dance physics experiments

Science of Dance (Guide on Physics of Dance)

May 20, 2021
Science Facts

Dance Science is a field of research that aims to investigate dance extensively. From how lack of training can affect the health of dancers in this area to preventing injuries, this science has provided some surprising findings.

Researchers have looked at how to make dancers safer by finding better ways to spot heart problems before they become severe, and even looking at what happens when you get hurt on stage.

Furthermore, the Science of Dance explores the human body’s reaction to movement as it changes in space and time, the fundamental building blocks of any type of dance.

It focuses on developing fitness and personal abilities through incorporating studies of both the anatomy of the body and movement patterns.

This scientific knowledge facilitates understanding and knowledge of body movement while increasing athletic performance through the intricate balancing and acrobatics required to master specific movement patterns.

Physics Concepts Behind Dance

The study of physics—mainly classical physics—is integral to a well-rounded education. However, we rarely associate it with any kind of dance. Contrary to popular belief, classical mechanics can describe the movement and bodies of a dancer.

The laws of physics, however, just like any other physical object in the universe, may describe the movements of a dancer.

1. Newton’s First Law of Motion

Newton’s first law of motion states: “Any object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force.” When a dancer leaps, the center-of-gravity must is initially raised off the ground, and there needs to be a force acting on it.

This is because of a property known as inertia; all objects resist a change in their state of motion.

There are three forces acting on a dancer while he or she is in the air. There is the force of gravity, there is the force of friction, and there is the force of inertia.

These three forces cause the dancer to accelerate once he or she leaves the ground. There is a force that the dancers’ body applies on the ground that pushes them into the air (normal force).

The other force is one between the dancers and the earth (gravitational force), which pulls them down.

Although the dancer is breaking inertia with a kick or other movement, inertia is able to break the dancer back down to the floor again.

This shows that once all the forces of dance are working together to keep the dancer airborne, and these forces must combine to take the dancer back down as well.

Three forces that acts on a dancer - Science of dance

2. Newton’s Second Law of Motion

Newton’s Second Law of Motion states: “The rate of change of momentum of an object is directly proportional to the force applied.” Many forces act on a dancer, and every force has a direction and magnitude.

However, what most people never notice is that these opposing forces have to be balanced in order for a dancer not to fall over.

The normal has to act upwards in order to balance how gravity pulls the dancer downwards.

Now that we know that gravitational force, normal force, and friction act upon the dancer, we need to know-how? Let’s observe.

Experiment: A skydiver fell from the airplane and will have no initial velocity. When the skydiver jumps off the plane, they will not have any acceleration towards the ground.

Now when the skydiver is in mid-air, gravity is pulling them towards the land which pulls them. While these downward forces are trying to accelerate the skydiver toward the ground, upward forces such as air resistance prevent this and slow down the skydiver.

Dancing takes place on a similar principle. All the forces are stable, and the dancer stays upright, through the concept of balanced force physics-how the net force on a body must be zero in order to stand still.

So, an essential requirement of dancing is to balance the various forces acting on the body- including gravity and friction.

Gravitational force makes things fall. It acts upon all objects; no matter if they are on earth, gravity will continue to act as it does. So, how is it equalized?

The normal force is a support force that is compared to the weight of an object. The normal force supports objects and keeps them upright. In dance, we use the same concept when we are resting in a plie position.

As gravity is pulling us down into the earth, our hips would naturally like to collapse inward upon the supporting muscles of our body.

However, if we place our mind into the normal force of our leg support, then this upward force will support and hold our hips open as we sink down.

Thus, gravity is opposed, and the dancer stays upright.

Forces and friction - while dancing - Science of dance

3. Newton’s Third Law of Motion

Newton’s third law of motion states that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” This means you generate a force on the pointe shoe when you push against the ground; ballerinas call this pushing off.

The ground pushes back up at the dancer at the same speed and with the same strength, creating the force for pointe shoes to work.

But this can only happen in a balanced manner if the centre of gravity is aligned with the point of contact.

If the center of gravity were not aligned, then the forces would not be equal, which creates a state of unbalance.

The dancer would topple over. This also explains why dancers spin around the same rotational axis. If they didn’t, the center of gravity would move.

Maintaining balance is a combination of skill and experience. Dancers must anticipate, calculate and respond quickly to situations they encounter in order to keep their center of gravity and rotation stable.

The Science Behind The Effects of Dancing

Research overwhelmingly shows that dancing physical and mental conditions such as social isolation, stress, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, ADHD, and Alzheimer’s.

This is because it improves the frame of mind and even some cognitive skills. Scientists have also found that taking a class in ballroom dancing can improve cognitive function in healthy seniors and in older adults with mild impairment.

Dancing can be physically exhausting, and after dancing you should be ready to relax. The heightened endorphins help lengthen your attention span and make you more receptive to positive stimuli, on stage and off.

Happy thoughts make for a happy mood. It reduces stress and stimulates the release of serotonin, the feel-good hormone.

It also helps in neuroscience, including developing new neural connections, enabling long-term memory, and improving spatial recognition. All in all, it’s extremely good for health.

How A Dancer Controls Dizziness

The brain of a dancer rewires itself after constant training. Dancers are less likely to feel dizzy because they have fewer neurons sending signals to a cerebral cortex area responsible for the perception of dizziness.

Although an advantage for dancers, this adaptability can lead to greater feelings of dizziness when people give up dancing.

Their brains no longer receive the same input that made them adapted to suppress the response. They experience symptoms of perceiving motion as they would if they had never been dancers.

Dance Science Degrees

After completing a Bachelor’s degree in dance science at CSULB, students will be able to integrate the concepts of leading scientists and researchers within neuroscience, biomechanics, and psychology that guide their exploration of both fundamental and chronicle questions in the advancement of the self.

The major objective is to conduct research based on primary data that establish formulas for movement patterns.

The Dance Science major integrates coursework in dance and human performance with scientific disciplines so that students can connect with other majors on campus.

There are several levels of education in Dance Science. These include- Undergraduate, Post Graduate, and Ph.D.

A lot of universities in the United States offer a variety of courses as well. These degrees can go on to offer lifelong careers.

Dance Science Careers

Dance degrees are an excellent way to gain a firm grounding in a wide range of practical performance skills and conceptual dance techniques alongside social sciences and humanities.

They combine practice, theory, and aesthetics, making it the perfect bridge between the dance industry and academia.

They open the doors for a plethora of careers, including the following. Remember, this is only a small sample of the careers you can pursue with a degree in dance science.

1. Dance Movement Psychotherapist

Dance Movement Psychotherapy is a holistic and integrated approach to treatment that takes the whole person and the whole of his or her experience into account.

It sees the body as a means of expressing experiences, exploring issues, and finding solutions. It provides an opportunity to experiment with new possibilities for resolving difficulties, to find out what works best in different situations.

2. Dance Administrator

Dance administrators may work for independent dance studio owners, large corporations, or government organizations.

Regardless of their specific position, all dance administrators have similar responsibilities regarding bookkeeping, human resources, and business operations.

Dance administrators are also responsible for handling personnel problems ranging from employee relations to resolving performance issues within the dance company.

3. Choreographer

There are many roles in the entertainment industry that require choreography. A choreographer and the dancers they work with are responsible for several different types of performances, including features in films and television, live shows at theatres, and music videos.

In order to break into this career, you’ll usually need a degree in dance or movement arts, often combined with a related subject like a business.

Dance-Related Science Fair Projects

Science fair projects don’t have to be limited to only those that can easily explain through numbers and data. Sometimes, science fair projects are most intriguing when scientific theories are best demonstrated with visual aids.

For example, dance-related science fair projects are a unique way to combine science with the art of dance. Students can easily demonstrate their hypotheses and find solutions to a lot of questions through the following experiments:

1. Demonstrating Health Benefits

This experiment would involve taking a group of people of various ages who do not dance and get them to go to beginner dance classes.

At the start and end of six months, perform the same physical tests on both groups. This will reveal whether there are any health benefits from taking up dance lessons. These strength tests may include:

Flexibility- How far can they split
Muscular Endurance- How long they can hold a plank
Cardiovascular Endurance- How far can they run on a treadmill

2. Demonstrating Emotional Effects

Compile a series of videos of varying types of dances with different music. Play all the videos for a wide range of people and record the change in emotions.

