Physics Post 17

For this physics post I will be explaining the picture I took of pencils (and pens) in an arrangement on the ground. As you can see, the writing utensils spell out "Mass is not weight". As we have learned, mass is definitely not weight. Weight, is in fact, mass times gravity. So, if you accidentally told someone who took physics that you were 400 kilograms or 40 Newtons, they would think you are crazy. Another example where confusing mass and weight would be bad is when converting a weight on earth to a weight onthe moon. If you forget to convert your weight on earth back into mass, then it would be much heavier than it should be. To be exact, someone who has a mass of 45 kilograms would weigh approximately 440 Newtons on earth (earth's gravitational acceleration being 9.8 meters per second squared). And on the moon they would weigh about 73 Newtons (the moon's gravitational acceleration being 1.63 meters per second squared). But, if you forget that 440 is in Newtons not kilograms and you tried to convert it, the person would end up weighing about 717 Newtons, which is very heavy. Also, if they were a girl or sensitive guy, you would offend them. The moral of the story is: mass is not weight *insert heavy metal song here*.

>implying I own a lot of pens and pencils

Physics Post 16

For this physics post I will be explaining the picture I took of a lock at the edge of my bed. This represents physics because it is a demonstration of potential energy. Also, if I had taken a picture of the lock falling off the bed, it would be a demonstration of kinetic energy. The energy in both of those pictures would be the same amount of joules because energy is conserved. For example, if the lock (while on the edge of the bed) was 0.5 kilograms and it was 0.5 meters off of the ground, it would have about 2.5 joules of energy (when rounding gravity to 10 meters per second squared). The falling lock would also have 2.5 joules of energy, but it would be kinetic energy.

Physics Post 15

For this physics post I will be explaining the picture I took of my phone on the side of a box while comparing it to my group's egg drop lab. This relates to our lab because it represents how our egg in the box fell. Of course, this is a hypothesis because we do not know exactly how the egg fell since we there were three drops total and we did not openthe box in between the drops. Our strategy was to increase the cushion in the box in order to increase stopping time for the egg therefore decreasing the force placed on the actual egg. This failed because after dropping the box with the egg three times, the egg was dislodged from it's resting place in the middle of the box and it went to the outer edge. This is represented in the picture I took (although the egg was on the inside not the outside). When the egg was dropped like this, there was no cushion for the egg to slow down with. After falling two stories, the force that was imparted on the egg from the sudden stop easily broke the shell.

Physics Post 14

For this physics post I will be explaining the picture I took of me dropping a calculator on my pillow. This shows how the force that is imparted on an object hitting the ground (or my bed in this case) can be reduced by putting some sort of cushion to increase the time it takes to stop. By increasing the stopping time, which is inversely related to the force, you decrease the objects chance of a stop that is too sudden. In this specific situation, the pillow is more than enough to cushion a .2kg calculator falling from 1 meter. Although in movies, stunt doubles often have very large air cushions which will help them to fall from heights without injury.

Physics Post 13

For this physics post I will be explaining a picture I took of a marble being flicked at a thumb drive. For this picture, we are assuming that the thumb drive is the same mass as the marble, and the marble contacts the thumb drive perfectly. If we assume those properties are in effect, the initial velocity of the marble should become the final velocity of the thumb drive and the thumb drive, which is at rest, should move in a direction opposite of the incoming marble. Also, the marbles final velocity should be zero. This shows the conservation of momentum. Since the items are of equal mass they should perfectly exchange their velocities; the equation m1v1(initial) + m2v2(initial) = m1v1(final) + m2v2(final) proves this. When you condense the formula to m(v1+v2)initial = m(v1+v2)final (since m1=m2 you can condense them and put them out of the parentheses), and you cancel out the masses (since they remain constant) you are left with v1+v2(initial) = v1+v2(final). This shows that if v1 = something and v2 = 0 and if v1's initial velocity is transferred into v2's final velocity, v1 must become 0 in order to balance the equation.

