My Physics Weblog

LAST POST!

dance247tm — Mon, 11 May 2009 09:13:42 +0000

wow. ok… so i read traci’s blog, and it made me kind of sad…. I’m soooo gonna miss period 7/8 physics!!! Ok. So i probably won’t miss ALLL the work we had to do, but i’m def gonna miss our class and THE BEST LAB GROUP EVER!!!! (traci, kellie, AND doc! [aka BFF]) LAB GROUP: thanks for always putting up with my laziness and loudness and weirdness etc! I’m gonna miss you guys next year!!! You Chemists!!!! hahaha bestlabgroupeverktt@live.com!!! doc! : don’t worry about missing us cuz me and trace will def come to visit you!!! haha I hope you save our ornaments!!! we put a lot of work into them!!! I may even miss Princess Anders and all of his food stealing and apples cut into 64 pieces<—amazing and a lot harder than it seems!!!! (hopefully you’ll be in my shakespeare and finding poetry classes next year!!! hahaha) class: thanks for all the memories and all of you who helped me when i didn’t understand things… wow that was kinda longer than i expected it to be… ok. i guess now i should start the actual physics of this blog…

sooo.. i just got these new speakers for my computer and i was playing around with them… twisting them back and forth and i noticed that the sound got louder and softer as i turned the speakers… then i realized what was happening! constructive and destructive interference!!! At certain angles, the sound waves coming out of the speakers interfere with each other and produce destructive waves where the music sounded softer. At other angles, the sound waves produced interfere and create constructive waves and the music sounds louder. i was amazed and played around with the speakers for like another 10 minutes.. haha i know… i’m a dork/weirdo/whatever. It was amusing to me. So anyways… here’s a picture of my speakers…

yeah… i know my desk is kinda messy… sorry… i’m kinda a messy person.

Ok.. sooooo i guess that’s it for this blog… unless i decide to add some more posts anyways… just for funsies?? Referring back to my first post… I guess i didn’t end up drowning due to my helpful lab group and class of course! This year felt like a pool party! and i’m so sorry to see it end! thanks for everything doc! and everyone else! you helped make this year in Physics AWESOME!!!

Action Reaction

dance247tm — Mon, 04 May 2009 06:23:46 +0000

Last week i wrote my blog on sunday morning i think… after that i had volleyball practice and i witnessed some physics going on. I thought about adding on to that blog i did last week, but then i decided that i would just write about it this week. So anyways… we were doing a passing drill at the gym in manoa, and I was in the serving group. So i served the ball and i saw two of my teammates collide. It was pretty cool because i saw them collide and bounce off of each other. (i know this doesn’t sound like a good/cool thing, but it was actually pretty cool to see. They were both ok. No one was hurt.) It was like what we learned in physics with Newton’s laws. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, etc. This was also an inelastic collision. In this type of collision, momentum is conserved, but Kinetic energy is not. Ok. I think that’s enough physics for now… I’m pretty tired from prom and volleyball and tourneys. SO.. until next week! Ah!! APs!!!

a picture of our team..

POOL TIME!

dance247tm — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:46:35 +0000

ok. so this week wednesday my sister and I went to the pool by our house. And my sister asked me if i could touch the bottom of the pool on the deep end. (Our pool starts at like 3 1/2 feet and slants till 9 feet.) I said of course I can, but i don’t want to. I tend to get ear infections if i stay down there too long. I know because of physics, and common sense, that the deeper you go under water, the more pressure you feel. this is because P=F/A. as i go deeper, there is more water above me pressing down on my same area, so i begin to feel more and more pressure. All this pressure is too much for me and my sensitive ears, so i decided not to dive down in the water. However, my sister did, multiple times. She’s been complaining that she can’t hear anything in her left ear… Hmm.. could it be an ear infection??? :p

FAIR!!!