Notice if the emotion has anything related to the dance and music. For example, if it’s a nostalgic, soulful song- what mood does it cause? If it’s an upbeat pop sound with breakdancing, how do they react?

List your observations and present them at the fair. If possible, do this with the judges as well! It’s an interesting spin to a science project.

3. Demonstrating Varying Effects of Dizziness

Put a group of dancers and non-dancers on a rolling chair and tell them to pull a lever when they are feeling dizzy.

Dancers and non-dancers alike reported feeling dizzy after about 7 seconds of spinning. But dancers took an average of six seconds longer to pull the lever than non-dancers.

The results suggest that everyone’s sensory cues are based on the same unconscious system for telling them when their bodies are spinning at a dangerous speed.

But in dancers, this system is strengthened by daily practice, making them more aware of how to balance on one foot and hold their arms above their shoulders without getting sick.

The biggest difference between dancers and non-dancers is that dancers will pull the lever about one second earlier.

They know when they are feeling unstable a lot sooner than non-dancers do. And the reason for that is that they have very strong proprioceptive awareness.

Proprioception is your sense of your body in space, knowing where your limbs are and how they relate to each other, and having a sense of balance.

So, they will not feel dizzy after they finish spinning. Note down your observations and present them at the fair.

How Is Science Used In Dance?

Science has always been an integral part of dance, with physics and anatomy class being an essential part of training at many schools.

Science is also used in dance in a more specific way to improve performance and reduce injury risk. The practice of dance science came about after the traditional method of fixing dancers’ problems individually proved inadequate. It simplifies the lives in many fields, such as:

1. Health and Performance

The physical health of a dancer is one important aspect that can seriously affect their ability to perform well.

These fitness routines are why many dancers have a strict diet that includes eating right and exercising daily.

They are also required to keep up with annual physicals just like any other athlete. This study of science is responsible for developing fitness routines for dancers that will keep them in the best possible physical and mental condition for dancing.

This understanding of the fitness required to be a performer is essential. Scientists realized that dance provides an excellent way to stay fit, but it is not enough to keep healthy. Various workout programs can help you enjoy dancing more while maintaining an outstanding fitness level.

Science has a straightforward answer for how one can use dance, exercise, and physical therapy together to improve the fitness level of students.

Three general types of classes are commonly available in gyms and health clubs: cardio-focused dance classes, aerobics classes, and flexibility/muscular endurance classes.

Each of these kinds of styles builds a different type of fitness. Hip hop dance classes are combined with other workouts that challenge posture and endurance, such as breathing exercises and strength training. These help in endurance, a longer career, and speedy recoveries with injuries.

2. Choreography

What is the science of choreography? It’s a complicated question because perfection in dance is hard to define. However, each dance move is broken down into minute components, and dancers scientifically analyze each part.

Understanding the scientific aspects of dance allows them to evaluate and improve their own choreography, which is crucial as it denotes the plot and structure of dance routines.

To a scientist, perfection isn’t a visible quality. It is measurable through mathematical and statistical processes. Dance has something similar, which is called “perfect score.” Science is utilized in various dance genres, from contemporary to hip hop.

Modern ballet, for example, incorporates a lot of biomechanical principles and physiological principles, such as understanding the anatomy of the body and how the structure interacts with force to create motion.

Principles of physics and human physiology are used to improve the body’s efficiency and control. Mechanics help dancers proportion their weight to not overwork limbs, particularly hands and wrists.

Science is used to minimize frictional forces, leading to injuries such as pulled muscles, torn ligaments, and even joint damage.

In ballet, dancing a perfect pointe shoe means having one’s heel on the floor, and all toes pointed. A perfect pirouette is where the dancer does not lose her balance and keeps her feet in line with her hips, shoulders, and head while turning on one foot.

The excellent turnout shows that every leg muscle has been used to achieve the outside position of the foot joints in a turned-out position. Leg muscles aren’t allowed to make an effort during this movement. Every one of these moves has its base in science.

3. Mind-Body Relationship

It is vital for dancers to understand the relationships between their minds and their bodies as they must be able to control their bodies and allow them to put a soul in routines.

Investigating this is important, as we can see the human body as a complex machine, and dance requires very complicated manoeuvres which allow dancers to communicate with their bodies.

Due to this intimate relationship between mind and body, dancers are in a unique position to test the connection between the two, and how it plays a role in their performance.

Additionally, dance is gradually becoming especially important for the field of neuroscience. Researchers learn that dance, and the creative arts in general offer insight into disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders, and even mental disorders like depression.

Scientists study the mind-body relationship to better understand the link between thoughts, emotions, and the brain, focusing on how the brain reacts to and starts movement during dancing.

Dancers can quickly provide insights into how thought processes and movement because of the creative component involved in their performances.

The study of dance can reveal how spontaneous responses differ from movements (i.e., routines) that are practised or memorized. This has a basis in neuroscience.

The Conclusion

Dance is considered to be part of the arts, but it is interesting to realize that there is a large amount of science in dance.

Dance Science investigates it extensively. This area of study is an emerging, multi-disciplinary field that seeks to understand, not just the physical and aesthetic aspects of dance, but also the cognitive, emotional, social and spiritual reactions we have to movement and music.

From this viewpoint, dance is seen as a deeply-rooted human behaviour, and has an amazing impact on life.

The Science Experiment: Dance's Growing Scientific Curiosity

A bespectacled man draws a line in mid-air, as if extending a string from his chest. He retracts his hands, cupping them in front of his sternum, and flutters his fingers. With the flourish of one palm, he circumscribes an invisible sphere: elegant, swift, precise. You might almost mistake him for a dancer.

In fact, he’s a physicist, one of several featured in Three Views of the Higgs and Dance , a short film created by Emily Coates and Sarah Demers at CERN, the world’s largest particle laboratory, near Geneva, Switzerland. As colleagues at Yale University, Coates, the director of the dance studies program, and Demers, a professor of physics, have teamed up in recent years to examine dance through the lens of physics and vice versa. The body language of researchers describing the Higgs boson—the elusive subatomic particle discovered at CERN in 2012—caught Coates’ choreographic eye.

“It’s like finding a trove of new sea life or something,” she says, laughing. “The repertoire of gestures is innovative, continually changing and, to my mind, doing a lot of work in terms of how discoveries in that field get pushed forward.”

The collaboration between Coates and Demers, who have also developed a cross-disciplinary course at Yale called The Physics of Dance, is just one example of dance-science projects that seem to be proliferating lately, from Gilles Jobin’s 2013 Quantum , also created at CERN, to Jody Oberfelder’s participatory study of the human heart, 4Chambers , staged at a former hospital in Brooklyn earlier this year. In the past five years, artists from Jonah Bokaer to Miguel Gutierrez to Wayne McGregor have peered into the science of the brain, exploring memory and perception in relation to movement. Last fall in London, McGregor gathered more than a decade’s worth of his science-inspired research into a gallery exhibition, Thinking with the Body . That title might resonate with Jennifer Monson, another choreographer whose work has long bridged science and dance. And don’t forget Karole Armitage, who tackled relativity, string theory and quantum mechanics in her 2010 Three Theories and whose next production, premiering at the Museum of Natural History this spring, addresses global warming.

The heart, the mind, the planet, the universe; realms both too small and too large to imagine: It’s no wonder choreographers are drawn from the studio to subjects more often examined in the lab. If a dancemaker’s most basic materials are the body, space and time, science offers ways of newly understanding and shaping all three.

Gilles Jobin, who is based in Switzerland, notes that while he has observed a growing scientific curiosity among choreographers, it’s not a passing craze. “I think it’s more than a trend,” he says. “Our world is increasingly fragmented, and we have a different mental picture of how things are organized around us.” As technology and science grow more entwined with our daily lives, art reflects that. And scientists need artists, too. As Jobin says, “We can teach them different ways of thinking. Artists tend to go around problems in very original ways.”

Of course, “dance” and “science” are massive fields that could interact in as many ways as there are species of sea life. As one of the first participants in Collide@CERN, a residency program founded in 2011 to support artist-scientist exchanges, Jobin turned to science for structure, using principles of particle physics to devise movement.