Physics Post 12

For this physics post I will be explaining the picture I took of me about to drop a stuffed dog. This demonstrates change in momentum, or rather, the change in momentum that is going to take place when I drop the stuffed dog and it stops moving when it lands on my bed. Since I am dropping the stuffed dog on earth, gravity will make the stuffed dog accelerate down, in a negative y direction. Assuming that the mass of the dog is 0.20 kg and it's velocity downwards is 3.00m/s we can find the change in momentum by subtracting the initial momentum from the final momentum. Since the stuffed dog will remain on the bed after landing, it's final momentum is zero. It's initial momentum will be mass times negative velocity: 0.20 kg x -(3.00m/s) = -0.60 kg x m/s. Therefore, the change in momentum or delta p will be positive 0.60 kg x m/s which makes sense since it was initially traveling downwards or negative and the change from negative to zero is positive.

Physics Post 11

For this physics post I will be explaining the picture I took of my pencil on a somewhat frictionless surface. This relates to our lab last week because we were measuring how fast our cart would go according to the hanging weight, not friction. Therefore we had to remove friction from our experiment. We did this by using a nearly frictionless cart and track set that would accurately display how fast the hanging weight would make the cart accelerate. My somewhat frictionless surface is the cover of my binder. Since it is plastic, and my pencil does not stick to it, it creates an imitation of a frictionless surface. Because it is somewhat frictionless, my pencil should not stop rolling once I apply force to it. This is true except for the fact that the clip on my pencil would impede a rolling motion since it acts like a speed bump whenever the pencil rolls over it.

Physics Post 10

For this physics post I will be explaining the picture I took of my lanyard attached to my glasses case which represents what happens in a pulley system. Although I do not have a pulley, the main forces that are involved in a pulley system are still at work. The main forces here are friction and gravity. The force that the mass of the I.D. in the lanyard and the pull of gravity make is not enough to overcome the friction between the glasses case and the bed surface. If the situation was reversed, and the glasses case was the one that was hanging, there would be more than enough force to pull the I.D. off of the bed since the glasses case weighs much more than the I.D.

Physics Post 9

For this post I will be explaining a picture I took of me pulling my planner out from under my glasses case. In theory, if I pulled the planner at a fast enough velocity, it should come out from under the glasses case without displacing the glasses case. But in actuality, there are several factors which will prevent this from happening. One factor is the glasses case itself. It is not very balanced since the cleaning cloth makes it slightly heavier on one side. Another factor is the bed that this is occurring on. The bed is not a completely flat surface. Therefore, the energy that has to be applied on the planner in order to not affect the glasses case's inertia will be slightly different in terms of magnitude and direction. If this were to be occurring on something flat, like a desk, and I removed the glasses and cleaning cloth from the glasses case, then this experiment would run smoother.

Physics Post 8

For this physics post I will be explaining the picture I took of me shaking a pen. You could say that I am shaking this pen fast. But relative to what? I could be shaking the pen fast relative to a gorilla shaking a banana tree. You could also say that I am shaking this pen slow. But again, relative to what? I could be shaking the pen slow relative to a bomb shaking the molecules in the air. This can all be considered true because everything in the world is relative to something else. You could say a sloth was really fast. Relative to the speed of the growth of the tree it's climbing on. You could also say the speed of sound is slow. Relative to the speed of light.

Physics Post 7

For this post I will be explaining a picture that I took of me flicking a paper clip off the edge of my bed. This demonstrates how axes are independent because as I flick the paper clip horizontally, it will constantly go that speed on the x-axis while accelerating -9.8 meters per second from gravity on the y-axis. If I had changed the angle of my flick to aim slightly upwards, then by calculating the x and y vectors of the diagonal, I could find the initial velocity of the x and y. If you were to solve for the final velocities of the x and y, you would find that the x-velocity would have remained constant and the y-velocity would have been accelerated from gravity.

