Browsing Archive: June, 2011

Blow Your Own Sail

Posted by Chris Bird on Monday, June 27, 2011,

I enjoyed tonight's episode of the Discovery program, Mythbusters, as I do every Sunday, but this episode was especially interesting because of a segment on a physics thought experiment called “Blow Your Own Sail”.

This is a very old thought experiment for physics students. Suppose you are in a sailboat on a day with no wind, and there is no motor onboard but there is a large fan. Can you use the fan to blow the sail and propel yourself along?

According to Newtonian physics for every acti...

To My Students...

Posted by Chris Bird on Friday, June 17, 2011,

I posted the following commentary last year at graduation time, and so many people wrote to thank me for it and asking to quote it, that I have decided to re-post it. And every word of it applies just as much to my students this year as the ones last year...

Today marked the graduation for a number of students who I have tutored or taught in the past, and I want to send out my congratulations. And to thank you for letting me be a small part of that journey.

I know how hard some of you have had...
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Another Era Ends...

Posted by Chris Bird on Monday, June 6, 2011,

I just finished watching the final episode of Daily Planet with Jay Ingram, and it made me more than a little nostalgic. ( OK, so maybe the title is a little too dramatic, but in my opinion this show deserves it!).

For those of you who live outside of Canada, let me start by explaining this show a little. Way back in 1995, when no one had really heard of the Discovery Channel, long before the creation of popular shows like Mythbusters or Dirty Jobs, an idea was formed for a nightly TV show wh...
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Dr. Christopher Bird

Browsing Archive: June, 2011

Blow Your Own Sail

To My Students...

Another Era Ends...

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