“I wanted to find systems where the dancers could generate their own choreography in a very precise way—like rules of a game,” he says. “Particle physics is a lot about interactions and collisions, and I thought that inside those I could find some system to apply to our scale.” That approach didn’t quite pan out. “The problem with particle physics is you’re talking about the smallest of the small,” he adds, “and the rules that apply on that scale have nothing to do with the rules we apply on our scale.” But his conversations with physicists unveiled other ideas—about gravity and electromagnetism, for instance—that gave rise to choreographic devices. He stresses that Quantum , for six dancers, is not about physics. (“You’re not going to learn anything about particle physics by looking at it.”) Science is a means to the end of dance.

For others, like Jennifer Monson, the opposite is true: Dance is, among many things, a prism through which to appreciate the natural world. In BIRD BRAIN , developed with environmental scientists between 2000 and 2006, Monson followed the migratory routes of birds and gray whales across large stretches of space and time. BIRD BRAIN: Ducks and Geese Migration , for example, took her from Texas to Minnesota over 10 weeks, with around 30 site-specific, outdoor performances along the way. That investigation continues to inform her current project, Live Dancing Archive .

“I found that dance itself is a research tool for understanding the relationships in ecosystems,” says Monson, who was interested in biology from a young age. “When I’m dancing in a landscape, I sense that my body is able to generate knowledge about time and scale and space on multiple levels; it has this knowledge about geologic time, plant time, animal time and the relationship between those. It’s a kind of embodied knowledge that’s different from just collecting data and analyzing it.”

For the audience, too, BIRD BRAIN wasn’t so much about dance itself. “I was really thinking of the dancing as a vehicle to experience the environment,” Monson says.

Other artists choose to zoom in on the science of the human body. In 4Chambers , Jody Oberfelder used interactive movement, installation and video to heighten participants’ awareness of their own beating hearts. That inspired her next project, still in progress, about the brain. “I’m thinking of it as a choreographed experience for people to learn more about how their mind makes connections,” she says, “how the society of your brain interacts with the society of the world.”

Behind every dance-science collaboration is the potential for creative breakthroughs, the kind that can only come from a fresh perspective on one’s own field. In 2004, Monson established iLAND (the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance) to encourage what she calls “hybrid processes” between life scientists and movement artists. All are encouraged to delve into the others’ methods and practices: Choreographers dissect fish; botanists dance. “We talk a lot about how exciting it is to be a beginner at one thing when you’re an expert at something else,” Monson says.

At Yale, Coates and Demers similarly keep disciplines in flux. Their Physics of Dance course—and the forthcoming textbook they’re co-authoring based on their curriculum—involves as much movement as math, both in and out of the classroom. One unit, for instance, “looks at angular momentum and torque in relation to the ways in which Balanchine, as if he were a physicist, really brilliantly altered the pirouette,” Coates says.

“When we started planning the course,” says Demers, “one of our basic principles was to place physics and dance on equal footing, meaning we wouldn’t use dance to teach physics exclusively or vice versa. We were interested in diving into both disciplines with real integrity.

“That said,” she adds, “I haven’t found a better way to teach concepts like Newton’s Third Law, the idea that anytime two things are in contact, they give each other equal and opposite force. It’s a very tricky, counterintuitive thing, and this class was the first time I felt like it really clicked. It was obvious that working through these ideas with your body was incredibly powerful in getting an intuition for the science.”

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Dancing with science: teaching physics through dance.

Lesson Plan: Dance Lab - Exploring Physics Through Dance

Objective: The objective of this lesson is for students to learn and understand the principles of physics through dance. Students will work in groups to conduct experiments related to dance movements, measure and compare data, develop hypotheses, analyze results, and create a dance routine that demonstrates the principles of physics.

Duration: This lesson is designed to be completed in one or two class periods, depending on the availability of time and the complexity of the experiments.

Common Core Standards: PS2.A: Forces and Motion

Measuring tape

Stopwatch or timer

Recording sheets for data collection

Writing materials for hypothesis, data recording, and conclusion

Dance space or studio

Introduction and Group Formation (20 minutes)

Discuss: Tell me what you think the connection is between dance and physics.

Explain that dancers often utilize physics principles to enhance their movements and performances.

Ask: Can you think of any examples of how physics concepts, such as force, motion, and energy, are present in dance?

Talk about how understanding these concepts could help improve your dancing.

Introduce the concept of the Dance Lab and explain that students will be conducting experiments to explore the physics behind various dance movements.

Optional: you could show YouTube videos of vertical jumps, pirouettes, and plie leaps to help prepare students.

Do: Divide the students into three groups and assign each group one of the following tasks:

Task 1: Measure/compare the height of dancers who perform vertical jumps with and without moving their arms.

Task 2: Measure the speed of dancers who perform pirouettes with their arms out and their arms in a tight circle.

Task 3: Measure the distance of dancers who perform leaps with and without a plie first.

Say: When you’re finished with this task, you’ll be working together to create a short dance routine that demonstrates at least 3 principles of physics.

Write a list of well-known principles to help students come up with ideas. Here are some words you could include:

Newton's Laws of Motion

Energy/Conversion

You can provide resources to help remind them what the selected physics principles mean.

Do: Provide each group with specific instructions for their assigned task. Make sure they understand how to measure the relevant variables. Allow them to choose who is dancing, and remind them to take safety precautions.

Dance Experiment (45-60 minutes)

The following are reminder prompts you can say during the class to keep groups on task:

Say: In your groups, you should be creating a hypothesis about the outcome you expect from your experiment.

Encourage them to consider the relationship between the physics principles they are exploring and the dance movements they observed.

Say: At this point, you should be conducting your experiment, measuring and recording the relevant data, and making observations.

Encourage students to collaborate, share responsibilities, and support each other during the data collection process.

Say: You should be finishing up your experiment and moving on to analyzing the data and comparing it to your initial hypothesis.

Have them discuss and interpret their findings as a group, noting any patterns or relationships they observe.

Discuss: I’d love to hear what your groups learned from this experiment and your takeaway!

Allow the groups to briefly share their findings with the class.

Dance Routine and Presentation (35-50 minutes)

Say: Groups that are finished with their experiments should be moving on to your collaborative dance routine.

Walk around the classroom and encourage the students. If some don’t feel comfortable performing, that’s okay. Instead, encourage them to take the lead on including the scientific elements.

Say: Okay, it’s time to show off what you’ve done!

Give each group the opportunity to present their dance routine to the class.

As each group performs, have the other students observe and identify the demonstrated physics principles.

Discuss: Facilitate a class discussion after each routine to discuss the physics concepts showcased and their connection to the movements.

Reflection and Discussion (10 minutes)

Discuss: Lead a class reflection on the lesson, allowing students to share their thoughts on the connection between dance and physics.

Ask: How can understanding physics change the way we dance?

Assignment: For homework tonight, you’ll each write a conclusion summarizing your group’s experiment, findings, and whether their hypothesis was supported or disproven. You can also include your thoughts on the collaborative dances. These conclusions should be 300 to 500 words.

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0 as of June 21, 2000
5,479 as of February 3, 2002
8,779 as of July 3, 2002
11,162 as of November 14, 2002
13,383 as of January 20, 2003
17,580 as of May 19, 2003
22,847 as of December 20, 2003
28,310 as of May 24, 2004
34,622 as of November 29, 2004
41,267 as of May 17, 2005
56,302 as of March 31, 2006
69,557 as of December 23, 2006
80,640 as of May 20, 2007
103,805 as of May 18, 2008
124,690 as of May 13, 2009
126,646 as of June 7, 2009

Some statements about dance technique can be restated using a physics vocabulary...
Interplay between reality (constraints of physical law) and illusion is part of the art...
Lifts "feel" the way they do for exactly the same reason that a large star will collapse into a black hole...
Comment about art vs. physics...
The harder you push, the more rapidly the momentum changes.
The longer you push, the greater the total change in momentum.
up & slightly to-the-left push from air track (there's no frictional force parallel to the air track)
The harder you push, the more quickly the object "spins up."
The further from the spin axis you apply the forces used to generate the torque, the more quickly the object "spins up."
The longer you push, the greater the total change in angular momentum.
Net force is zero (otherwise your momentum would change: you might fall)
Net torque is zero (otherwise your angular momentum would change: you might tip over)
shift foot to move floor contact area
adjust arms/legs/torso to move c.g.
slow turns: maintain static balance
fast turns: rotation axis shouldn't wobble (much)
Upside-down cat curves its back "the easy way."
Cat straightens its back while bending around its middle to its right.
Cat comes out of its bend-to-the-right while arching its back "the hard way."
Cat straightens its back while bending around its middle to its left.
Cat comes out of its bend-to-the-left while curving its back "the easy way."
more massive -> greater gravitational pull
mass is to gravity like electric charge is to electrostatics: in electrostatics: the larger the electric charge something has, the greater the force it feels in an electric field.
t is duration of jump (in seconds)
h is height, measured in feet.
Height of the dancer will influence how this looks: a six-foot-tall dancer jumps 1/6 of his height, a five-foot-tall dancer jumps 1/5 of her height.
a six-foot dancer executing a 1/5 -his-height jump will stay in the air for about 0.55 seconds, instead of 0.50 seconds (he can only do 9 jumps in 5 seconds, instead of 10)

Gravity only influences the vertical component of motion, not the horizontal:
Height vs. time is a parabola, while horizontal distance vs. time is a straight line:

dancing with a partner
effects relating to body size in more detail
impact and stress injuries.

