What I Learned This Semester...

                      

This semester I definitely learned a lot about physics. From simple concepts like acceleration, velocity, scalars/vectors, and other terms, I have expanded my knowledge and outlook on different aspects in life. From simple kinematics, to 3-D kinematics, to momentum, and finally to energy, I think a person would’ve had to be totally oblivious to not take something away from this semester. I think my favorite section that we learned, even though it was our last, was energy. I found it interesting how everything has energy in some sort of way. We can find how much energy is stored in one specific object, such as a spring. When it’s compressed, it actually has stored energy, very interesting. In my picture, I chose a picture of the wind chimes that are outside my house, and a toy car that was in my garage. I chose these thinsg because now I can actually apply to physics to real life situations. If I wanted to calculate the maximum speed at which the wind chime goes when the wind is blowing it I could. If I wanted to find out the acceleration of the race car, and its velocity, I could. I realized that with the concepts I learned, I can apply it to a lot of things in life.

                This semester I found that learning physics can be fun. Thank you Mr. Blake for making the first semester  fun and easy to learn. Even though some concepts were hard to grasp, you made it easier  for us to learn them, and actually utilize them. I learned this semester that you and Mr. Freitas make an excellent singing group, haha. Overall this semester was really fun, and I hope to learn more in the upcoming semester.



Energy

This week in physics, we learned about energy and "work." We learned about gravitational potential, and spring potential. An important law that we learned was the law of conservation, which states in an isolated system energy is neither created nor destroyed. Above is a picture of a sling shot, which is similar to a spring. When pulled back it is compressed, to find the potential of it you need the distance at how much it is pulled back, and the k which is the spring or in the case, the sling shot constant. I also learned about gravitational potential which is found when given the mass, the force of gravity, and the height at which an object is at in relation to the ground. I learned alot of new concepts and formulas this week in relation to energy and "work." 

Egg Drop Lab

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9nOID0lLxo&feature=player_embedded
This week we did out egg drop lab. My group included melody and kawai. We  thought that the more cushion we put in the box, the more safer our egg would be. So our group decided to use a shoe box and pack as much cotton balls as we could both in the actual box and on the cover, so that it would protect the egg in case the box flipped over during the fall down from akahi. We decided to put a box in the middle of the shoe box to hold the egg. Then we decided to wrap the egg in felt, to cushion the fall even more. When it came time to drop the egg, we were extremely nervous. Melody dropped the egg from the top, and all we heard when it hit the ground was a hard thud. We thought for sure that our egg was cracked, when we opened the box we found that the egg was surprisingly still intact. We were so happy when we found out that our egg survived the incredible fall. We learned more about physics, and how things like contact time, gravity's pull, friction, and many other factors play a role in such a simple experiment such as this egg drop lab.

Physics Blog

About Me

The beach represents me because I spend a lot of time here. I love going to the beach in my free time with my family and friends. I enjoy doing what I love most, which is paddling in the ocean. Especially since I grew up on the windward side, the beach is always nearby. The beach is like my second home. I’m never far from it.

My name’s Lydia and I love to play soccer, dance hula, and paddle. I currently live in Kane’ohe, where I have been for my whole life. My family and friends all live on the windward side. In my free time, I love to go to the beach, and spend time with my family.

Since middle school, I have slowly progressed in sciences. I’ve been getting mostly B’s in my science courses over the years. My favorite science course that I took was biology. I love learning about the life that’s around me. This year for math, I’m taking a semester of college algebra, and a semester of trigonometry. This year I hope to achieve more awareness about the things that happen around me. I wan t to discover answers to “why does this happen?” and “how does that work?”

Units and Measurements

In this first unit we were taught about measurements and relationships to different variables. In my blog, I chose a picture of me paddling to exemplify a relationship.  In every sport there’s a relationship between the physical activity of the sport and the person’s body, which shows two variables establishing a relationship between each other. As I increase the speed at which I paddle, my heart beat also starts to increase. Same goes for when I warm down after paddling, my heart beat starts to slow down to. This shows a relationship between two variables, a person’s body to their physical activity. I realize that physics can be applied even when I’m out in the ocean paddling. 

Kinematics

picture taken by me of the blue angels

For the second blog post for unit 2, I chose a picture of the blue angels. Unit 2 relates to kinematics. Kinematics is defined as the study of how things move. This picture relates to this unit because jets related to velocity and speed. Jets as well as any other moving objects have some relation to kinematics. Jets are fast object that fly at top speeds of about 750 mph. Jets have average speeds, and velocity. I thought choosing a picture of the blue angels would exemplify a perfect example of what kinematics is about. Kinematics is simply about “how things move.” A jet has a high velocity simply because of how fast it travels. 

Direct Relationships

picture of me paddling at my first race

Last week we did a lab called "physics olympics." This lab taught us about relationships between the data, and its graph. We learned more in depth about direct, and inverse relationships when it comes to noticing trends in a graph.  A direct relationship is a positive relationship between two variables in which they both increase or decrease in conjunction. To relate this blog to me personally, I chose a picture of me paddling. Paddling shows a direct relationship between the distance and velocity. As I paddle my distance increases with every stroke I take. As the distance increases, or decreases so does the velocity in conjunction. There is a direct relationship between distance and velocity.  