Physics Post 6

For this physics post I will be explaining this picture I took of a vector on my bed. Since there are no defined axes, a person would not know which direction or the scale of this vector. Without the axes or any other type of line to show direction, a person could not define what direction this arrow is going therefore, by definition, making this not a vector since there is no direction. As an example, a scale that you could use in this picture would be the squares on my bed. If a person took the two tan lines closest to the tail of the arrow and used those as the x and y axis, and estimated that each square was about 3 centimeters, they would find that the arrow is about 22.5 centimeters. Assuming that 1 centimeter is equal to 1 meter per second, this arrow has a magnitude of 22.5 meters per second. Also considering that the edge of my bed that is showing is facing north, then a person could guess this arrow is facing southeast, giving the vector a direction.

Physics Post 5

For this physics post I will be explaining the picture I took of a car and a deer. This picture relates to physics because when a car is about to run into a deer (this happens in the continental United States since Hawaii doesn't have roaming deer) the drivers instinct is to brake and swerve. Braking the car leads to deceleration (also known as accelerating in the opposite direction). (Not considering drivers reaction time) If this car were about to hit the deer who is 90 meters away at 30 meters per second, the driver would need to accelerate in the opposite direction 30 meters per second squared within the 90 meters. This is actually quite easy because the average person can brake at 15 feet per second squared which is equal to 5 meters per second squared (a professional race car driver can brake at about 32 feet per second so he would have less than no problem).

Physics Post 4

For this physics post I will be explaining the picture I took of an ant. This picture relates to physics because you can make a distance over time graph of an ant's movements. An example would be this ant who was crawling from the edge of my bed to my laptop which is about 4 feet. It took the ant about 2 minutes to make this journey. If you plotted this on a graph, you could see that the ant's average speed was about 2 feet/minute (0.023 miles/hour). But, he was not constantly walking this speed. He took several breaks on his trip. During this time his speed was zero. That means his speed in the time that he wasn't taking breaks must have been more than 2 feet/minute.

Physics Post 3

For this physics post I will be explaining the picture of me throwing up a box of tissues. This relates to physics because the object you throw in the air is affected by the downward acceleration of Earth's gravity. Most things that are thrown in the air will follow the fast-slow-stop-slow-fast pattern. The first part, fast, is from the energy that the person used to throw the object in the air. Then, it will slow down due to gravity and eventually, at the peak of its path, it will reach a speed of zero. Then, it will slowly pick up speed due to gravity's downward acceleration. Finally, it will resume the speed that corresponds to how many seconds it was in the air.

Physics Post 2

For my second physics post I will be explaining the picture of my paintball gun. This relates to what we are learning in science because speed of your paintball is measured every time you play. In order to keep people safe, the referees at various paintball fields on the island require that you shoot your paintball gun through a chronometer to measure how fast your paintball is going. Although paintball is measured in feet per second, you could convert that to meters per second through dimensional analysis. Paintball can also relate to vectors and displacement if you were to follow the path of your paintball as you shot it in a certain direction.

Physics Post 1

For a physics related picture I turned my lanyard into a pendulum. This is related to physics because we recently did a lab that was related to pendulums and their periods. According to the lab data we found out how things such as string length, angle of drop, and mass of dropped object affected the length of the pendulum's period. Also, our hypothesis about the string length, angle of drop, and mass of drop object were either proven or not depending on what kind of data our group collected. Although this lanyard is not the same as the pendulum we used in class, it is still a good source for measuring different laws of physics because physics is physics and it can't be changed without major proof.

Introduction Post

My name is Philip. I am currently a junior. I am also currently taking Mr. Blake's physics class. So far in high school I have taken Biology and Chemistry. I got B grades in Biology and A grades in Chemistry. In summer school in elementary I took marine biology and got an A. My current math class is Honors Pre-Calculus. What I hope to accomplish in Physics is to get a better understanding of different laws of Physics and how it affects our lives. That picture is of me and my friends at paintball. This represents me because hanging out with friends and doing stuff like paintball is what I like to do.