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The closest point to the Sun in a planet’s orbit is called Perihelion. The furthest point is called Aphelion. The planet moves fastest at perihelion and slowest at aphelion.
GIFs extracted from Year On Earth
Planets in our Solar System orbit the Sun. The orbits of some planets are almost perfect circles, but others are not. Some orbits are shaped more like ovals, or “stretched out” circles.
Scientists call these oval shapes “ellipses”. If a planet’s orbit is a circle, the Sun is at the center of that circle. If, instead, the orbit is an ellipse, the Sun is at a point called the “focus” of the ellipse, which is not quite the same as the center.
Since the Sun is not at the center of an elliptical orbit, the planet moves closer towards and further away from the Sun as it orbits. The place where the planet is closest to the Sun is called perihelion.
When the planet is furthest away from the Sun, it is at aphelion. The words “aphelion” and “perihelion” come from the Greek language. In Greek, “helios” mean Sun, “peri” means near, and “apo” means away from.
Einstein’s search for general relativity spanned eight years, 1907-1915. Some periods were quiet and some were more intense. The moments when the great transition occurred, came sometime between the late summer of 1912, when Einstein moved from Prague to Zurich, and early 1913. If we could choose one time at which to look over Einstein’s shoulder and watch him work on general relativity, it would be this time.
And that is just what we can do. For, found among his papers when Einstein died in 1955 was a small, brown notebook containing his private calculations from just this time. This is the Zurich notebook.
At NASA’s Drawing Board - J R Eyerman
Guangzhou Opera House by Zaha Hadid,
photos by trevor.patt via ADDoA
Snowflakes (2010)
“I will create a serene world with numerous transparent prism sticks in plastic. The accumulation of transparent sticks is tinged with white color just like real snow. I believe that the installation will offer visitors extraordinary experiences as if stepping into the snowflake.”
Different modes of oscillation for a pendulum
The period of a simple pendulum is not a trivial thing, and it depends on the initial conditions.
Shown here are ten different modes of oscillation for the same pendulum. The only difference is the total amount of mechanical energy in the system.
As a result, each one has a completely different period of oscillation, unlike what the small-angle approximation (as taught in high-school) would suggest. They can’t be in sync. You may see some really interesting patterns based on the delay between them in your browser.
The red graph above each pendulum represents the phase portrait for the respective mode of oscillation, with the current state marked as a blue dot. The horizontal axis represents angle (hence why it wraps around the sides) while the vertical axis represents angular velocity.
Pendulums are very interesting dynamical systems, as they are relatively simple to understand but can produce surprisingly complex results in certain cases, such as the chaotic behavior of double pendulums and the odd behavior displayed by coupled pendulums.
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