Do Work

This past week, we've been learning about work in physics. Work is defined as the product of the force of an object and the distance through which the object is moved. The formula for work is work = force x distance. Work is measured in joules. So over the weekend, I tried looking for something related to the physics we've been learning about recently, but the only thing I can think of is a particular lack of physics that occurred. While I was at a birthday party, my friend Andy and I were leaving and he couldn't find his slippers. We think Gavin may have accidentally grabbed them by mistake, but anyway, I had to piggy back Andy to the car since it was raining all night and the ground was wet. After carrying him all the way down the street and around the corner to the car, I was super tired and out of breath but after I thought about, I sadly realized that I didn't do any work. Because the force used to lift Andy was perpendicular to the direction of the motion of me walking to the car, this was not considered work. The picture included is not a picture from this weekend but its a picture similar to the situation.

Newton's 3rd Law

This past summer, I visited Vietnam. We got to do a lot of new things but one of the really cool activities we did was visiting the Cu Chi Tunnels, a former military base during the Vietnam War. The tunnels now serve as a major tourist attraction where people can learn about the underground tunnels, built by the Viet Cong, buy war memorabilia including zippo lighters and dog tags of fallen American soldiers and even shoot various types of guns at a shooting range. Despite the fact that I look extremely weird in the picture, this is a picture of me shooting an AK 47. Newtons third law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. When I shot the gun, there was a strong kick or recoil. There was a worker assisting people and telling them where to stand and gun was mounted on the wall to prevent any serious injuries caused by the recoil. According to Newton's third law of motion, the force that I felt when the gun recoiled was equal to the force exerted on the bullet. The reason the bullet accelerates more than the gun however, is because the mass of the bullet is so much smaller. The greater mass of the gun on the other hand, results in a much lesser acceleration than the bullet.

simple physics

Although there was a lot of physics going on in the form of sports this weekend (soccer, wrestling, basketball, swimming, and diving), I decided to focus on a very simple type of physics that took place on Friday night. Earlier this weekend, my friends and I went to Senor Frogs. While I was looking over my pictures, I noticed that there was physics right at our table. As we sat down and ate, our bodies exerted a force on the bench. The bench exerted an equal and opposite force on us as we sat down. This demonstrates Newton's third law of motion; whenever one object exerts a force on a second object, the second object exerts and equal and opposite force on the first. Physics is in the most common places. In fact, you are probably experiencing Newtons third law right now.

Diving in with physics

On friday I watched my friend, Bridget's diving meet at school. It was the first time I ever watched on and it was quite interesting. I took some videos because I thought that there would be some kind of physics at the meet. I'm sure there's a ton of physics to diving but the only thing I can think of at the moment is that when the diver is diving into the water, gravity pulls down on the diver at 9.8 m/s. The different divers hit the water at different times however, due to other factors such as how high the are able to jump off the board, how many and what kind of turns they do.

Singing With Physics

Lately, I've been too busy to notice the world of physics around me. As I was looking through my computer files for something that could be applied to physics, I found something that I didn't realize at the time was related to physics. A few months ago, my friends and I went out and sang karaoke. While I watched this video again, I realized the reverberations that can be heard while they are singing. Reverberations are multiple echoes that you can here while singing karaoke or even while in the shower. These echoes can make an ameture sound better, but cut down on the crispness of a pro.

happy holidays with physics

While I was watching TV, I glanced over at the Christmas tree my mom decorated. Because of the huge mess Christmas tree make, my family has an artificial tree. The tree originally came with lights already on the tree. After a few years, some of the lights stopped working. I recently realized that this was due to a string of Christmas lights that was arranged in a series circuit. The result: when one bulb goes out, the others on the string stop working as well. My mom replaced the lights with a new string that's arranged in a parallel circuit so that if one of the bulbs go out, she won't have to replace all the lights again.

rear view mirrors

On Friday, my friends and I went to the Aloha Stadium to watch Iolani's football team compete against Radford for the div II state title. Iolani beat Radford 35-20. After the game, we decided to go to Pearlridge to get dinner and catch a movie. Matt was driving in front of me and Shantha while we were leaving the stadium. While we were stuck in traffic, we remembered that if Matt looked into his rear view mirror, we would be able to make eye contact with him, and we would both be able to see each other. We learned this in physics in the past week and this occurs because of the angle of incidence and the angle of reflection. Shantha and I began to jump around in the car, and waved our arms to try to get Matts as a good driver should, he kept his eyes on the road, and didn't see us in his rear view mirror.