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Science Fair Project Ideas for Kids, Middle & High School Students ⋅

Science Fair Ideas With the Topic Dance

Tumbling or Cheerleading Science Fair Projects

While dancing is an art form and a type of self-expression, all types of dance present a wide variety of opportunities to study science, as well. From the biological and mechanical basics that make human movement possible to the more advanced physical traits of complicated motions of balance, the topic of dance brings with it a number of excellent inspirations for science fair projects.

Science of Spotting

For this project, study the science behind spotting. Spotting is a technique used by ballet dancers to avoid dizziness while spinning, where the dancer keeps her eyes fixed to a single spot and spins her head in one quick turn during a spin, rather than spinning along with the rate of the rest of her body. Examine the anatomical causes of balance vs. dizziness and assess why it is that spotting prevents the latter.

Balance Practice

For a science fair project based on balance, look at how dancers are able to balance their bodies in precarious positions. Specifically, look at how balancing is based in micro-movement, rather than keeping completely still. Compare the tiny movements of a dancer's balanced body to other types of structures, such as shock absorbers or architectural designs.

Rotation Science

Study the science of rotation and how it affects movement in dance. Use dancer volunteers to help you with experiments designed to study how different factors in the shape of a dancer's body or the type of leverage achieved for a spin will affect the speed and number of rotations they can achieve from a single push-off. Examine factors like potential energy and wind resistance.

Dancing Health and Science

With this fair theme, explore the various ways in which healthy habits improve conditions for dancers and why. Examine topics like stretching or potassium intake and how these things can help prevent muscle cramps, or factors like anatomy and how it relates to the difference between proper and improper techniques and causes of injury. Try to design and build some functional experimental models that be used to show the effects of improper pressure on joints, tendons and ligatures.

Physical Coordination and Dance

Using this theme, perform statistical experiments to test whether intensive study of dance improves basic physical coordination. Use simple tests (such as catching a thrown ball or dropped ruler) to study the reflexes of two groups of people; those with advanced dance training and those with little or no dance experience. Check the two sets of data to see if dancing skills affect reflexes and response time in other areas.

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Education.com: What Type of Dance Burns the Most Calories
The Children's Museum of Indianapolis: Ballet Balance
Dance Magazine: The Science of Spotting

About the Author

Lauren Vork has been a writer for 20 years, writing both fiction and nonfiction. Her work has appeared in "The Lovelorn" online magazine and thecvstore.net. Vork holds a bachelor's degree in music performance from St. Olaf College.

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Creative Dance Teaching Ideas and Resources

School dance ideas – dancing science

Dance in the classroom is all about children having opportunities for exploration and discovery. As we do in science experiments, in dance children create a hypothesis about how they will use the elements of dance, they experiment through improvisation, draw conclusions about the results and then report, either orally, physically or in written form about what happened.

Turning STEM into STEAM is widely accepted as promoting critical thinking skills, communication, and creativity.

Dance, science, history.

Our prehistoric ancestors used dance as a way of bonding, thereby ensuring their chances of survival, according to a 2006 study in the Public Library of Science genetics journal . (Ebstein, 2006) They traced two genes from current dancers that identified a predisposition to being a good communicator.

Steven J. Mithen in his book “The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language and Body” (Harvard University Press, 2006) asserts that having these communication powers made dance an important interaction tool for Neanderthals. Mithen also identifies the importance of dance as a part of mating rituals where the strength of a partner was the difference between life and death.

He contends that humans with the ability to dance would have strong physical attributes including coordination and balance. The physical benefits of dance in our age has been researched at length and includes identifying strength and endurance, flexibility and agility and advanced fine and gross motor skills as some of the attributes of dancers.

Cognition and dance

Many of the same cognitive processes are used in dance as in science. They both use anticipation and prediction, problem solving and planning as well as pattern recognition.

Since 1971 scientists have been representing their discoveries through dance as a part of Dance Your Ph.D . Looking at the original science dance about Protein synthesis will provide insights into the learning that could occur on multiple levels by doing this kind of a dance science collaboration.

You can encourage further problem solving by making a dance from scientific findings and check for student understanding of the original science experiment.

Science experiments for dance activities

Key to the success of this combination of dance and science is a clear understanding, by both the students and the teacher, of both areas of study. The students must clearly understand the science behind the experiment. Just watching the process is not enough. A written activity that asks the students to explain the results will ensure that they are clear about what they have observed.

Of equal importance is the students understanding what elements of dance they are using and why. It is not enough to visually mimic the experiment. The use of movement must add to the understanding of the science.

As they gather the information they already know, ask the students : What occurred in the experiment? Why did that phenomenon occur?

As they plan for movement, ask the students : How will you represent it? What dance elements do you plan to use?

On reflection, ask the students : Why you have chosen those movements? What has made the results of the experiment clearer through the movement?

To help the students make connections between dance and science as processes, you could use the documentation structure from the experiment. Consider using these headings:

Each experiment has its own title that describes what it is investigating. Dance also uses titles but not always in the literal form. Students can find the contrasts between the literal and the abstract.

The planning stage of both science experiment and movement experiment could require materials. The students could make suggestions for music, sound, stimulus objects or props that they may need to have on hand to assist with their dance.

My Prediction

The science hypothesis asks the students to make a prediction about what they are exploring while still leaving room for unexpected discoveries. The dance predictions could be about what they envisage their dance to be and their ideas for making the dance.

This is a step by step description of what you did in the experiment. This is a great beginning to get students journaling about making dance. It documents the processes of choreography and reminds them of how things worked in the past and how they could use them in the future.

This requires students to reflect on their dance. Try to link the dance achievements for each year level to the questions you will be asking in this reflective phase.

For example, in the P-2 band you could ask them to describe the effect of the dance they made and how did it make them feel. In years 3-4 they may be required to describe and discuss the similarities and differences between each groups dance. For years 5-6 they could have to explain why they chose the elements of dance or the props they used to represent the experiment.

This is an opportunity for a deeper reflection on the dance making process and the science behind the experiment. They can identify what they were right about, what was different and what was challenging. It takes their reflections further towards reflexivity.

My favourite science experiments to use for dance activities.

Dancing Raisins

Shaving cream rain clouds

Dancing Oobleck

Me and my Shadow

Using dance and science together allows the creative and imaginary world of dance to connect with the questioning and reason of science. A creative combination of science and art is a process that few students will forget. It leads the students to imagine new ways of scientific communication in an ever changing world.

For more ideas about how you can use science and dance in your classroom take a look at the Free Lesson plans.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “Are Dancers Genetically Different Than The Rest Of Us? Yes, Says Hebrew University Researcher.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 16 February 2006. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/02/060213183707.htm>.

The last Term of the year is always an important one for the Year 6…

Whether you’re a beginning teacher or an experienced teacher it always helps to have reference…

This dance activity is a really fun way to get the new school year started.…

← Dance activities that link to the ‘real world’
Creative dance activities to use coming up to a break →

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At STREB Action Lab, Dance and Physics Collide

Choreographer Elizabeth Streb pushes the boundaries of Newtonian physics—with dance. In her show Forces , dancers fly, fall, and collide in mid-air. No wonder the "action architect" has her share of scientist fans, among them, big-thinking particle physicist Lisa Randall.

