Download Let me overview the importance of basic physics in Space Engineer

Let me overview the importance of basic physics in Space Engineer. There are many physics laws for
mechanics, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, etc., and all are useful for engineer. I just
mention some of them.
The very basic law is Newton's first law. It says:
“p = constant unless we make changes.”
This law is founded by Newton, but its engineering confirmation has not been proven until Mr. Lars
Eliasson at IRF (Swedish Institute of Space Physics) examined it with our vacuum system. One day, our
vacuum system did not work well enough to make required low pressure, then Lars expected from Newton's
first law that such a behavior continues unless he fixes it. In order to prove this, he started the pump without
fixing it next day, and confirmed that the value of P was the same as the day before. From this, he reached a
generalised conclusion:
“You can expect the behaviour of a machine only from your experience. If it shows some strange
behaviour, it will not be automatically fixed by itself.”
This is the Newton's first engineering law.
But a more important one is Newton's second law which is confirmed by Dr. Ingrid Sandahl. It states:
“If we observe changes of behavior of an object, there must be some force working on it.”
Some years ago, Ingrid made up a hypothesis that our calibration facility would behave in a strange way if
somebody outsider uses it. In order to prove this, she asked a summer student to calibrate one of her
instrument. When the summer was over, we found that we had to spend a lot of money to fix the problem
that raised afterward. From this, she reached an important conclusion:
“If the calibration facility behaves slightly strange, we must have done something stupid. If the
calibration facility behaves very strange, some student must have used it.”
This is the Newton's second engineering law.
Newton set also the third law. It states:
“There is a gravity force which pulls everything down.”
It is confirmed by Prof. Rickard Lundin.
He has used an old ion source since early 70's, and its function has been pulled down year by year. Since the
gravity is constant, the degeneration rate should be constant too. From linear regression, we expected that
we had to buy a new one several years ago. However, an attempt to ignore this law was made by Rickard
because he believed that such a gravity force works only when we make mistakes. Against his expectation,
the ion source kept degenerated, and the calibration of TICS (3-D Ion Composition Spectrometer) always
delayed due to this. From this, Rickard reached a serious lesson:
“Everything is pulled down even though we do nothing stupid. So, we have to apply a money for new
many years before it decays.”
This is the Newton's third engineering law.
When we discuss the motion of anything, of course we may not forget the special relativity theory:
“Moving object has different internal time so as to keep c constant.”
But SSC (Swedish Space Corporation) people ignored this. They believed when they operated Freja satellite
that if there is a difference, it must be small. However, Mr. Per-Arne Lindqvist at Royal Institute of
Technology recently proved that the satellite time and the ground time are completely different, as mush as
several seconds. Then finally FSC (Freja Science Team) reached an important law:
“Satellite time is never perfectly defined from the ground station time.”
You have to also learn thermodynamics laws. First law of thermodynamics states
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“If a work is done, it is converted to heat.”
This is well proved by Freja particle team last year. After a lot of struggle which caused extra works until
midnight, they began to have nightmares more and more. Finally they lost their coolness not to switch on
HV (high-voltage supply) under 10 to -4 Pascal pressure. When they turn on HV, the pre-amp got heated
too much and was gone. From this, they reached thermodynamics first engineering law:
“If we work too hard, what we can get is only fever.”
The second law is so-call entropy's law:
“Entropy of a system never decreases unless we put extra energy.”
and is well experienced by Mr. Urban Bränström who has an old radio. It became noisy year by year, and
finally he could not listen to it. Since the noise is equivalent to the entropy, he thought that he must give
energy on the radio to decrease the noise. Then, what he did was to put a lot of mechanical "work" on the
radio by simply hitting it several times. Suddenly, the noise disappeared. In this way, he proved:
“We need to spend extra energy to obtain low noise.”
We also have the third law:
"There is no randomness at T=0."
Here, T is the temperature. For many years, they had problem in accomplishing Interball Satellite project,
and during this delay, they observed the following: everybody is co-operative whenever a new project is on
schedule because everybody is cool, but later on when the project delays and governments begin to put extra
money, people get excited and some disturbances always occur within the team. Thus the noise and heat
comes together. Then IKI people summarised the thermodynamics third law as:
“Any project has to be done as soon as possible in order to minimize noise from inside.”
Let me move to Electromagnetic Laws which are summarised by Maxwell.
First one is Ampere's law:
“Electric currents, both induction and conduction, generate magnetic field.”
which is confirmed by one of my friend (well, I shouldn't tell his name). One day he got drank so that he felt
a lot of electric current running in his brain. Nevertheless, he dared to work on his Macintosh, and miscontrolled his files, deleting right ones and generating wrong ones. Thus, the current in the brain affected
the magnetization of the floppy disk severely. From this, my friend reached the generalized Ampere's law:
“Never decide which file to be deleted when you drink alcohol.”
Next we have to mention Faraday's law:
“Change of flux generates troidal electric field.”
Here, "flux" originally means the magnetic flux, but as proved by Prof. Bengt Hultqvist, it can be
generalised to the number flux. Last year he decided to invite many Russian scientists to the conferences,
and the number flux of Russian scientist drastically increased for short period. During their stay here, they
copied many papers that they cannot get in Russia and the copy machine was kept used. Following
Faraday's law, the electric field of the machine never disappeared to the extent that the machine became out
of order every other day. Finally, Zerox company had to replace it to a new one due to this incident. After
they left, all user reached engineering Faraday's law:
“Copy machine has to be Russian-prove.”
Poisson's law states:
“Isolated charge diverges the field.”
This is well demonstrated by Dr. Ingemar Häggström. He is in charge of many ground data in Kiruna.
Since he is only the person in charge, his room is occupied by the data, and his space (it's rather a field than
a room) is diverging all the time. Thus, Ingemar is claiming generalised Poisson's law:
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“Person in charge needs more space.”
There are many other laws, but I do not have time to cover all.
Well, I think these examples are still sufficient to show how physics laws are important in engineering.
Before finishing my introduction, let me show an example that physics laws are useful even in political
field.
Lorenz found a law connecting EM field and the mechanical forces.
“A charged body travelling across the magnetic field receives a force from side.”
This Lorenz force is confirmed by prime minister Carl Bildt. When he became in charge of Government, he
tried to open up his way, and then received a lot of criticism from the left side in the out field now.
Suddenly he realised the Lorenz force in the following way:
“Whoever try to do something new receives a lot of criticism anyway.”
Yamauchi, 1993-08-30
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