Foam

A foam is a substance that is formed by trapping pockets of gas in a liquid or solid. A bath sponge and the head on a glass of beer are examples of foams. In most foams, the volume of gas is large, with thin films of liquid or solid separating the regions of gas.

An important division of solid foams is into closed-cell foams and open-cell foams. In a closed-cell foam, the gas forms discrete pockets, each completely surrounded by the solid material. In an open-cell foam, the gas pockets connect with each other. A bath sponge is an example of an open-cell foam: water can easily flow through the entire structure, displacing the air. A camping mat is an example of a closed-cell foam: the gas pockets are sealed from each other so the mat cannot soak up water.

Foams are examples of dispersed media. In general, gas is present in large amount so it will be divided into gas bubbles of many different sizes (the material is polydisperse) separated by liquid regions which may form films, thinner and thinner when the liquid phase is drained out of the system films. When the principal scale is small, i.e. for a very fine foam, this dispersed medium can be considered as a type of colloid.

Foam (organization)

FoAM describes itself as "a network of transdisciplinary labs for speculative culture". The networked, Brussels-based collective constitutes a group of designers, scientists, cooks, artists, engineers and gardeners who share an interest in taking knowledge from their respective areas of expertise and applying it in new public contexts. Guided by the motto "Grow your own worlds," the practice of this multidisciplinary research group aims at integrating principles of ethical living, sustainable design and eco-technology. FoAM's overall mission is shaped by its various participating artists and technologists, who have sensed a need for mediation between the artistic and the scientific worlds.

FoAM was founded by Maja Kuzmanovic in 2000 as a cultural research department in Starlab. In 2001, FoAM became an independent, distributed entity with cells in Brussels and Amsterdam. Since that time, the core group of this de facto new-media think tank has included members from Belgium, the Netherlands, Australia, Croatia, Lithuania, the UK, and Sweden; its larger network has attracted people from around the world.

Foam (disambiguation)

Foam may refer to:

See also

List of obsolete units of measurement

This is a list of obsolete units of measurement. These units of measurement are typically no longer used in contemporary times. Some may be in limited use in various regions.

Obsolete units of measurement

A

B

Flight dynamics

Flight dynamics is the study of the performance, stability, and control of vehicles flying through the air or in outer space. It is concerned with how forces acting on the vehicle influence its speed and attitude with respect to time.

In fixed-wing aircraft, the changing orientation of the vehicle with respect to the local air flow is represented by two critical parameters, angle of attack ("alpha") and angle of sideslip ("beta"). These angles describe the vector direction of airspeed, important because it is the principal source of modulations in the aerodynamic forces and moments applied to the aircraft.

Spacecraft flight dynamics involve three forces: propulsive (rocket engine), gravitational, and lift and drag (when traveling through the earths or any other celestial atmosphere). Because aerodynamic forces involved with spacecraft flight are very small, this leaves gravity as the dominant force.

Aircraft and spacecraft share a critical interest in their orientation with respect to the earth horizon and heading, and this is represented by another set of angles, "yaw," "pitch" and "roll" which angles match their colloquial meaning, but also have formal definition as an Euler sequence. These angles are the product of the rotational equations of motion, where orientation responds to torque, just as the velocity of a vehicle responds to forces. For all flight vehicles, these two sets of dynamics, rotational and translational, operate simultaneously and in a coupled fashion to evolve the vehicle's state (orientation and velocity) trajectory.

Euler angles

The Euler angles are three angles introduced by Leonhard Euler to describe the orientation of a rigid body. To describe such an orientation in 3-dimensional Euclidean space three parameters are required. They can be given in several ways, Euler angles being one of them; see charts on SO(3) for others. Euler angles are also used to describe the orientation of a frame of reference (typically, a coordinate system or basis) relative to another. They are typically denoted as α, β, γ, or φ, θ, ψ.

Euler angles represent a sequence of three elemental rotations, i.e. rotations about the axes of a coordinate system. For instance, a first rotation about z by an angle α, a second rotation about x by an angle β, and a last rotation again about y, by an angle γ. These rotations start from a known standard orientation. In physics, this standard initial orientation is typically represented by a motionless (fixed, global, or world) coordinate system; in linear algebra, by a standard basis.

Any orientation can be achieved by composing three elemental rotations. The elemental rotations can either occur about the axes of the fixed coordinate system (extrinsic rotations) or about the axes of a rotating coordinate system, which is initially aligned with the fixed one, and modifies its orientation after each elemental rotation (intrinsic rotations). The rotating coordinate system may be imagined to be rigidly attached to a rigid body. In this case, it is sometimes called a local coordinate system. Without considering the possibility of using two different conventions for the definition of the rotation axes (intrinsic or extrinsic), there exist twelve possible sequences of rotation axes, divided in two groups: