Why did Galileo use a thought experiment instead of working with real objects

American eels (anguilla rostrata) are freshwater fish with long, slender bodies that we can treat as uniform cylinders 1.0 m long and 10 cm in diameter. an eel compensates for its small jaw and teeth by holding onto prey with its mouth and then rapidly spinning its body around its long axis to tear off a piece of flesh. eels have been recorded to spin at up to 14 revolutions per second when feeding in this way. although this feeding method is costly in terms of energy, it allows the eel to feed on larger prey than it otherwise could. 1.a field researcher uses the slow-motion feature on her phones camera to shoot a video of an eel spinning at its maximum rate. the camera records at 120 frames per second. through what angle does the eel rotate from one frame to the next? 2. the eel is observed to spin at 14 spins per second clockwise, and 10 seconds later it is observed to spin at 8 spins per second counterclockwise. what is the magnitude of the eels average angular acceleration during this time? 3. the eel has a certain amount of rotational kinetic energy when spinning at 14 spins per second. if it swam in a straight line instead, about how fast would the eel have to swim to have the same amount of kinetic energy as when it is spinning? 4.a new species of eel is found to have the same mass but one-quarter the length and twice the diameter of the american eel. how does its moment of inertia for spinning around its long axis compare to that of the american eel?

The extremely high temperatures needed to trigger nuclear fusion are proposed to be generated by laser irradiating a spherical pellet of deuterium and tritium fuel of diameter 1.8 mm. (a) determine the maximum fuel temperature that can be achieved by irradiating the pellet with 200 lasers, each producing a power of 550 w. the pellet has an absorptivity 0.3 and emissivity 0.8.

Air is to be preheated by hot exhaust gases in a cross-flow heat exchanger before it enters the furnace. air enters the heat exchanger at 95 kpa and 20°c at a rate of 0.6 m^3/s. the combustion gases (cp = 1.10 kj/kg°c) enter at 160°c at a rate of 0.95 kg/s and leave at 95°c. determine the rate of heat transfer to the air and its outlet temperature.