How a cannon works

Introduction

Cannons are artilleries which use gunpowder and explosive material to launch a projectile. The classic old cannon were made of cast iron and used gun powder   to "explode" and generate the force of pressure which then pushed out a cannon ball, or balls, chains, nails, or whatever was rammed in. The first cannons were developed in china and the use of cannon expanded all over the world. In this article we are mostly interested in how this machinery works and will instruct in how to operate such artillery.

Basic components of cannon

This gun has three basic components: the tube, the carriage and the chassis. The tube rests on the carriage. Most tubes are made of cast iron. The tube and carriage rests on the chassis, which permits the cannon move left, right, forward or back to aim, load and fire. Altogether this weapon is called a piece.

Preparation

Preparing the cannon for firing started with placing a cartridge of black powder, which is gunpowder, made from paper, flannel or wool. How much powder was used is based on the distance to the target, the size of the gun and what type of projectile is used. In order to get the cartridge to the bottom of the tube a pushed into the tube, breach, with a rammer (long stick).

Ignition

A friction primer is used to ignite the black powder that is in the tube. The friction primer consists of a hollow tube that fits into the vent hole. At its top there is an opening through which a serrated wire can be inserted. The wire has a loop on it through which a lanyard, or rope, is attached.

When it is time to fire the cannon the rope on the friction primer is pulled. The serrated wire creates enough heat from friction to ignite the black powder that is in the primer tube. This fire ignites the black powder in the breech. The explosion that results from the breech powder being ignited propels the projectile out the end of the tube.

 

Aiming

Aiming the cannon is done by pointing the piece, the cannon, with a breech sight for the up and down elevation and the cannon was moved left or right for lateral positioning.

                                            history of flying machine



Ever since man first saw a bird fly, man has wanted to fly. The first attempts were efforts to fly like a bird by attaching feathers to their arms and flapping. Those attempts were unsuccessful.

What is an Airplane?

Most of us only have to look up into the sky to see an airplane, and many of us have traveled by airplane to places that would have taken much longer by any other means of transportation. An airplane by definition is an aircraft that has a fixed wing and is powered by propellers or jets.

The first powered air plane

kitty hawk

During 1890 while Orville and Wilbur Wright were working in a bicycle shop, the Wright Brothers got interested in flying. They learned that bicycles that were closer to the ground were faster. They read all the books they could find about airplanes to learn more. They then began building gliders near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The Wright Brothers improved the glider. In 1899 they made a large, two wing kite. After experimenting for a while on unmanned gliders, they made a glider where the pilot would control the airplane in the air. After working on glider experiments they found out how to steer a plane while in flight by developing a rudder (the tail of the plane) and flaps on the wings. With the rudder and the flaps, the pilot could control the direction of the airplane and the height

In December of 1903, the Wright Brothers became the first people to successfully fly a plane with a person in it. The plane flew one hundred twenty feet and flew only about twelve seconds. They had three successful flights that day. In 1903 the Wright Brothers made their first powered airplane that they named the "flyer." It was a biplane (two winged plane) that had a 12 horse power engine that they had built themselves. The pilot would lie on the lower wing on his stomach and steer the plane. In 1908 the Wright Brothers finally made a plane that could fly for more than one and a half hours.

Before the Wright Brothers - History of Flight

Around 400 BC - Flight in China

The discovery of the kite that could fly in the air by the Chinese started humans thinking about flying. Kites were used by the Chinese in religious ceremonies. They built many colorful kites for fun, also. More sophisticated kites were used to test weather conditions. Kites have been important to the invention of flight as they were the forerunner to balloons and gliders.

1485 Leonardo da Vinci - The Ornithopter and the Study of Flight.

Leonardo da Vinci made the first real studies of flight in the 1480's. He had over 100 drawings that illustrated his theories on bird and mechanical flight. The drawings illustrated the wings and tails of birds, ideas for man carrying machines, and devices for the testing of wings.
The Ornithopter flying machine was never actually created. It was a design that Leonardo da Vinci created to show how man could fly. The modern day helicopter is based on this concept. Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks on flight were reexamined in the 19th century by aviation pioneers.

1783 - Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier - The Flight of the First Hot Air BalloonThe brothers, Joseph Michel and Jacques Etienne Montgolfier, were inventors of the first hot air balloon. They used the smoke from a fire to blow hot air into a silk bag. The silk bag was attached to a basket. The hot air then rose and allowed the balloon to be lighter-than-air.
In 1783, the first passengers in the colorful balloon were a sheep, rooster and duck. It climbed to a height of about 6,000 feet and traveled more than one mile.

1799-1850's - George Cayley - GlidersSir George Cayley is considered the father of aerodynamics. Cayley experimented with wing design, distinguished between lift and drag, formulated the concepts of vertical tail surfaces, steering rudders, rear elevators, and air screws. George Cayley worked to discover a way that man could fly. Cayley designed many different versions of gliders that used the movements of the body to control. A young boy, whose name is not known, was the first to fly one of Cayley's gliders, the first glider capable of carrying a human.

For over 50 years, George Cayley made improvements to his gliders. Cayley changed the shape of the wings so that the air would flow over the wings correctly. Cayley designed a tail for the gliders to help with the stability. He tried a biplane design to add strength to the glider. George Cayley also recognized that there would be a need for machine power if the flight was to be in the air for a long time.
George Cayley wrote "On Ariel Navigation" that showed that a fixed wing aircraft with a power system for propulsion, and a tail to assist in the control of the airplane, would be the best way to allow man to fly.