Dementia Takes The Stage In 'The Other Place'

Performing arts, experimenting on consciousness, through art, a new view of newton in 'isaac's eye'.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Pendulum waves, what it shows :.

Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and random motion. One might call this kinetic art and the choreography of the dance of the pendulums is stunning! Aliasing and quantum revival can also be shown.

How it works :

The period of one complete cycle of the dance is 60 seconds. The length of the longest pendulum has been adjusted so that it executes 51 oscillations in this 60 second period. The length of each successive shorter pendulum is carefully adjusted so that it executes one additional oscillation in this period. Thus, the 15th pendulum (shortest) undergoes 65 oscillations. When all 15 pendulums are started together, they quickly fall out of sync—their relative phases continuously change because of their different periods of oscillation. However, after 60 seconds they will all have executed an integral number of oscillations and be back in sync again at that instant, ready to repeat the dance.

Setting it up :

The pendulum waves are best viewed from above or down the length of the apparatus. Video projection is a must for a large lecture hall audience. You can play the video below to see the apparatus in action. One instance of interest to note is at 30 seconds (halfway through the cycle), when half of the pendulums are at one amplitude maximum and the other half are at the opposite amplitude maximum.

Our apparatus was built from a design published by Richard Berg 1 at the University of Maryland. He claims their version is copied from one at Moscow State University. Dr. Jiří Drábek at Palacký University in the Czech Republic has informed us that it was originally designed and constructed by Ernst Mach when he was Professor of Experimental Physics at Charles-Ferdinand University (today known as Charles University) in Prague around the year 1867. The demonstration is used in the Czech Republic under the name Machuv vlnostroj —the "Wavemachine of Mach." The apparatus we have was designed and built by Nils Sorensen.

James Flaten and Kevin Parendo 2 have mathematically modeled the collective motions of the pendula with a continuous function. The function does not cycle in time and they show that the various patterns arise from aliasing of this function—the patterns are a manifestation of spatial aliasing (as opposed to temporal). Indeed, if you've ever used a digital scope to observe a sinusoidal signal, you have probably seen some of these patterns on the screen when the time scale was not set appropriately.

Here at Harvard, Prof Eric Heller has suggested that the demonstration could be used to simulate quantum revival. So here you have quantum revival versus classical periodicity!

1Am J Phys 59 (2), 186-187 (1991).

2Am J Phys 6 9 (7), 778-782 (2001).

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The Dancing Raisin Experiment

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Raisins may be dehydrated grapes, but when you add a certain liquid to them they become hip-hoppin’ dancers—at least, that's how they look.

To demonstrate the principles of density and buoyancy , all you need is a little carbon dioxide gas to get those raisins doing the jitterbug. To create carbon dioxide in the kitchen you can use baking soda and vinegar or with the less messy (and less predictable) clear, carbonated soda.

This is a low-cost project, and the materials you need are easy to find in the grocery store. They include:

2 to 3 clear glasses (depending on how many versions of the experiment you want to run at the same time)
A box of raisins
Clear, well-carbonated soda (tonic water, club soda, and Sprite all work well) or baking soda, vinegar, and water

Start by asking following question and record the answer on a piece of paper: What do you think happens when you put raisins in soda?

The Dancing Raisins Experiment

Decide whether you want to use soda or baking soda and vinegar to conduct the experiment or if you want to compare what happens in both versions of the experiment.

Note: For the baking soda and vinegar version of the experiment, you’ll need to fill the glass halfway with water. Add 1 tablespoon of baking soda, stirring to make sure it dissolves completely. Add enough vinegar to make the glass about three-quarters full, then proceed to Step 3.
Put out one clear glass for every different type of soda you’ll be testing. Try different brands and flavors; anything goes so long as you can see the raisins. Make sure your soda hasn’t gone flat and then fill each glass to the halfway mark.
Plop a couple of raisins into each glass. Don’t be alarmed if they sink to the bottom; that’s supposed to happen.
Turn on some dance music and observe the raisins. Soon they should begin dancing their way to the top of the glass.

Observations and Questions to Ask

What happened when you first dropped the raisins in the glass?
Why did they sink?
Once they started "dancing," did the raisins stay at the top?
What else did you notice happening to the raisins? Did they look different?
Do you think the same thing would have happened if you put raisins in water?
What other objects do you think would "dance" in soda?

Scientific Principles at Work

As you observed the raisins, you should have noticed that they initially sank to the bottom of the glass. That’s due to their density, which is greater than that of liquid. But because raisins have a rough, dented surface, they are filled with air pockets. These air pockets attract the carbon dioxide gas in the liquid, creating the little bubbles you should have observed on the surface of the raisins.

The carbon dioxide bubbles increase the volume of each raisin without raising its mass. When the volume increases and the mass does not, the density of the raisins is lowered. The raisins are now less dense than the surrounding fluid, so they rise to the surface.

At the surface, the carbon dioxide bubbles pop and the raisins’ density changes again. That’s why they sink again. The whole process is repeated, making it look as though the raisins are dancing.

Extend the Learning

Try putting the raisins in a jar that has a replaceable lid or directly into a bottle of soda. What happens to the raisins when you put the lid or cap back on? What happens when you take it back off?

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Observing the dance of a vortex−antivortex pair, step by step

Department of Physics and Astronomy, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99163, USA

The investigation of vortices in superfluids is a fascinating and active line of research that, by now, has a history spanning over half a century. Starting from the first observations of quantized circulation in liquid helium in the 1950s [1] , the field has undergone tremendous progress. Nowadays, dilute-gas Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) provide a powerful tool with which vortex research can be pushed into new regimes, and several hallmark results have been obtained, reaching from interferometric measurements of the quantum mechanical phase of individual vortices to the direct imaging of large vortex lattices containing over 300 vortices in a regular array [2] . Now Tyler Neely and collaborators at the University of Arizona in the US, the Jack Dodd Center for Quantum Technology in New Zealand, and the University of Queensland in Australia [3] are adding another chapter to the story of vortices in superfluids. They have succeeded in creating vortex dipoles, consisting of a vortex paired with an antivortex, in such a controlled way that the dynamics can be studied in detail. An antivortex differs from a vortex only in the orientation of the circular fluid flow. When a vortex and an antivortex meet in a harmonic trap (such as the one holding the BEC in the Neely experiment), they can pair up to form a vortex dipole and then perform an enchanting dance that has now been imaged for the first time. The long lifetime of the vortex dipole and the stability of the observed dynamics are quite intriguing, indicating that such dynamics may also play a key role in other situations where vortices and antivortices emerge, e.g., superfluid turbulence. In another recent paper, periodic streets of vortex pairs in BECs have been studied numerically by Sasaki et al. [4] . Vortex physics also exists in systems as diverse as superfluid Fermi systems, magnetic flux lines in superconductors, and neutron stars. Thus a precise understanding of vortex dynamics is highly desirable, and BECs can lead the way in elucidating the physics of vortices in a well-controlled environment.

Vortices emerge when a superfluid is subjected to rotation. At first sight, it may seem surprising that something as apparently simple as inducing rotation would lead to interesting dynamics. To see why this is the case, recall that the velocity of a superfluid is proportional to the gradient of the phase of the underlying macroscopic wave function. The curl of a gradient field is generally zero and thus the flow is irrotational. Consequently, interesting dynamics are bound to occur when the irrotational fluid is subjected to rotation. The outcome is best understood by first considering the flow of water in a sink after the drain plug has been pulled. The water starts rushing down the drain and after a short while forms a rather stable vortex above the drain. If a little paper boat is placed into the swirling water, the boat spirals around the drain in such a way that its bow always points into the same direction. This is due to the fact that conservation of angular momentum of the water spiraling towards the drain leads to a 1 / r dependence of the fluid velocity on the distance r from the drain, “compensating” for the rotation of the fluid around the drain. So the flow is irrotational, even though the stream is clearly curved. If, on the other hand, the boat is placed such that it stretches across the central eddy, then it is found to rapidly spin around its vertical axis. For a rotating superfluid, the situation is quite similar: based on the requirement of a uniquely valued wave function, similar 1 / r dependence can be derived. Vorticity, defined as the curl of the velocity field, is concentrated in the vortex core where the superfluid density goes to zero. Everywhere else the fluid is irrotational, as expected for a superfluid.

