On the derivation of the terminal velocity for the falling magnet from dimensional analysis

Dimensional analysis was employed to develop a predictive formula for the terminal velocity for a magnet dropped down a metallic tube. In this particular application, the technique succeeded in generating the same formula theoretically derived and that has been published by others. The analysis thus presented suggests other applications that can be developed for motivating in the use of the technique.

Sleepiness is not always perceived before falling asleep in healthy, sleep-deprived subjects

To test whether subjects spontaneously signal sleepiness before falling asleep under monotonous conditions.

Burning Skies: A Novella

Burning Skies is a seventy-page novella completed as an Honors Thesis in Creative Writing. The story is set in Los Angeles, California, during the 1992 riots surrounding the controversy over the beating of Rodney King by four white police officers. The story is toldthrough the perspectives of the four main characters: Erin, a woman who is four months pregnant with a baby she desperately wants; her husband David, who has moved the couple out to California so that he can pursue his dream of being a cinematographer; Abby, David’s deeplyreligious younger sister who has unexpectedly flown out to Los Angeles from her home in Indiana after discovering her husband’s infidelity; and Cameron, a black man training to be a pastor who Abby has befriended through her years of missionary work in Los Angeles.The novella follows the events of the riots as they break out all across the city and the personal dramas of each of the four main characters, looking at how the public interacts with theprivate and examining the ways in which explosions in the public and political sphere can ricochet into our private and personal lives. It is a story about the political and racial climate in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, but it is also a story about four human beings, about their needs and their desires, about their struggles to survive in an unpredictable world. The novella showcases the skills and techniques the author has learned after four years of studying fiction at Bucknell University; it can best be described as a work of realistic fiction.

The Velocity of Falling Particles in a Liquid Medium

The investigation was prompted by the fact that there seemed to be some discrepancy between the results published by Richards,and the empirical figures used in classification and in gravity concentration. Further, the work of Richards was restricted to quartz and galena whereas this study also includes pyrite and calcite.

Rendering Falling Leaves on Graphics Hardware

There is a growing interest in simulating natural phenomena in computer graphics applications. Animating natural scenes in real time is one of the most challenging problems due to the inherent complexity of their structure, formed by millions of geometric entities, and the interactions that happen within. An example of natural scenario that is needed for games or simulation programs are forests. Forests are difficult to render because the huge amount of geometric entities and the large amount of detail to be represented. Moreover, the interactions between the objects (grass, leaves) and external forces such as wind are complex to model. In this paper we concentrate in the rendering of falling leaves at low cost. We present a technique that exploits graphics hardware in order to render thousands of leaves with different falling paths in real time and low memory requirements.

Heterogeneous multinational firms and productivity gains from falling FDI barriers

During the past decade of declining FDI barriers, small domestic firms disproportionately contracted while large multinational firms experienced a substantial growth in Japan’s manufacturing sector. This paper quantitatively assesses the impact of FDI globalization on intra-industry reallocations and aggregate productivity. We calibrate the firm-heterogeneity model of Eaton, Kortum, and Kramarz (2011) to micro-level data on Japanese multinational firms. Estimating the structural parameters of the model, we demonstrate that the model can strongly replicate the entry and sales patterns of Japanese multinationals. Counterfactual simulations show that declining FDI barriers lead to a disproportionate expansion of foreign production by more efficient firms relative to less efficient firms. A hypothetical 20% reduction in FDI barriers is found to generate a 30.7% improvement in aggregate productivity through market-share reallocation.

Stability analysis of a free falling pararotor

The pararotor is a decelerator device based on the autorotation of a rotating wing. When it is dropped, it generates an aerodynamic force parallel to the main motion direction, acting as a decelerating force. In this paper, the rotational motion equations are shown for the vertical flight without any lateral wind component and some simplifying assumptions are introduced to obtain analytic solutions of the motion. First, the equilibrium state is obtained as a function of the main parameters. Then the equilibrium stability is analyzed. The motion stability depends on two nondimensional parameters, which contain geometric, inertia, and aerodynamic characteristics of the device. Based on these two parameters a stability diagram can be defined. Some stability regions with different types of stability trajectories (nodes, spirals, focuses) can be identified for spinning motion around axes close to the major, minor, and intermediate principal axes. It is found that the blades contribute to stability in a case of spin around the intermediate principal inertia axis, which is otherwise unstable. Subsequently, the equations for determining the angles of nutation and spin of the body are obtained, thus defining the orientation of the body for a stationary motion and the parameters on which that position depends.