Spring-loaded centrifugal governor 2026-10-18
Consider two equal balls of mass , four light rods each of length , a fixed upper pivot and a light sliding lower collar. Each upper and lower rod makes angle with the spindle. A spring of spring constant is uncompressed at and is compressed by collar motion. Its compression is . Collar balance gives , while vertical ball balance gives . Radial Newton's second law gives . Eliminating the rod tensions proves the displayed relation for nonzero .
Spring-mounted rolling cylinder Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
Attach a spring of spring constant to the axle of a round body of mass , radius and axial moment of inertia . Assume rolling without slipping, a horizontal drag force applied through the axle, and no additional resisting torque. The translational force equation is , where is signed static friction. The rotational equation and rolling constraint give , yielding the displayed equation. Equivalently, the kinetic energy is . This added effective inertia lowers the undamped angular frequency to . A distributed viscous torque would add a separate damping term and cannot be inferred from the drag force alone.
Spring-supported pendulum normal modes 2026-10-25
A pendulum bob and a horizontally moving support of equal mass , with support spring spring constant , have the quadratic potential energy . With , , the normal mode eigenvectors can be normalized to , where . The lower mode is in phase and the upper mode in opposite phase. The positive eigenvalues of the symmetric stiffness-per-mass matrix give the displayed squared angular frequencies.
Squared mass 2026-10-25
Stability of a two-scalar quartic potential Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-10-25
For real scalar fields with quartic potential energy density , nonnegativity in every direction is equivalent to the displayed conditions. Necessity follows on an axis and on . Sufficiency follows by writing . With a positive quadratic mass term, equality cases still give a stable isolated classical vacuum at the origin. The quartic alone is strictly positive away from the origin precisely when and . Rotation symmetry additionally requires .
Stable circular timelike geodesic in anti-de Sitter spacetime Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-18
In static coordinates on anti-de Sitter spacetime, write , conserved energy per unit rest mass , and conserved specific angular momentum . Timelike normalization gives with . A circular geodesic at obeys , so and . Thus and . Both its static-coordinate period and its own proper time period are , independent of radius. Stability follows from . A static clock at the orbital radius measures the different period , which does depend on radius.
Stagnation enthalpy 2026-10-20
The sum of specific enthalpy and macroscopic kinetic energy per unit mass. In a steady adiabatic flow without shaft work, its change is determined by the change in external potential energy. At essentially constant external potential energy, it is conserved through a stationary nonradiating shock wave even though entropy increases.
Standard gravitational parameter Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-14
The product of the gravitational constant and a central mass sets the strength of the exterior Newtonian gravitational field. Its dimensions are length cubed divided by time squared. In the exact relative two-body problem, the parameter is ; using for one source assumes the test particle approximation.
The combination is useful because orbital and falling-body observations constrain directly. A gravitational circular orbit of radius has oscillation period , so measuring and gives . That measurement alone does not separately determine and . Similarly, radial free fall from rest has a natural time scale .
Other interactions require a different model. Inverse-square radiation pressure can reduce the effective attraction for a dust Kepler orbit; calling that effective coefficient a gravitational parameter must not hide the added force.
Standard thin-disk dissipation flux 2026-09-28
Star Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-06
Star cluster Created 2026-09-29 Updated 2026-10-06
Star formation 2026-09-28
Star formation is the gravitational collapse and fragmentation of cold interstellar gas into protostars and eventually stars. Cooling, turbulence, magnetic fields, rotation, and feedback determine its efficiency and characteristic masses.
Starobinsky inflation 2026-09-28
Starobinsky inflation is an inflationary model whose Einstein-frame scalar potential can be writtenThe exponentially flat large-field plateau supports slow-roll inflation, while the potential is quadratic near its minimum.
Static friction on an inclined plane 2026-10-14
An inclined plane tilted slowly from horizontal turns a coefficient of static friction into a critical angle. Assume a nonrotating block on a stationary, rigid, dry surface, with gravitational weight and the contact forces as its only forces. Take to be the angle between the uphill surface direction and horizontal. Let be a unit vector pointing uphill and a perpendicular unit vector pointing outward from the surface. Resolving the gravitational weight givesThe angle between the downward vertical and the inward normal is also . Thus the inward component uses cosine and the downhill component uses sine. These are components of one force, not two additional forces.