Before the Wright Brothers created the first flying Airplane able to carry a human, there were those who inspired the idea. If not for their ideas and experiments perhaps airplanes as we know it today might not have been. The first ideas of the perfect airplane were the flapping-wing machines, called ornithopters. The Ornithopter is where the wings are providing both

How Superconducting Levitation Works

I thought this video introduced superconductors very clearly.

magnetic field on earth

Earth has a magnetic field. If you imagine a gigantic bar magnet inside of Earth, you'll have a pretty good idea what Earth's magnetic field is shaped like. Of course, Earth DOESN'T have a giant bar magnet inside it; instead, our planet's magnetic field is made by swirling motions of molten iron in Earth's outer core. Earth has two geographic poles: the North Pole and the South Pole. They are the places on Earth's surface that Earth's imaginary spin axis passes through. Our planet also has two magnetic poles: the North Magnetic Pole and the South Magnetic Pole. The magnetic poles are near, but not quite in the same places as, the geographic poles. The needle in a compass points towards a magnetic pole. When you are far away from a pole a compass is very helpful if you want to find your way around. The compass needle points pretty much due North (or South if you live in the Southern Hemisphere!). However, if you are near either pole, a compass becomes useless. It points towards the magnetic pole, not the true geographic pole. Those two poles could be quite far apart, and in different directions. Think how hard it must have been for early explorers to find their way around in the Arctic and Antarctic without being able to use a compass.

 Earth's geographic poles and magnetic poles

Earth's magnetic poles are actually pretty far from its geographic poles. In 2005, the North Magnetic Pole (NMP) was about 810 km (503 miles) from the Geographic North Pole. The NMP was in the Arctic Ocean north of Canada. The South Magnetic Pole (SMP) was about 2,826 km (1,756 miles) from the Geographic South Pole. The SMP was off the coast of Antarctica in the direction of Australia.

Did you notice how we said where the magnetic poles were in 2005? Guess what; the magnetic poles actually move around! Remember, swirling motions of molten metal in Earth's outer core make our planet's magnetic field. Those swirling motions are changing all the time. That means the magnetic field is changing, so the magnetic poles move! In the first part of the 20th century, the
poles usually moved about 9 km (5.6 miles) per year. Then, around 1970, they started moving faster. In recent years they have been moving about 41 km (25 miles) per year!
Sometimes Earth's magnetic field even flips over! The North and South Magnetic Poles trade places. This doesn't happen very often; usually at least a few hundred thousand years pass between these flips.

 What is the aurora?

The aurora (Northern and Southern Lights) mostly happen near the magnetic poles. That's because the charged particles (mostly electrons and protons) that cause the aurora follow along magnetic field lines towards the magnetic poles. When the particles run into air in Earth's atmosphere, the air glows in pretty colors - making the beautiful aurora!

The ENERGY BALL REPORT

By: Yasamin Abbaszadegan

For: Mr. Chung

Feb 9, 2012

In a series circuit the light bulbs are connected to the energy source (battery) by one component (wire). There is only one path in a series circuit in which the current can flow. The current in a series circuit goes through every component in the circuit and it stays constant. (2) There are some advantage and disadvantages to this way of designing. For instance if the circuit opens or closes by a switch or a bulb burns out the entire circuit would operate or stop operating. This is a disadvantage because for example if an apartment's electrical system uses series circuit for their lighting, if one light bulb burn out, all other electrical devices in the house would stop working as well. A parallel circuit is a little different from the series circuit; it has multiple paths for the current to flow. To make a parallel circuit, two or more components are connected in parallel. At least, it has two light bulbs or other electrical device.(2)  This design is more efficient to use in households because if a certain place in the circuit was opened not every electrical device in the circuit would stop working but only the switch for the specific bulb would stop working.

In our class every group were given an energy ball that had a tiny circuit inside it and had two metal plates on each side. We had made many experiments on how to make the ball lighten and make sounds. Conductivity of materials which means having atoms with loosely bound electrons that can be easily transferred to neighboring atoms, are important in success of such experiments. (1) We had observed that some materials make the ball work and some don't, for instance when the tips of two fingers or the palms of a person's hand touched the metal plates, the ball lightened but when we touched the plates by the back of our hands or by the hair on our hands it didn’t work or worked very weakly. The reason that the ball was activated was due to the conductivity created within the circuit, through hands and bodies of students.  Dampness and moisture on hands creates better conductivity, while dryness on hands makes poor conductivity and in these cases the balls were not activated.  Where materials have atoms with tightly held electrons that are not transferred anywhere, they become insulators. (2)

I understood that I had worked on my report not ahead of time and I had worked on it in the last minute giving me less time. I also didn’t review the sheets that the teacher had given so that I would ask some questions that I had confronted while writing this report. "PHYSICS concepts and connections" and "Hyperphysics" were the two references I used to write this report.

References:

(1)     Nave, C.R., (1011) Hyperphysics, Georgia State University.

(2)     Nowikow, l, & Heimbecker, B., (2001) Physics, Toronto/Vancouver, Canada: Irwing Publishing

Categories of Physics

It is good to know the Categories of Physics that are studied,

• Particle Physics
• Astrophysics
• Theoretical Physics
• Experimental/Applied Physics
• Mechanical Physics
• Quantum Physics (Quantum Mechanics)
• Bio Physics
• Optical Physics

My first post - My love of Physics

My love of physics is never ending!

I want to share all the exciting stuff about physics and my learning experience with all you people out there... :)