Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2014
Volume 59, Number 5
Saturday–Tuesday, April 5–8, 2014; Savannah, Georgia
Session B17: Invited Session: Hyperloop and other Transportation Ideas |
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Sponsoring Units: FPS Chair: Valerie Thomas, Georgia Institute of Technology Room: 105-106 |
Saturday, April 5, 2014 10:45AM - 11:21AM |
B17.00001: The Hyperloop as a Source of Interesting Estimation Questions Invited Speaker: Rhett Allain The Hyperloop is a conceptual high speed transportation system proposed by Elon Musk. The basic idea uses passenger capsules inside a reduced pressure tube. Even though the actual physics of dynamic air flow in a confined space can be complicated, there are a multitude estimation problems that can be addressed. These back-of-the-envelope questions can be approximated by physicists of all levels as well as the general public and serve as a great example of the fundamental aspects of physics. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 5, 2014 11:21AM - 11:57AM |
B17.00002: Hyperloops, Nuclear Spacecraft, and the New York City Subway Invited Speaker: Stephen Granade Frustrated by the speed and high cost-per-mile of the California High-Speed Rail project linking Los Angeles with San Francisco, Elon Musk proposed the Hyperloop: a high-speed train running in a sealed, partially-evacuated tube. Musk released a white paper that described the technology and concluded that the Hyperloop could be built for less than a tenth of a cost of the California High-Speed Rail. Musk's white paper focused heavily on the scientific and technical questions that must be answered, but public transportation is a domain at the intersection of science and society. Public transportation infrastructure is shaped as much by the pressures of government and citizens as by the technology behind the transportation. Tube-based transport like the Hyperloop has been proposed before, but has never gone further than words on a page. Why? Historical examples like the development of the New York City subway and the proposed nuclear-powered Orion spacecraft shed light on the societal barriers that new transportation must overcome, and help illuminate why technology-based answers are not a full response to transportation questions. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, April 5, 2014 11:57AM - 12:33PM |
B17.00003: Can we build a more efficient airplane? Using applied questions to teach physics Invited Speaker: Aatish Bhatia For students and for the science-interested public, applied questions can serve as a hook to learn introductory physics. Can we radically improve the energy efficiency of modern day aircraft? Are solar planes like the Solar Impulse the future of travel? How do migratory birds like the alpine swift fly nonstop for nearly seven months? Using examples from aeronautical engineering and biology, I'll discuss how undergraduate physics can shed light on these questions about transport, and place fundamental constraints on the flight properties of flying machines, whether birds or planes. Education research has shown that learners are likely to forget vast content knowledge unless they get to apply this knowledge to novel and unfamiliar situations. By applying physics to real-life problems, students can learn to build and apply quantitative models, making use of skills such as order of magnitude estimates, dimensional analysis, and reasoning about uncertainty. This applied skillset allows students to transfer their knowledge outside the classroom, and helps build connections between traditionally distinct content areas. I'll also describe the results of an education experiment at Rutgers University where my colleagues and I redesigned a 100+ student introductory physics course for social science and humanities majors to address applied questions such as evaluating the energy cost of transport, and asking whether the United States could obtain all its energy from renewable sources. [Preview Abstract] |
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