A leak

A hollow insulated cylinder of height 2H and volume 2V is closed from below by an insulating
piston. The cylinder is divided into two initially identical chambers by an insulating diaphragm
of mass m. The diaphragm rests on a circular ledge and a gasket between them provides tight
contact. Both chambers are filled with gaseous helium at pressure p and temperature T . A force
is applied to the piston, so that it moves upwards slowly.

a) Find the volume of the lower chamber V0 when the gas starts to leak between the chambers

b) Find the temperature T1 in the upper chamber when the piston touches the diaphragm.

c) Find the temperature T2 in the lower chamber immediately before the piston touches the
diaphragm.
Thread around a cylinder
One end of a thread is tied into a loop of length L >2πR, and a cylinder of radius R is put through
the loop. The coefficient of friction between the thread and the cylinder is µ. The free end of the
thread is being pulled parallel to the axis of the cylinder (as shown by arrow in the photo) while
keeping the cylinder at rest. If the length of the loop is longer than a critical value, L > L0 , the
loop can slide along the cylinder without changing its shape, otherwise the friction “locks” it into
a place and increasing the pulling force would eventually just break the thread. Find this critical
value L0 . The weight of the thread is to be neglected; the thread will not twist when being pulled.

It might be useful to know that:

Z √ √
2 1 + x2 dx = x 1 + x2 + sinh−1 x

Where:  √ 
sinh−1 x ≡ ln x + 1 + x2
 Glass ball
The first photo here is taken with a digital camera
and shows a glass ball, backlit with diffuse dichromatic
light which has only two narrow spectral lines (red 630
nm and violet 400 nm). This diffuse light comes from
the white floor (marked with ‘1’ in the figure) and
the white walls (marked with ‘2’), both illuminated
with violet and red LED lamps. The sensor of the
camera has only red, blue and green sensors so that
violet light appears in the photo as blue. The photo is
taken from a distance much greater than the radius of
the ball. On the back side of the ball, a very narrow
opaque thread is glued to the glass surface, forming
an arc of a great circle on the ball. In the photo, the
thread is obstructed by the ball and cannot be seen
directly. However, hugely deformed images of a very
short segment of the thread are seen as blue (marked
with ‘b’) and red (‘r’) ellipses. The letter ‘p’ indicates
purple-coloured areas in the photo.

In the first photo, the centre of the ball is marked with a cross, and the perimeter of the ball is
traced with a dashed line. You can find a larger version of the first photo on a separate sheet. You
may take distance measurements there. In the larger photo, the boundary between the red and
purple regions is also traced with a dashed line.

The second photo is taken while illuminating with a

white LED with the ball turned so that the thread can
be seen directly.

a) Explain qualitatively using a ray diagram why a seg-

ment of the thread is seen as a closed loop in the first
photo.

b) Determine the coefficient of refraction nR for the red

light.

c) Determine the difference of the coefficients of refrac-

tion ∆n ≡ nV − nR for the red and violet light (with
nV denoting the coefficient of refraction for the violet
light)
Solenoid and loop
A closed circular loop of radius r consists of an ideal battery of electromotive force ξ and a wire of
resistance R. A long thin air-core
 solenoid is aligned with the axis of the loop (z-axis). Its length is
√ 
l  r, cross-sectional area is A r  A , and the number of turns is N . The solenoid is powered
by a constant current I provided by an ideal current source. The directions of the currents in the
solenoid and in the loop are the same (clockwise in the figure).

a) Find the force F1 acting on the solenoid when its head O1 is positioned in the loop centre O.
What is the force F2 acting on the solenoid when its tail O2 is located in the centre of the loop?

b) Suppose now, that the solenoid is moving slowly with a constant velocity v along z-axis starting
far away from the loop, going past its centre, and proceeding further to the right in positive
z-direction. Plot the current J flowing in the loop as a function of time. Highlight important
features and values on the graph. The velocity v is so small that self inductance of the loop
can be neglected.

Mechanical accelerator
A massless thread makes N turns around statically fixed cylinder, as shown in the figure. Initially,
the free (unwound) ends of the thread are parallel to the axis X. Then, a heavy point-like object
P is attached to one end of the thread while the other end is pulled with a constant velocity u
along X. Find the maximum velocity attained by the heavy object.

