Mr Ribas’s blog - Blog de Mr Ribas

02 04 2008

Northern Lights and Nuclear Bombs

Posted by: Rafa Ribas in 2º Bachillerato, Física, Physics, Year 11

It doesn’t happen often that I can find something relevant for two of my courses; but I have been teaching magnetic fields to my Year 13 class, while my Year 11 are looking at radioactivity and the Northern Lights.

So here is an interesting article about a bizarre 1950s experiment that could be interesting - it involved exploding nuclear bombs in outer space, so that a stream of charged particles would be produced travelling along the magnetic field of the Earth. This would create a radiation belt which would affect enemy satellites.

I have not been brave enough to watch the entire 45 minute video, but the diagram is really quite something…  Oh, and for my newly-found bunch of foreign readers, if anyone is interested, more information in the usual place.

Tags: article, electromagnetism, nuclear

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 9:34 pm and is filed under 2º Bachillerato, Física, Physics, Year 11. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Northern Lights and Nuclear Bombs”

1.   Julio Says:
   April 2nd, 2008 at 10:56 pm

   Great article, as always. When it comes from Público newspaper, it must be good. Público is one of the best Spanish national newspapers when talking about science (and many other things), contributing to the expansion of scientifical knowledge in Spain and across the network (www.publico.es).

   By the way, I hope tomorrow’s Physics exam isn’t very hard, please just let me breeze through it Mr. Ribas.

   Good luck to all other class mates.

2.   jaime paternina Says:
   April 8th, 2008 at 7:20 pm

   Hello mr Hoang! do you have our exam results for todays assesment???

3.   Rafa Ribas Says:
   April 8th, 2008 at 9:13 pm

   Jaime:
   I corrected the spelling mistake on your first comment (that’s why I have not included your second one). Perhaps you want to redirect your comment to Mr Hoang’s own blog?
   See you in class…

4.   mrhoangscienceteacher Says:
   April 8th, 2008 at 9:21 pm

   Workin on it Paternina. Are you registered on the moodle course?

5.   mrhoangscienceteacher Says:
   April 8th, 2008 at 9:27 pm

   I’m sure that Mr Ribas doesn’t appreciate us communicating via his blog.

   Have you read the article Paternina? What do you think?

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