dance247tm — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 21:14:59 +0000

ok. so as you ALL know, this weekend was IOLANI FAMILY FAIR! I actually saw doc! a lot at fair haha!! yay! lab partner!!!! anyways… i asked him yesterday while i was working at the info booth if we had to blog and he said yes, sooo i’m writing my blog right now. Ok so i was telling ian and mr. u that i was probably gonna blog about something at the fair, but i didn’t have my camera.. and idk how to upload pictures from the phone i have now to my computer, sooo i’m just gonna blog on it and find some random picture to post up anyways… for all of you juniors who were working at malasadas… there were like christmas lights hanging up inside the booth. that made me think CIRCUITS! k so i’m sure you all already knew this, but if one of the lightbulbs in the chain goes out, not ALL the lightbulbs go out. Just that one does. “WHY is this?” you may ask. Well… this is because the lights are wired in parallel, as opposed to series. Ok. well i guess that is it for this week. hope you all had fun at FAIR!!! oh! and good job in the talent show to all who participated! (PRINCESS!! haha the hat worked!!! KEL!!! that cinnamon thing was very delicious! thanks!!! haha too bad they didn’t have the tiara anymore!!! TRACI!!! that guy chris is pretty weird… but he was funny haha)

Refraction

dance247tm — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 08:48:38 +0000

K… i was looking through old pictures again, and i found some pictures from this past summer that demonstrate refraction, which we learned a few tests ago. The refraction of light in air (n=1.00) is different from the refraction of light in water (n=1.33). Because of this fact, light bends when it passes from air to water or vice versa. My sister and i went to the pool a lot this past summer, and we brought my camera to the pool and took some pictures. we took some pictures underwater, and for some reason, our faces would get distorted under the water. i didn’t know then, but now i know the reason for this. The water and the waves on the water distorted our faces because as the light traveled from the air to the water, it bent and so our faces look distorted. Here’s some pictures of us underwater!

CALIFORNIA SCREAMIN!!! :D

dance247tm — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 09:36:18 +0000

Ok. sooo.. over spring break I went on the California College Tour trip and it was oodles and oodles of FUN!!! We had a blast and saw A LOT of colleges while we were up there. Anyways, one of THEEE BESSSTTT days up there was the day we went to DISNEYLAND / CALIFORNIA ADVERTURE PARK! We got to ride rides, eat food, and SEE THE PRINCESSES (the real ones, not anders.. haha)!! I think one of theeee best rides was California Screamin! the roller coaster. In the ride, there’s a loop de loop, and as I was riding the roller coaster i thought, “hey! this relates to what we learned in physics!” This was totally centripetal force! While we were riding the loop de loop part of the roller coaster, we felt a Force radially inward at a magnitude of (mv^2)/r!!! if i knew the mass of the roller coaster plus all the people in it, the velocity of the rollercoaster, and the radius of the loop, i would be able to calculate the force we felt, but i don’t know any of those, so i cant… haha. Well anyways… here’s a picture of me and a couple of friends on the roller coaster. haha

Flash!

dance247tm — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 06:54:52 +0000

k so i had a totally good idea for a blog that has to do with all this double slit stuff we’re learning, but i didn’t get a picture of it (i wasn’t thinking ahead).. i guess i’ll explain it anyways tho.. (by the way this has nothing to do with the “flash!” part yet, but it is about light!). Ok so i was scorekeeping at the boys’ JV red team volleyball game, and i happened to look down under the table. ok so we have this “Raiders” tarp/banner thingy that hangs in front of the scorekeeping table and it has holes in it around the edges. When i looked under the table, there was light coming through the holes, and that light was refracted and it was like a pretty flower of light haha. The lower gym has many light sources (there’s a whole bunch of lamps/lights hanging) which were being sent through the holes and interfering with each other. They produced the pretty pattern i was seeing (which sadly i don’t have a picture of..)