The thread is inextendable and flexible. Suppose that the turns of the thread are wound tightly
to one another and are placed practically in the same plane, perpendicular to the cylinder axis.
Neglect any friction in the system. Do not consider the force of gravity.
Cat eyes
You may have noticed that in darkness, when a cat is within the light beam of a headlamp, its
eyes appear very bright, see the photo below (left). This phenomenon can be modelled by a lens
setup, see the photo on right, and the diagram beneath the photos.

The photo on right was taken by a digital single-lens reflex camera. The light intensity at the
camera sensor pixels marked by a red line (in the photo) is shown in the graph below: the log
base 10 of the light intensity (measured as the number of photons caught by each pixel) is plotted
against the x-coordinate, with the pixels’ side length serving as the unit length.
The lens modelling cat eyes can be treated as an ideal thin lens of focal length f = 55 mm
and diameter D = 39 mm; however, you should keep in mind that the given graph shows real
measurement data, and the lens has certain non-ideal features. Most importantly, partial reflections
of brightly lit areas from the lens surfaces may decrease the contrast: dark areas seen through the
lens appear less dark than they actually are; this effect can be neglected for the camera lens, but
not so for the lens serving as a model of a cat’s eye.
Based on the given data, estimate (with the accuracy of ca 20% ) the distance h between the axis
of the camera and the axis of the lamp (which can be considered as a point source) if the distance
of the camera from the paper sheet was L = 4.8 m.
Ice pellets
An interesting weather phenomenon can occur when the temperature profile in the atmosphere
shows an inversion. The solid blue line in figure 1 shows such a temperature profile. The inversion
occurs at heights between 1 km and 2 km. Under these conditions snow falling through the
atmosphere (partially) melts in the warmer layer and (partially) freezes again before reaching the
ground in the form of “ice pellets”.

Figura 1: Atmospheric temperature T vs. height h above the ground.

Assume that a small, spherical ice droplet almost completely melts while falling through the
atmospheric layer between hA and hB where the temperature is above freezing point.

a) Determine the mass fraction of the droplet that freezes before reaching the ground.

b) Find, as precisely as possible, the temperature of the droplet at ground level if there were no
inversion and the temperature profile followed the dashed line below a height of 2 km.

Neglect evaporation, condensation and size changes of the droplet. Assume that water and ice have
very high thermal conductivity and that the density of the atmosphere is constant with height.
Use cwater = 4.2 kJ kg −1 K −1
for the the specific heat of water and cice = 2.1 kJ kg −1 K −1 for that of ice. The specific latent
heat for the melting of ice is L = 334 kJ kg −1 .
Motion of a charged ball
A solid, homogeneous spherical ball of mass m and radius R is made of insulating material and
has charge Q distributed uniformly throughout its volume. The ball is placed on a large horizontal
surface, and set in rolling motion without slipping in such a way that its center starts to move
with initial horizontal velocity v0 . There is a uniform magnetic field (flux density) of magnitude B
perpendicular to the surface. The coefficient of static friction is large enough to prevent the ball
from slipping on the surface. The moment of inertia of the ball about an axis through its center
2
is 2mR
5
.

Describe the motion of the center of the ball and the shape of its trajectory.

Hint: Depending on your approach you may use the following identity:
   
~ ~ ~
~a x b x ~c = b (~a · ~c) − ~c ~a · b

valid for any three vectors ~a, ~b and ~c.

Water hose
A stream of water exits from the nozzle of a hose with a constant unknown speed v. A child
plays with the hose by rotating it randomly in a fixed vertical x − y plane. The nozzle is kept at
x = y = 0 m, and the angle between the nozzle’s axis and the horizon is never less than 45◦ . At
each moment in time, the stream in the air has an irregular shape. The shape at one instant is
shown in the figure below.

Using this figure, determine the exit speed v if the free fall acceleration is g = 9.8 m/s2 .

Figura 1: Shape of the water stream at a certain moment in time (larger version provided on
separate sheet).
Three balls
Three small identical balls (denoted as A, B, and C) of mass m each are connected with two
massless rods of length l so that one of the rods connects the balls A and B, and the other rod
connects the balls B and C. The connection at the ball B is hinged, and the angle between the rods
can change effortlessly. The system rests in weightlessness so that all the balls lie on one line. The
ball A is given instantaneously a velocity perpendicular to the rods. Find the minimal distance
d between the balls A and C during the subsequent motion of the system. Any friction is to be
neglected.