Over the past decade, many experimental techniques have been devised and implemented to generate vorticity in BECs [2] . Most of these techniques either create vortices that all spin in the same way (i.e., no antivortices), or offer little to no control over the vortex/antivortex pairs that they may create. The technique used by Neely et al. consists of dragging a small cylindrical obstacle through the BEC (Fig. 1 , top panel). The obstacle is experimentally realized by a focused laser beam that exerts a repulsive dipole force on the atoms. In the wake of the obstacle, vortices and antivortices can be generated. The effect is familiar, for example, from the von Karman vortex street of clouds sometimes observed behind islands in the ocean (see Fig. 2 ). Vortices generated behind obstacles also influence the design of car antennas and are said to be responsible for the collapse of cooling towers at the Ferrybridge power station in the 1960s [5] . The fact that this mechanism also works for superfluids was demonstrated using computer simulations in 1992 [6] and in a BEC experiment in 2001 [7] . Neely et al. have now perfected this technique to such a degree that, for the first time, the dance of a vortex and an antivortex in a harmonic trap can be followed in detail.

To understand this, first consider a classical vortex ring such as a smoke ring that can be emitted by smokers and volcanoes alike (Fig. 1 , bottom panel). Vortex rings are also believed to occur inside a pumping heart [8] and exist in superfluids as well [9] . One of the familiar features of a smoke ring is that it does not stand still but travels forward, in a direction pointing along its symmetry axis. This is expressed in the Helmholtz vortex law, which says that a vortex floats along with the local fluid velocity. For a vortex ring, this means that any small segment of the ring moves along with the fluid velocity at its location generated by the rest of the ring. In this way, the vortex ring propels itself forward.

A conceptual connection between the familiar vortex ring and the motion of the vortex dipole in the Neely experiment can be made by considering the oblate BEC as essentially a plane cutting horizontally through the vortex ring along its symmetry axis. At the intersection, a vortex and an antivortex arise (see Fig. 1 , bottom panel). This vortex dipole moves along a straight line through the trap in much the same way as the classical vortex ring propels itself forward. The finite extent of the BEC and the presence of the harmonic trapping potential complicate the situation. When approaching the end of the cloud, the vortex/antivortex pair separates. This is reminiscent of the spreading of a classical vortex ring hitting a wall. The vortex and antivortex then precess in opposite directions along the edge of the BEC until they meet again on the other side, pairing up and starting the next cycle of their dance. For an individual vortex, such precession has been observed before [10] and can intuitively be understood as follows: the inhomogeneous density distribution of a harmonically trapped BEC leads to a radially directed buoyancy force on a vortex. Since the vortex is a rotating object, it responds to a radial force by performing azimuthal motion. This is related to the Magnus effect in classical fluids, which affects the motion of spinning balls in many ball games, and also led to the idea of the Flettner boat, a sailing boat that replaces conventional sails by spinning cylinders.

One of the beautiful aspects of the new experiments is the repeatability with which vortex dipoles can now be produced. Since vortex cores are usually below the optical imaging resolution of the detection system, observing them requires turning the trap off and letting the BEC expand for a few milliseconds before imaging the cloud. This type of detection is necessarily destructive, and obtaining a coherent sequence of images requires a sufficient amount of repeatability over many experimental runs. In the experiment, the motion is followed over several cycles in the harmonic trap, and excellent agreement is found with numerical simulations. A second intriguing aspect is the long lifetimes of the dipoles: even though the vortex and antivortex come very close during the straight parts of their motion, they are not observed to annihilate right away. This surprising stability is explained by the oblate geometry of the BEC: the vortex and antivortex lines in the experiment are very short and therefore fairly resistant to bending. The vortex line does not bend, split, and reconnect with the antivortex line, and thus is fairly stable. Finally, adding even more players to the field, Neely et al. have repeated their experiment with an increased speed of their obstacle, thus creating aggregates of up to three vortices and three antivortices. Interestingly, novel dynamics is observed: the vortices form a group that moves together, and so do the antivortices. These two groups then form the two parts of the dipole.

The research in vortices is still going strong even though it has been over 50 years since the first prediction and detection of a vortex in a superfluid. The observed dance of a vortex dipole is the newest highlight in a line of research that, over the years, has taught us much about the peculiar phenomenon of superfluidity, and even more may be just around the corner. One can speculate that with controlled generation of a vortex and antivortex now achieved, it may just be a matter of time until controlled reconnections between vortex lines can be observed in detail. This would be yet another milestone on the path towards an understanding of quantum turbulence, a hot topic currently entering the BEC scene [11] .

See, e.g., R. J. Donnelly, Quantized vortices in Helium II (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991)[ Amazon ][ WorldCat ]
See, e.g., P. G. Kevrekidis et al. , Emergent Nonlinear Phenomena in Bose-Einstein Condensates (Springer, Berlin, 2008)[ Amazon ][ WorldCat ]
T. W. Neely, E. C. Samson, A. S. Bradley, M. J. Davis, and B. P. Anderson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104 , 160401 (2010)
K. Sasaki, N. Suzuki, and H. Saito, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104 , 150404 (2010)
See, e.g., Neil Schlager, When Technology Fails: Significant Technological Disasters, Accidents, and Failures of the Twentieth Century (Gale Research Inc., Detroit, 1994)[ Amazon ][ WorldCat ]
T. Frisch, Y. Pomeau, and S. Rica, Phys. Rev. Lett. 69 , 1644 (1992)
S. Inouye et al. , Phys. Rev. Lett. 87 , 080402 (2001)
B. J. Bellhouse, Cardiovascular Research 6 , 199 (1972)
G. W. Rayfield and F. Reif, Phys. Rev. 136 , A1194 (1964)
B. P. Anderson, P. C. Haljan, C. E. Wieman, and E. A. Cornell, Phys. Rev. Lett. 85 , 2857 (2000)
E. A. L. Henn, J. A. Seman, G. Roati, K. M. F. Magalhaes, and V. S. Bagnato, J. Low. Temp. Phys. 158 , 435 (2010)

About the Author

Peter Engels studied physics at the University of Bonn, Germany. After a stay at Princeton University as a visiting graduate student, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Hanover, Germany. In his postdoctoral research at JILA / University of Colorado, he investigated the physics of vortex lattices in BECs. He currently holds an Associate Professor position at Washington State University where he conducts experiments studying the dynamics of BECs and quantum degenerate Fermi gases.

Observation of Vortex Dipoles in an Oblate Bose-Einstein Condensate

T. W. Neely, E. C. Samson, A. S. Bradley, M. J. Davis, and B. P. Anderson

Phys. Rev. Lett. 104 , 160401 (2010)

Published April 19, 2010

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Everyday science

Researchers cut to the chase on the physics of paper cuts

If you have ever been on the receiving end of a paper cut, you will know how painful they can be.

Kaare Jensen from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), however, has found intrigue in this bloody occurrence. “I’m always surprised that thin blades, like lens or filter paper, don’t cut well, which is unexpected because we usually consider thin blades to be efficient,” Jensen told Physics World .

To find out why paper is so successful at cutting skin, Jensen and fellow DTU colleagues carried out over 50 experiments with a range of paper thicknesses to make incisions into a piece of gelatine at various angles.

Through these experiments and modelling, they discovered that paper cuts are a competition between slicing and “buckling”. Thin paper with a thickness of about 30 microns, or 0.03 mm, doesn’t cut so well because it buckles – a mechanical instability that happens when a slender object like paper is compressed. Once this occurs, the paper can no longer transfer force to the tissue, so is unable to cut.

Thick paper, with a thickness greater than around 200 microns, is also ineffective at making an incision. This is because it distributes the load over a greater area, resulting in only small indentations.

The team found, however, a paper cut “sweet spot” at around 65 microns and when the incision was made at an angle of about 20 degrees from the surface. This paper thickness just happens to be close to that of the paper used in print magazines, which goes some way to explain why it annoyingly happens so often.

Using the results from the work, the researchers created a 3D-printed scalpel that uses scrap paper for the cutting edge. Using this so-called “papermachete” they were able to slice through apple, banana peel, cucumber and even chicken.