Before downhill contact slip, zero acceleration and Newton's second law requireThe required static friction points uphill. Substituting into the bound and dividing by the positive givesThe tangent function increases on this range of angles, so the last admissible resting angle isThe inverse tangent takes a dimensionless quantity to an angle. At equality the ideal model still permits a limiting resting state; increasing further excludes it. At a smaller angle, is the demand ratio, not the coefficient of static friction.[ref]
For the stipulated , and , the critical angle is approximately . At , and , comfortably below the bound . At , maintaining rest would require , but the bound is only : rest is impossible. At , and . Notice that the limiting tangential force here is smaller than the horizontal limit because tilting reduces the normal force.
Cancellation of mass makes this relation useful: the ideal critical angle tests a contact coefficient without needing a calibrated force gauge. Doubling the block's mass doubles both demanded static friction and its bound, leaving unchanged if is unchanged. This is a testable model prediction. It need not survive a change in surface condition, a direction-dependent coefficient, appreciable deformation, or vibration.
The derivation also assumes continued contact and that sliding occurs before tipping or rolling without slipping. The resultant contact force must act within the supporting footprint so that the block can satisfy torque balance; a tall block may tip first. No extra tension, imposed tangential pull, or lift is included. In a slowly raised apparatus, quasistatic process means that motion of the board contributes negligible inertial forces while locating the threshold. Once downhill contact slip begins, a constant-velocity sliding angle would concern kinetic friction, not the onset of static friction.
For , complete the static energy into squares and . The boundary term is . A saturating kink is , with constant and mass . This is a model-specific Bogomolny bound.
Steady-flow energy balance 2026-10-14
For steady flow through a fixed control volume with one inlet and one outlet, the first law of thermodynamics and conservation of mass giveHere is the mass flow rate, incoming heat per unit time, outgoing non-flow work per unit time, the flow speed, elevation and gravitational acceleration. The specific enthalpy includes both the transported internal energy per unit mass and the pressure work needed to push volume through the boundary; is mass density. The inlet supplies that pressure work, while the outlet consumes it to displace the downstream fluid.[ref]
Thermodynamics and Propulsion. §2.5.1–2.5.2, equation 2.11: mass conservation, transported enthalpy and the steady-flow energy equation
For an insulated stationary throttle, require negligible heat transfer, no shaft or other non-flow work, and negligible changes in bulk kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy. Then . With unchanged composition this is also equality of molar enthalpy. The upstream and downstream states must admit equilibrium pressure, temperature and property values, although the constriction itself is irreversible and can be far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Start-up storage of energy in the walls and fluid, heat leakage, or a large outlet speed invalidates the reduced balance. A nozzle can convert specific enthalpy into bulk kinetic energy even when it is insulated.
The same accounting for a fixed transported amount is , hence . This explains why dropping the two pressure work terms would give the wrong conserved quantity.[ref]
For a Keplerian disk with evolution and , take zero viscous torque at and zero flux outside the source region at . The steady state gives , and its outer condition gives the displayed flux. Integrating once more from the zero-torque inner boundary condition yieldsThe equation determines the viscosity-density product, so a thermodynamic viscosity closure can be imposed afterward. For nonnegative integrable , it is nonnegative and the inner accretion rate is exactly the total supplied mass per unit time.
Stefan number Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-31
The Stefan number compares sensible heat with latent heat per unit mass. Some solidification literature uses its reciprocal as the Stefan parameter, so the defining formula must accompany the convention.
Stellar activity Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
Time-dependent stellar phenomena such as starspots and chromospheric emission that can change brightness and spectral-line shapes, complicating radial-velocity planet searches.
Stellar age Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-14
The stellar age is the elapsed time since a star formed. A constant number formation rate on a finite interval gives a uniform distribution of present ages if every formed object remains counted, including stellar remnants. An age distribution inferred only from surviving main sequence stars generally differs because their lifetimes depend on mass.
