In case you haven't noticed, it's about the end of the year 2012. As is the tradition of my people (bloggers), I will now describe my top posts of the year. What is a top post? By 'top', I mean my favorite posts.
These are in no particular order.
Star Wars Blaster Speeds
Summary: Basically, in this post I try to measure the speed of blaster fire in Star Wars Episodes IV-VI. The above histogram shows that the space fire is way faster than "ground" fire. If you look at the angular speed of the blaster fire (independent of scale), they all have similar speeds in terms of pixels per second. That is, they all look to be about the same speed.
Why I like it: I had planned to look at this post for a long time but didn't get around to it until I needed it for Star Wars Day (May the Fourth). It was quite a bit of work to go through these three movies, but I really like the way the data turned out. Plus, it's Star Wars.
Are Expensive Batteries Worth the Extra Cost?
Summary: The batteries at those dollar-store type places are really cheap, but are they worth it? Here I drained some AA batteries and measured both the voltage and current. From this, you can calculate the total power stored in the battery. So? What's the answer? Well, cheaper batteries have less energy. I guess that should be obvious. In terms of dollars per joule of energy, all the batteries were about the same.
Why I like it: Although it was a pain in the rear to collect data (waiting for a battery to drain), it was still cool to collect the voltage current data. I was surprised that the price per energy was very close for all the batteries.
The Mass of Stuff in Bad Piggies
Summary: This is just one of a few posts on Bad Piggies. I admit that I am little obsessed with the physics in Bad Piggies. In this post, I create some in-game experiments to measure the masses of the different building pieces.
Why I liked it: This is a great example of science. You can make your own experiments - but you just can't do whatever you want. There were some things that didn't work out as well as I liked, but it was still a lot of fun. Yes, there are more Bad Piggies posts to come.
The Physics of the Red Bull Stratos Jump
Summary: This post is a summary of other posts. That makes this summary sort of an inception-like summary. Of course the Red Bull Stratos jump was a pretty big deal that happened this year. I had many posts on the event, but this one links to lots of them.
Why I like it: If you have been reading this blog for a while, you know I have been pumped up about the Red Bull Stratos jump for quite a while. In fact, I first blogged about the Stratos jump in February 2010 when I was still at ScienceBlogs.
The Physics of The Hulk's Jump
Summary: You know The Hulk, right? He's a big green guy. Well, what happens when he jumps? In the movies (and in the comic books), he can jump really high. What kind of forces would he need to exert on the ground? Would it break the ground just by jumping? Probably.
Why I like it: This is one of those posts where I want to see a movie, but I can't right away. Instead, I just blog about it.
Could the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier Fly?
Summary: In the movie The Avengers, there is the famous SHIELD flying helicarrier. Could it fly? Based on my possibly flawed model for a flying helicopter, it would take 300 giga Watts to power with a thrust speed over the speed of sound. So, not likely.
Why I like it: First, The Avengers. Second, it might be wrong but I loved created a model for the thrust and power of a helicopter. This graph of calculated helicopter power vs. actual helicopter power surprised me quite a bit.
Why Do I Love Angry Birds Analysis?
Summary: Clearly, I like to analyze Angry Birds. For me, this is like rock climbing on a fake climbing wall. Even though you don't really get to the top of a mountain, you still get to practice the same kinds of moves.
Why I like it: This post explains why I like Angry Birds so much.
A Video Critique of Khan Academy
Summary: It wasn't my idea to make a video critique of Khan Academy. I really just wanted to participate in this silly little video contest. So, here is my rather silly video pointing out some mistakes in one of Khan's videos.
Why I like it: This thing exploded. Not necessarily in a good way - but it was still a little fun (as long as you don't read the youtube comments).
Science Standards: The Next Generation
Summary: Here is a discussion of the next version of science standards along with my thoughts on the idea of having standards.
Why I like it: This post has a fairly good representation of my feelings about education and evaluations.
How Can Airlines Reduce Fuel Costs?
Summary: Airlines claim that they can save fuel costs by switching their flight manuals to iPads. How can this be true? If it is true, what are other ways to save fuel?
Why I like it: First, if you know the mass of iPads and the amount of money saved you can easily use this to calculate the savings for other things. It's fun. Second, I have a simple model for how a plane flies. I like that.
Most Popular Posts
In case you were curious (I was), here are some of the posts with the highest views over the year.
- Most views: Are Expensive Batteries Worth the Extra Cost?
- Second most view: Can a Human Powered Bike Go 100 mph? I didn't have this one in my top posts. It was a nice post, just not a top post. I suspect the high number of views because it was linked by some biking site.
- Sixth place: What Can We Do With the Higgs Boson? This was one of my posts after the media frenzy around the Higgs Boson. It wasn't a bad post - just sort of simple.
- Seventh place: Minecraft Physics. Not sure about this one. This was mostly a commentary on someone else's Minecraft experiment. I guess it gets a bump because it says "Minecraft".
- Tenth place: Analysis of the Human Birdwings. Yes, this was a popular hoax. I didn't include the birdwings in my top posts because I don't think I did a great job on the analysis.
I just realized that these most popular posts have a problem. If I look at the stats over the past year, a post from last January will have a much longer time to accumulate page views than a post written in December. I have no idea how big of an effect this could be. Of course, this will lead to a future blog post looking at the size of the "long tail" for different posts.