Jensen notes that the findings are interesting for two reasons. “First, it’s a new case of soft-on-soft interactions where the deformation of two objects intertwines in a non-trivial way,” he says. “Traditional metal knives are much stiffer than biological tissues, while paper is still stiffer than skin but around 100 times weaker than steel.”

The second is that it is a “great way” to teach students about forces given that the experiments are straightforward to do in the classroom. “Studying the physics of paper cuts has revealed a surprising potential use for paper in the digital age: not as a means of information dissemination and storage, but rather as a tool of destruction,” the researchers write.

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August 29, 2024

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Novel encoding mechanism unveiled for particle physics

by Nuclear Science and Techniques

Advancement in particle physics: New encoding mechanism unveiled

In the development of particle physics, researchers have introduced an innovative particle encoding mechanism that promises to improve how information in particle physics is digitally registered and analyzed. This new method, focusing on the quantum properties of constituent quarks, offers unprecedented scalability and precision. It paves the way for significant advancements in high-energy experiments and simulations.

The work is published in the journal Nuclear Science and Techniques .

The newly proposed encoding mechanism can seamlessly incorporate complex quantum information for particles, including multi-quark states with up to nine valence quarks and an angular momentum of up to 99/2. This comprehensive approach addresses the longstanding issue of accurately distinguishing between particles with similar properties, ensuring precise and detailed digital representation.

High-energy heavy-ion collision experiments continuously identify new particles , leading to the need for precise and unique identification codes. Conventional methods, which added mass to distinguish between particles, have proven insufficient, especially with the discovery of numerous particles sharing similar quantum characteristics. "Our new encoding mechanism not only meets current demands but is also adaptable for future discoveries," say Prof. Zhiguang Tan and Prof. Hua Zheng, the corresponding authors.

The research involved extensive analysis of existing particle data and encoding practices. The team evaluated current methods, identifying their limitations, particularly in handling multi-quark states. By developing a system that integrates seamlessly with popular event generators and digital simulations, they created an encoding mechanism that is durable and rational. "We've ensured that this new framework can be expanded and adapted easily, which is crucial given the rapid pace of discovery in our field," adds Prof. Zheng.

This new encoding mechanism is poised to become an invaluable tool for researchers and scientists involved in particle physics . Its ability to provide detailed and distinguishable particle codes will enhance the accuracy of digital simulations and experimental analyses. With this mechanism, researchers can expect more reliable and precise data, which is critical for advancing their understanding of particle physics.

The research team is optimistic about the broader applications of their encoding mechanism. They anticipate that future discoveries of exotic particles and multi-quark states will be effortlessly integrated into their system. Further refinement and user feedback will ensure that the mechanism evolves with the latest scientific advancements. "We are excited about the future and the potential this has to unlock new frontiers in particle physics," Prof. Tan says.

By addressing the limitations of current methods and providing a scalable, adaptable solution, researchers have set the stage for more precise and comprehensive digital simulations. As Prof. Tan and Prof. Zheng state, "This is just the beginning. Our mechanism is designed to evolve, supporting the scientific community as we continue to explore the fundamental particles of our universe."

This research is a collaborative effort between Changsha University, Shaanxi Normal University, Texas A&M University, and Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN).

Provided by Nuclear Science and Techniques

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Saint Petersburg State University
Faculty of Physics
E. F. Mikhailov

E. F. Mikhailov Saint Petersburg State University | SPBU · Faculty of Physics

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Ernest Courant Traineeship in Accelerator Science & Engineering
Developing the Next Generation of Particle Accelerator Talent
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At Brookhaven National Lab’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), physicists from around the world study what the universe may have looked like moments after its creation, from the smallest subatomic particles to the largest stars.

Stony Brook University, in collaboration with Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Cornell University and FERMI National Accelerator Laboratory, has established the Ernest Courant Traineeship in Accelerator Science & Engineering. The program is supported by a $2.9 million, five-year grant from the High Energy Office of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

The new program is named after renowned accelerator physicist Ernest Courant who, as a long-time physicist at BNL, laid the foundation of modern accelerator science. Courant also taught for 20 years as an adjunct professor at Stony Brook. The traineeship is offered through the Center for Accelerator Physics and Education (CASE).

CASE is a joint center between BNL and Stony Brook, with three main goals of training scientists and engineers with the aim of advancing the field of accelerator science, developing a unique educational program that will provide broad access to research accelerators, and expanding interdisciplinary research and education programs utilizing accelerators.

CASE focuses on four specific areas identified by the DOE as “mission critical workforce needs in accelerator science and engineering”: physics of large accelerators and systems engineering; superconducting radiofrequency accelerator physics and engineering; radiofrequency power system engineering; and cryogenic systems engineering, especially liquid helium systems.

Vladimir Litvinenko, professor of physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and senior scientist at BNL, said the DOE is specifically looking to groom the next generation of scientists in those areas because “that’s where they have a shortage of skilled labor, and they really want us to help address that.”

Research to understand and manipulate matter and energy using accelerators has led to the creation and commercial production of modern electronics and has had numerous applications in areas like radiation treatments for cancer, food safety, oil discovery, and searching for weapons of mass destruction. The understanding that accelerator science and technology has provided of matter and energy is also critical in space exploration and exploitation in terms of creating instrumentation, understanding space radiation, and creating new propulsion systems.

The graduate-level curriculum consists of courses and practical training at accelerator facilities of the collaborating institutions, and thesis requirements. Each participant has a supervisor guide their training.

Students in the traineeship program who complete four courses of the core program — 12 or more credits in accelerator science and engineering — and earn a B+ or higher in each course will be issued a certificate in Accelerator Science and Engineering with specializations including the four areas listed above.

The traineeship is available to all students. Participants who are U.S. citizens or permanent U.S. residents are eligible for funding provided by the DOE grant. The expectation is that the traineeship can be completed in two years and students can pursue their research interest beyond the program.

Litvinenko said the program will help students get a job involving accelerators, and appeals to a wide range of students from across the sciences.

“One of my students who was interested in accelerators just really loved mechanical things,” said Litvinenko. “She was working in a garage before she came here. Other students might be interested in a more experimental hands-on experience, and others might be attracted to the diversity of the field, because accelerator science involve a broad range of sciences. It incorporates electrodynamics and mechanics, but there’s also quantum materials as well as complex systems like cryogenics.”

“Participating in the CASE Accelerator School has been a great experience,” said Pietro Iapozzuto, a physics researcher at Stony Brook whose career dream has been to work in particle physics. “The classes teach you practical skills that will be needed to work in top government research facilities. The program has given me the opportunity to learn theoretical, computational, and experimental skills in order to become a proficient accelerator physicist. It also prepared me to participate in internship opportunities at the CERN laboratory and Brookhaven.”

“I’m an electrical engineer but I have had the pleasure of working with physicists in recent years,” said Thomas Robertazzi, professor and IEEE Fellow, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “What I have come to realize is if our society is ever to have the type of the appealing technologies we see in shows like Star Trek, it will take physicists like the ones in the traineeship program to discover and invent them.”

Litvinenko said the current talent shortage is attributed to the attraction of engineers to the booming mobile device field.

“So many engineers today are working on iPhones and other mobile devices,” he said. “But in accelerators we use really high-power systems, which is a very different scale and design. It’s older technology that’s no longer taught in regular universities, but still it’s extremely important. This is one of the things which we hope to offer next year to students.”

Irina Petrushina ‘19, a research assistant professor who co-teaches a course on RF superconductivity for accelerators within the traineeship program, said the traineeship offers students a unique opportunity to explore the world of accelerator physics and engineering.

“One can get a taste of accelerator physics and learn the basic concepts of accelerator operation in Fundamentals of Accelerator Physics, and more experienced students can learn about specific topics of interest such as cryogenic systems or computational aspects,” she said. “In addition to the direct interaction with the world-renowned experts, the students get to perform some hands-on experiments using one of the accelerators at BNL. The proximity and close collaboration between Stony Brook and BNL present an amazing opportunity to immerse yourself in the day-to-day life of an accelerator scientist.”

Litvinenko said there is also a very practical aspect to the program: “Many of our students are landing jobs before graduation. I think this is not always true about academia and graduates and this may be reason why this certificate and the very real possibility of finding a good job is an additional attraction. In the end, students want to have a successful career.”