Solenoid
A solenoid of length l = 20 cm is wound around a vertical, cylindrical test tube made of glass,
filled with water. The solenoid is thermally insulated from the water. The height of the water
level is approximately 20 cm above the upper end of the solenoid, the diameter of the test tube is
1 cm, the number of turns of the coil is N = 6000.

The atmospheric pressure is p0 = 101 kP a, the temperature of water is 293 K. Magnetic

susceptibility of water is χ ≡ µr − 1 = −9.04 · 10−6 . Vacuum permeability µ0 = 12.57 · 10−7 H/m.
The current in the solenoid is slowly increased until the water starts boiling inside the coil. At
which current strength would this happen? Make reasonable approximations when needed. Note
that the required current strength might be slightly too large for the present technology.
Staircase
The equilibrium shape of bodies in zero-gravity is determined by the minimum of their surface
energy. Thus, for example, the equilibrium shape of a water droplet turns out to be spherical: the
sphere has the smallest surface area among bodies of the same volume. At low temperature, the
equilibrium shape of crystals may have flat facets. The parts of the crystal surface that have a
small angle φ with the facet are in fact staircases of rare steps on this facet. The height of such
steps is equal to the period of the crystal lattice h.

Equilibrium surface profile y (x) of a certain crystal and the corresponding microscopic staircase
are shown schematically in the figure, where n denotes the step number, counting from x = 0.

3
The profile shape at x > 0 can be approximated as y (x) = − λx 2 h , where λ = 45 µm and
h = 0.3 nm.

a) Express the distance dn between two adjacent steps as a function of n for n  1.

b) The interaction energy E of two steps depend on the distance d between them as

E (d) = µdν

where µ is a constant. Assume that only adjacent steps interact. Find the numerical value for
the exponent ν.
Oscillating rope
A heavy uniform rope of length L is suspended vertically from the ceiling. The rope may oscillate
around its equilibrium position with different natural frequencies, which will be denoted by fi
(i = 1, 2, ...) in an ascending order. The figure below presents the shape of the rope in the first
three natural vibrations, as obtained by a computer simulation. Note that the horizontal and
vertical scales in the figures are not equal. You may assume that the actual lateral displacement
of the rope is much smaller than its length (small-amplitude approximation).

Figura 1: Shapes of the oscillating rope for the first three natural vibrations (i = 1,2,3... from left
to right).

a) Develop a simplified model, which will allow you to estimate the frequency f1 of the first
(fundamental) vibration of the rope. Hence, calculate approximately f1 for a rope of length
L = 1.0 m. (Assume that g = 9.8 m/s.)

b) Take necessary readings from the figure to estimate the frequency ratio f1 :f2 :f3 .

Disk in gas
Consider a thin flat disk of mass M and face area S at temperature T1 resting initially in weigh-
tlessness in a gas of mass density ρ at temperature T0 (T1 = 1000 T0 ). One of the faces of the disk
is covered with a thermally insulating layer, the other face has a very good thermal contact with
the surrounding gas: gas molecules of mass m obtain the temperature of the disk during a single
collision with the surface. Estimate the initial acceleration a0 and maximal speed vmax of the disk
during its subsequent motion. Assume the heat capacity of the disk to be on the of order N kB ,
where N is the number of atoms in it, and kB is the Boltzmann constant, and molar masses of
the gas and the disk’s material to be of the same order. The mean free path length of molecules
is much larger than the size of the disk. Neglect any edge effects occuring at the edge of the disk.

Superconducting mesh
Consider a mesh made from a flat superconducting sheet by drilling a dense grid of small holes into
it. Initially the sheet is in a non-superconducting state, and a magnetic dipole of dipole moment
m is at a distance a from the mesh pointing perpendicularly towards the mesh. Now the mesh is
cooled so that it becomes superconducting. Next, the dipole is displaced perpendicularly to the
surface of the mesh so that its new distance from the mesh is b. Find the force between the mesh
and the dipole. The pitch of the grid of holes is much smaller than both a and b, and the linear
size of the sheet is much larger than both a and b.