, it's easier to wonder about "what if I have different quanities than one joule and one second?" In other words, fractions get smaller and smaller as the denominator gets bigger. This is taught in grade school, but it's nice to say "the limit of 1 over x as x goes to infinity is zero". Not only is it nice to be able to say, but it gives you a formal way to look at the very large and the very small. Soon math becomes nothing more than a magnifying glass, a microscope, or telescope, to peer at the world around you, question reality, and think about how far you can take one way of looking at things before that way begins to break down.

I would hesitate to call high school algebra "algebra", as it is identical to functions but with different emphasis. What it has in common with algebra is the use of symbols, but what you are really doing in college prep algebra is setting up to understand functions. Uh, but anyway...