Ok! onto the “flash!” part. so i thought i would write about camera flashed this week cuz i found an old picture of a camera flash! Soooo basically a camera flash is a capacitor which we learned a couple tests ago. A capacitor is like a battery kinda. It stores energy from an energy source then stops the current from flowing. After that, the energy in this capacitor can be released and all the energy flows out quickly at once. The flash of the camera stores energy and when you press the button to take the picture, the energy is released and there is a flash of light. then the flash has to be recharged again. This is more evident in disposable cameras. When you hear that noise when you push the flash button, the flash is charging up. like a capacitor. Ok. so here’s a picture of the camera flash.

i think that’s enough for one weekend’s blog till next weeek!!!!

mirrors and Blue Planet!

dance247tm — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 08:59:42 +0000

I personally like mirrors. They’re good for a lot of things. Like checking what you look like, for use in cars and while driving, and many other things. For example, if you’re a girl, they’re really fun to take pictures in. I guess guys do it too… but not as much as girls. Anyways! soooo.. i thought i’d share my epiphany from class with you, in this blog…. so while doc was talking i realized why they use those convex mirrors for driving, and why they say “objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” soooo.. convex mirrors “shrink” images so that they appear smaller in the mirror than they actually do. Hence the warning on those passenger side mirrors of cars. Of course, this is in the book, but i realized it before seeing it. Convex mirrors form smaller, virtual, and upright images. Here’s a picture of a convex mirror because it was too late and dark to take one myself.

Oh and here’s a fun mirror picture!

Ok… so on to blue planet. I went to see Jeff Mikulina from Blue Planet Foundation speak on Tuesday during lunch. And it was actually pretty interesting. I believe what he believes. That we can have a world that isn’t dependent on oil and fossil fuels, and that Hawai’i would be an awesome source of energy and that we could export that energy to the world. I think it was cool but scary to see how much and how fast the world is changing and heating up. i think that we need to change that now and really go green. recycling, being aware of how much energy we use and trying to cut it down, and jus being more aware of our surroundings in general are ways we can help. We can also pick up trash, do projects to help our environment, and help by making others more aware of the situation. I think anything is possible if we works towards it. Right now, it may only be a dream, but it’s definitely a dream that can be attained.

serving and torque

dance247tm — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 03:41:12 +0000

wow i’m actually writing my blog on SATURDAY!!! it’s because i wanted to go surfing today, but my mom said i couldn’t cuz i didn’t finish all my homework. SO i’m gonna start doin my homework early on weekends. Maybe next week i’ll write my blog on FRIDAY?!?! haha. ok anyways…. today at volleyball practice we were working on our serving technique. (since only 3 out of our 9 players came to practice today.. well 4 came, but one went home sick… i digress) ANYWAYS… we were doing basics, like serving and our coach mentioned TORQUE!!! i was like OOOHH!!! PHYSICS!!! haha. Ok so brandon (our coach) was saying that we need to wind up farther so that we can have more torque, therefore more power, on our serves. since torque = rFsin(theta) where r is the distance from the axis to the force, F is the force, and theta is the angle between r and F. i guess because we were also increasing our angular momentum. and angular momentum = torque times the time interval. So basically, more momentum = more torque = more force = more work (force times distance) = more power (work divided by time). haha wow that was complicated. So much physics involved in volleyball and i didn’t even know!! I guess a faster swing would work too because the work done in a certain amount of time would be less and that means more power! it all makes sense. haha. ok enough for now… Tune in next week where HOPEFULLY i’ll write my blog on FRIDAY!!!

Here’s a picture of my friend serving because i didn’t wanna post one of me. haha sorry it’s sideways

VEGAS BABY!!!

dance247tm — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:22:43 +0000

ok. so while i was in vegas this past weekend for volleyball, i experienced A LOT of physics. SOOOO… first of all, when we were there, for some reason, when you touch ppl, you tend to shock them.. A LOT. We’d jus be standing in the huddle and i’d accidentally tap someone, and they’d be like “ow! you shocked me!” i don’t actually know why this happens, but it has something to do with charges. and i know we studied that. I’m guessing that somehow, a charge is created and electrons pass from one person to the next person when they touch. and that results in the shock the ppl feel. we also sent to New york new york. BUT, sadly, the roller coaster wasn’t working… however we did get to see it from the outside. There is a loop de loop in the roller coaster and the first thing i thought was… Centripetal Force! Anyways, it was a trip full of physics and volleyball! super COLD, but super de duper FUN!!!

Here’s a pic of my team [minus karla cuz she was with her parentals.. ]