Re: Q. about max acceleration, Planck's constant, PLUS: help locate Sci Am column (Amtr. Sci)


<giveitawhril2008@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:701f1956-35ed-400b-8e43-77292f134258@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
|I read something indicating there is a maximum acceleration that
| anything physically can take: a maximum G-force. I don't mean how
| large objects will fall apart, I mean a max. G that even, say, a
| single PROTON or NEUTRON will take. I think the author indicated that
| exceeding this max will not cause a proton, say, to fall apart, but
| just that the extra energy will be wasted and have no additional
| accelerating effect. Apparently this has something to do with Planck's
| Constant. Could someone tell us about this?
|
| I understand the most rudimentary basics of Planck's Constant [and of
| physics in general] ( constant = 6.26 joule-secs?), hv, etc. : it has
| to do with the quanta: the discreet packets that energy consists of.
| But I really don't remember what the author said and I cannot re-
| locate the article.

First of all you are confusing acceleration with force, a common
mistake. I feel a force on my *** while sitting in my chair, but I
am not accelerating. The chair is pushing me up with the same
force gravity is pulling me down.
Acceleration is a change in velocity, so when I drop an object
from a tall tower it accelerates earthwards until it hits the ground,
and then its velocity changes once again. That's when it breaks.
Atom smashers do much the same thing.
http://hands-on-cern.physto.se/ani/acc_lhc_atlas/lhc_atlas.swf

This video may help:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKCdq6X08Sw

| That's my main question. But also: where I read this was a really
| "cute" edition of the Amateur Scientist column in Scientific American.
| A tongue in cheek essay, this was, and it was probably in a decades
| old issue of Sci Am. I have researched this online and in university
| library stacks and CANNOT find the Sci Am issue that had this column!
| I emailed Sci Am about it and THEY couldn't help me locate it!
|
| The column expressed the heartfelt desire of many of us for greater
| advances in space exploration and related technology. With aplomb and
| a "straight face," the author told the amateur how to build an
| electromagnetic accelator capable of pushing heavy projectiles to near
| light speed and send them off to other stars! He even listed specific
| parts to buy from Radio Shack! The quantities involved would be kind
| of budget-stretching, however! :-) It is in this article that the
| constraints on maximum G-forces and Planck's Constant were mentioned.
|
| Can anybody locate which issue of Scientific American this Amateur
| Scientist column was in? It could have been from anywhere in the
| nineties back to the sixties.

Yeah, well, when Google gets around to scanning every publication
ever written you may find a slight information overload with as much
contradiction as there is information.

.

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