Beating the Zero-Sum Game, Together

During the 1950s, the landmark Robbers Cave experiment demonstrated that when groups must compete with one another, intergroup conflict, hostility, and even violence may result. At the Oklahoman summer camp, two troops of boys—termed the Rattlers and the Eagles—took part in a week-long tournament. During this time, their negativity culminated in derogatory name-calling, fistfights, and even vandalism and destruction of property. However, this work also revealed that such tension...

Work is done on an object when energy is transferred to the object. In other words, work is done when a force acts on a body that undergoes a displacement from one position to another. By definition, the work done by a force is the integral of the force with respect to the displacement along its path. Forces can vary as a function of position, and displacements can occur along various paths between two points. The magnitude of a force multiplied by the cosine of the angle that the force makes...

A reversible chemical reaction represents a chemical process that proceeds in both forward (left to right) and reverse (right to left) directions. When the rates of the forward and reverse reactions are equal, the concentrations of the reactant and product species remain constant over time and the system is at equilibrium. A special double arrow is used to emphasize the reversible nature of the reaction. The relative concentrations of reactants and products in equilibrium systems vary greatly;...

In multiple dimensions, the conservation of momentum applies in each direction independently. Hence, to solve collisions in multiple dimensions, we should write down the momentum conservation in each direction separately. To help understand collisions in multiple dimensions, consider an example.
A small car of mass 1,200 kg traveling east at 60 km/h collides at an intersection with a truck of mass 3,000 kg traveling due north at 40 km/h. The two vehicles are locked together. What is the...

Social traps are negative situations where people get caught in a direction or relationship that later proves to be unpleasant, with no easy way to back out of or avoid. The concept was orignally introduced by John Platt who applied psychology to Garrett Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons", where in New England herd owners could let their cattle graze in the common ground. This situation seems like a good idea, but an individual could have an advantage. If they owned...

A truss is a framework that comprises slender members connected at their ends by joints. Trusses are widely used in engineering and architecture to stabilize and strengthen structures like bridges, roofs, and towers. Truss members are designed to carry loads through tension and compression, enabling the truss to withstand external forces.
One critical concept in truss design is the idea of zero-force members. It refers to a truss member that experiences no stress under loading conditions.