Motion Detector 

A graph of me, and my parter melody's graph from the motion detector lab.

This past week we did a lab dealing with kinematics, and how the position of an object is related to time as it passes. I noticed how different positions affect the trend of the position vs time graph. I noticed that if an object is moved farther away from the detector, the graph shows an increasing slope. However, as an object moves closer to the detector the slope starts to decrease. And if the object is at a stationary position the slope is not affected. Through the lab I learned that position vs time is directly related, also increasing my knowledge of kinematics. 

Ball Toss Lab 

This week in class, we did the Ball toss lab. It taught me the various relationships between position vs time, velocity vs time, and acceleration vs time. In a position vs time for example, I found out that as the balls position increases till it reaches its max height, the slope shows as a slow increasing curve. As the ball starts to fall, the slope is shown as a gradual decreasing curve creating a parabola as an overall outcome.

Since we working with throwing a ball up in the air I decided to apply it to something I experienced, something similar to the increase and decrease of a ball's position. I watched the blue angels and in one part of the show they flew straight up into the air, eventually reaching a max height. As they reached the top they began to slow down, and accelerate downwards. Their position over time was parabolic because they eventually reached a max height and then turned downwards to create the decreasing curve on the graph. 


Vectors 

This week in physics we learned about vectors. Vectors are are quantities that are fully described by both a magnitude and a direction. In my picture there are pictures of a pool table. When playing pool a player has to shoot the ball in a certain direction. This is an example of vectors because when the ball is shot it is shot in a certain direction, and it also has magnitude. In a game of billiards, or as far as any pool game the ball is moved in multiple directions. The directions is switched and the magnitude is changed depending on what shot the shooter is trying to make.


SOH-CAH-TOA!

This week we went more into depth about vectors. We learned about velocities in different directions and how to apply cosine, sine, and tangent to vectors. We learned how to find different degrees in a triangle, by using different velocities. In my picture, I chose to explain how a typical equation would look like if we had to use cosine, sine, and tangent to find the unknown sides. We learned what vertical, and horizontal velocities were. We learned that when the hypotenuse and its adjacent angle is given, that it's possible to find the other unknown angles. We applied what we learned about velocity to our vectors section.

Extra Credit

I had my mom sit down at our desktop computer and I shower her all my blogs. I explained to her how we had to do a blog each week, relating to the material we learned in class that week. I showed her my first blog and how we had to write it about us, and how we had to choose a picture that related to us. I also explained how each picture related to the blog that I did for that specific week. I explained to her how I related the concepts that we learned in physics, to other things outside of physics class.

Forces

This week in physics we did an activity dealing with forces. We did an activity called the "table cloth trick." This activity requires you to remove the paper from under a standing pen, without tipping the pen over. I learned that if the friction force between the paper and the pen is strong enough, the pen will tip over. However, the friction force isn't sufficient enough, the pen will remain standing after the paper has been removed from under it. I learned that forces play a role in everyday life, even when it comes to the smallest things such as the table cloth trick. 

Newton's Law

Newton's second law states that if an object is in a state of motion it will tend to stay in that state unless acted upon by an outside force. This weekend i went to a beach house, and as i was walking on the sand i found i toy car. I took it back to the beach house and i was just rolling it across the table. As i was, i was thinking about when an object is in motion, it will want to stay in that state. I was rolling it back and forth, and one time i rolled to much that it fell off the table. The car wanted to keep going but the table was not allowing that.

Friction

This week in physics we did a lab dealing with friction, using a race car. WE found that by adding more weight to the car, it increased the friction between the surface of the car and the race car itself. That's why I chose a picture of my brother's race car. With less weight, came more speed. He came in third place because he didn't sand down his car enough, the extra weight created more friction and slowed his car down. This race car reminded me of the lab because it applied the exact same concept. By adding more weight, it causes the car to stay in place. 

Momentum

This week we will begin to learn about linear momentum.  I've started to read into this chapter, and so far I'm kind of starting to get the concept of it. Constant linear momentum is  defined as the momentum of an object of mass m that is moving in a straight line with a velocity v.   In the picture I am holding 2 acai berries.  Although they look similar, their masses differ.  If I were to roll them with the same initial velocity, the one with the greater mass would have a greater momentum because momentum is directly proportional to the mass. In other words the more heavier an object is, the greater the momentum is. They are directly proportional to each other. 

Egg Drop

This week and continuing next week, we will do a egg lab. Our problem is trying to figure out how an egg can drop from third floor akahi without cracking. We learned how different objects can observe the shock, one of the biggest shock absorbers is cotton, or the cotton balls. This might be an item that my group will use in making our egg drop device, because it will the cushion the fall of the egg. Another item we could use are the styrofoam, or the bubble pop sheets that are found in mailing packages, also used as shock absorbers.