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COMMENTS

Science of Dance (Guide on Physics of Dance)
Mesmerizing facts about Dance and how scientific principles define dance concepts and dancer's performance. Read all about Science of Dance.
PDF The Physics of Dance
The reaction of the audience to dance is not "enhanced" by knowing the physics There are interesting parallels between some ideas of current interest in the humanities and those of modern physics (e.g. the blurring of boundaries between a thing and its environment) It is interesting to see where dance/physics vocabularies overlap.
The Science Experiment: Dance's Growing Scientific Curiosity
The Science Experiment: Dance's Growing Scientific Curiosity. A bespectacled man draws a line in mid-air, as if extending a string from his chest. He retracts his hands, cupping them in front of his sternum, and flutters his fingers. With the flourish of one palm, he circumscribes an invisible sphere: elegant, swift, precise.
Dancing with Science: Teaching Physics through Dance
Objective: The objective of this lesson is for students to learn and understand the principles of physics through dance. Students will work in groups to conduct experiments related to dance movements, measure and compare data, develop hypotheses, analyze results, and create a dance routine that demonstrates the principles of physics.
The Physics of Dance
Presentations to dance classes at Hope College, Holland, Michigan (1996, 1997). Saturday Morning Physics Honors Program presentation at the University of Illinois (2001): as a pdf file (152kB) and as a PowerPoint presentation (871 kB). An interesting three-way collaboration with Architecture, Dance, and Physics (2000).
Science Fair Ideas With the Topic Dance
The art form of dance presents opportunities to study dance's art, movement and the science behind it. Dance as a science fair idea can focus on human movement in biological and mechanical ways as well as the more advanced physical traits of complicated motions, spotting, rotation and balance.
Dancing sprinkles
The baking tray is a sound source because it vibrates when it's struck. The vibrations are transmitted through the air (the medium) to the bowl and cling film (the detector). The incoming sound wave makes the surface of the cling film move up and down and the sprinkles on its surface dance in response.
School dance ideas
Using dance and science together is a great way to discover new methods of communicating in science. Here are Primary school dance ideas for using science experiments as a way of learning about choreographing and reflecting in dance.
At STREB Action Lab, Dance and Physics Collide
At STREB Action Lab, Dance and Physics Collide. Choreographer Elizabeth Streb pushes the boundaries of Newtonian physics—with dance. In her show Forces, dancers fly, fall, and collide in mid-air ...
Pendulum Waves
What it shows: Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and random motion. One might call this kinetic art and the choreography of the dance of the pendulums is stunning! Aliasing and quantum revival can also be shown.
The Dancing Raisin Experiment
The dancing raisin experiment is a fun, simple science activity that teaches about density and buoyancy. You may even have the supplies at home now.
Sound and Vibrations 2: Make Sprinkles Dance
Find out if you can make something move, by using only sound, in this fun lesson plan.
How to do the Dancing Oobleck Experiment
If you've ever wanted to try making oobleck "dance" here's how we did it! This is a weird and wonderful science experiment and its impossible not to be mesme...
Physics and Dance: How do familiar principles of physics ...
He has also been studying classical ballet for the last nine years, taking about ten hours a week of ballet classes at the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, a school and performing company with an outstanding reputation. His work in applying physics to dance movement culminated in a recent book, The Physics of Dance, published in 1984 by
The physics of dance
The physics of dance. Two Yale professors thrive where calculation meets choreography. A course first offered at Yale University in 2011 is cross-listed in an unusual combination of departments: physics and theatre arts. In the class, instructors Sarah Demers and Emily Coates team up to teach introductory principles in classical and modern ...
Observing the dance of a vortex−antivortex pair, step by step
Observing the dance of a vortex−antivortex pair, step by step. Peter Engels. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99163, USA. April 19, 2010 • Physics 3, 33. New experiments create pairs of vortices of opposite circulation by forcing a Bose-Einstein condensate to flow past an obstacle.
Full article: Embodied physics: Utilizing dance resources for learning
Our findings show how (1) dance offered an embodied lens for physics investigation; (2) positioning movement as inquiry gave dancers access to an expanded vocabulary for sense-making; and (3) dance provided opportunities to bring in social and cultural resources as critical funds of knowledge.
Dancing Einstein
Einstein's scientific theo-ries carry emotional content that can be transmitted through dance. Materials and methods. The experiment was performed within a sound- and light-insulated. low-energy dancer had to be carried off stage by others in a pithy nod at the photo-electric effect.
Dancing Candy Hearts
How? By making candy conversation hearts "dance!" Along the way you will discover some of the fun chemistry for this entertaining activity. So this Valentine's Day if you receive some conversation hearts, you can grab a glass of soda and try out this science activity to explore another way to enjoy the candies—by watching them slowly dance!
Foucault pendulum
Foucault's pendulum in the Panthéon, Paris. The Foucault pendulum or Foucault's pendulum is a simple device named after French physicist Léon Foucault, conceived as an experiment to demonstrate the Earth's rotation.A long and heavy pendulum suspended from the high roof above a circular area was monitored over an extended time period, showing that its plane of oscillation rotated.
Open problem in quantum entanglement theory solved after nearly 25
Audio and video. Audio and video Explore the sights and sounds of the scientific world; Podcasts Our regular conversations with inspiring figures from the scientific community; Video Watch our specially filmed videos to get a different slant on the latest science; Webinars Tune into online presentations that allow expert speakers to explain novel tools and applications
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Saint Petersburg Shredding - (727)286-3595. When it comes to Florida mobile shredding Legal Shred Inc. is the place to go. With the most advanced shredding equipment on the market today Legal Shred can visit your location and shred 10 boxes in 3 minutes.
New Experiment Could Solve One of Physics' Biggest ...
New Experiment Could Solve One of Physics' Biggest Mysteries: The Graviton ... Apples fall, planets orbit, and the universe moves in a dance guided by this force. Over a century ago, Albert ...
Researchers cut to the chase on the physics of paper cuts
Through these experiments and modelling, they discovered that paper cuts are a competition between slicing and "buckling". Thin paper with a thickness of about 30 micrometres, or 0.03 mm, doesn't cut so well because it buckles - a mechanical instability that happens when a slender object like paper is compressed.
High Power RF
The Center for Accelerator Science and Education (CASE) will pursue cutting edge accelerator science and R & D, training of next generation accelerator scientists - graduate and post doctoral â€" through courses, laboratory and experiments on accelerators. Undergraduate opportunities will play a significant goal of attracting students to the graduate program through introduction to ...
An (Old) New Challenge To All Known Physics
There could be some other features in the experiments that scientists have misunderstood. Or there could be a completely different explanation that still requires physics beyond the Standard Model.
Low Temperatures in High Demand
The Center for Accelerator Science and Education (CASE) will pursue cutting edge accelerator science and R & D, training of next generation accelerator scientists - graduate and post doctoral â€" through courses, laboratory and experiments on accelerators. Undergraduate opportunities will play a significant goal of attracting students to the graduate program through introduction to ...
Novel encoding mechanism unveiled for particle physics
High-energy heavy-ion collision experiments continuously identify new particles, leading to the need for precise and unique identification codes. Conventional methods, which added mass to ...
E. MIKHAILOV
The international Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX) program addresses the full spectrum of problems related to climate change in Eurasian Northern latitudes.
Developing the Next Generation of Particle Accelerator Talent
The Center for Accelerator Science and Education (CASE) will pursue cutting edge accelerator science and R & D, training of next generation accelerator scientists - graduate and post doctoral â€" through courses, laboratory and experiments on accelerators. Undergraduate opportunities will play a significant goal of attracting students to the graduate program through introduction to ...

Science of Dance (Guide on Physics of Dance)

Physics Concepts Behind Dance

1. Newton’s First Law of Motion

2. Newton’s Second Law of Motion

3. Newton’s Third Law of Motion

The Science Behind The Effects of Dancing

How A Dancer Controls Dizziness

Dance Science Degrees

Dance Science Careers

1. Dance Movement Psychotherapist

2. Dance Administrator

3. Choreographer

Dance-Related Science Fair Projects

1. Demonstrating Health Benefits

2. Demonstrating Emotional Effects

3. Demonstrating Varying Effects of Dizziness

How Is Science Used In Dance?

1. Health and Performance

2. Choreography

3. Mind-Body Relationship

The Conclusion

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The Science Experiment: Dance's Growing Scientific Curiosity

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