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Questions tagged [experimental-physics]

For questions about design, process, data, or analysis of experiments and observations.

Use this tag to ask about techniques in experimental physics, including the processing of data, design of experiments, and analysis of results or observations.

This tag may also be used to ask about experimental or observational evidence regarding a topic.

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Cooling a cup of coffee with help of a spoon

During breakfast with my colleagues, a question popped into my head: What is the fastest method to cool a cup of coffee, if your only available instrument is a spoon? A qualitative answer would be nice, but if we could find a mathematical model or…
fortran
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What experiment would disprove string theory?

I know that there's big controversy between two groups of physicists: those who support string theory (most of them, I think) and those who oppose it. One of the arguments of the second group is that there's no way to disprove the correctness of…
Albert
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Why is the detection of gravitational waves so significant?

LIGO has announced the detection of gravitational waves on 11 Feb, 2016. I was wondering why the detection of gravitational waves was so significant? I know it is another confirmation of general relativity (GR), but I thought we had already…
Dargscisyhp
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Why is the vibration in my wire acting so oddly?

I was soldering a very thin wire today, and when I had one end firmly soldered, I accidentally bumped the wire diagonally with my tweezers. What I'd expect to happen is that the wire oscillates for a little while in one axis, then stops. However,…
0xDBFB7
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How exactly do you avoid fooling yourself?

In cargo cult science Feynman writes: "Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off, because he had the incorrect value…
Trevor Andrade
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What was the major discovery on gravitational waves made March 17th, 2014, in the BICEP2 experiment?

The Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics held a press conference today to announce a major discovery relating to gravitational waves. What was their announcement, and what are the implications? Would this discovery be confirmation of…
Physics_maths
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Why do we need large particle accelerators?

The LHC is much larger than its predecessors, and proposed successors much larger still. Today, particle accelerators seem to be the main source of new discoveries about the fundamental nature of the world. My lay interpretation is that particle…
Lemma
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Status of experimental searches for tachyons?

Now that the dust has settled on the 2011 superluminal neutrino debacle at OPERA, I'm interested in understanding the current status of experimental searches for tachyons. Although the OPERA claim was a fun puzzle for theorists trying to find…
user4552
68
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10 answers

How did Newton discover his second law?

I've always assumed/been told that Newton's 2nd law is an empirical law — it must be discovered by experiment. If this is the case, what experiments did Newton do to discover this? Is it related to his studies of the motion of the moon and earth?…
occam98
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What are the next generation physics experiments?

The LHC and LIGO are two recent examples of hugely ambitious experiments in fundamental physics, both of which took decades to develop. What are the next major experiments currently being planned and developed? What will they measure? What impact…
lemon
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Why is jumping into water from high altitude fatal?

If I jump from an airplane straight positioned upright into the ocean, why is it the same as jumping straight on the ground? Water is a liquid as opposed to the ground, so I would expect that by plunging straight in the water, I would enter it…
Conrad C
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Why is cold fusion considered bogus?

Cold fusion is being mentioned a lot lately because of some new setup that apparently works. This is an unverified claim. See for…
Sklivvz
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Home experiments to derive the speed of light?

Are there any experiments I can do to derive the speed of light with only common household tools?
Justin L.
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2002 research: speed of light slowing down?

Back in 2002 there was some research published hinting that $c$ may have been faster at some distant point. It was based on measurements of the fine-structure constant, $$ \alpha = \frac1{4\pi\epsilon_0} \frac{e^2}{\hbar c} \approx \frac 1{137}, $$ …
Errol Hunt
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What is the upper-limit on intrinsic heating due to dark matter?

Cold dark matter is thought to fill our galactic neighborhood with a density $\rho$ of about 0.3 GeV/cm${}^3$ and with a velocity $v$ of roughly 200 to 300 km/s. (The velocity dispersion is much debated.) For a given dark matter mass $m$ and…
Jess Riedel
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