Blog Post #20

Hey guys, its me again talking to you about my majestic daily life, physics edition.  So we have been learning a lot about circuits and electricity these past weeks.  Today I'm going to be talking to you about circuits.  If you look at the picture, you will see my bathroom lights.  Please ignore the fact that one light bulb is out, it's because it is fused out.  Anyways, if you did not know already there are two different types of circuits, series and parallel (and combo but that is just a mixture of both).  If you don't know what they are it's just that series are connected in one line, while a parallel is connected by many different connecting paths.  My bathroom lights are set up in a parallel circuit because in a series, the broken light bulb would have killed the circuit and all of the bulbs would have stopped working.  But in this case, only one bulb stopped working, therefore, it must be in a parallel circuit.  Thats pretty much it.  I hope you learned just a little bit about circuits.  Anyways, I have to go change that light bulb now.  See you next week.  I think we might be doing our water bottle rockets this week.  But I'm not sure.  So don't count on it! Okay bye.

Blog Post #20

Hey guys, so today I'm here to talk to you about ways on saving energy.  My physics teacher gave us a challenge in class to create ways to save electricity in our house.  And whatever money we save, we get to pocket the difference.  Unfortunately, I'm moving next month and my dad is putting in photovoltaic cells for our house.  Therefore, I'm already excluded from the challenge.  But I am able to give ways on how to save energy in my house anyways.  So these are pics of my current house to show you ways on saving energy.  One thing you can do is turn off your air conditioning.  Open a window.  It uses a buttload of energy.  Also you probably heard of this before but turn off lights when you aren't using it.  That will save a great deal of energy over time.  Also, some appliances like chargers or other plug-in devices have a plug known as phantom power.  If you guys don't know what that is, it's just a term used for saying that some plugs do use electricity even when not in use.  So the easiest way to save electricity is to unplug plugs!  Anyways, I hope I taught you some things on saving electricity in your house. So see you guys next week.

Blog Post #19

Hey guys, it's me with another blog post.  Today I'm going to talk to you about currents.  Currents are the number of charges passing a point per second.  There are two types of currents, there are DC and AC.  They are called DC circuits and AC circuits.  DC circuits are direct currents which charges flow one way.  And AC circuits which charges flow both ways.  The television I have on my picture has a DC circuit because the charges from the plug go directly to the television.  But in the matters of an AC circuit, that can be demonstrated through your cellphone charger.  When the charger is hooked to the wall, charges from the wall, through the plug, which converts the charges from AC to DC then into your phone.  I hope that helps a little, yeah it got kind of confusing for me as well.

Blog Post #18

Hey guys!  Its me with another post.  This week I'm going to talk to you about capacitors.  Capacitance is basically energy storage for a short amount of time.  Capacitors are just that, but tangible.  Almost everything we use (technology wise) has capacitors.  In my example, the computer keyboard has capacitors.  These capacitors are located inside the keys of the keyboard.  You see, when a key is pressed, two plates are pushed together, which was originally divided by a dielectric.  Anyways, when a specific key is pressed, the plates are pressed together and it sends off an energy signal that tells the computer to type that specific key.  Then when the key retracts, it stops pressing the key.  Ironically, I'm doing it right now...  Anyways, I hope you learned something today.  Sorry if this kind of confused you a little bit.  Trust me, it's not easy talking about this.  Anyways, join me next week when I will be talking to you about something different!

Blog Post #17

Hey guys, this week I'm here to talk to you about electrical potential.  Don't get it mixed up with electrical potential energy.  They are not the same.  Electrical potential or electrical potential difference is the amount of electrical potential energy per charge.  This is measured in joules/coulombs (J/C).  This is also know as a volt or voltage.  If you look super closely to the poorly taken photo, you can see that this C battery has 1.5 volts.  This battery is used to power my radio/speakers.  What I learned in physics last class was that because my radio needs eight C batteries and each battery has 1.5 volts, we could replace this with a larger battery that has the same amount of volts.  Why would I do this?  I would do this because of the fact that the battery has a larger volume, it would have more electrical potential energy.  Meaning this would make it last longer and save me more money.  Unfortunately, I would have to manually rewire the radio to make the battery fit and even then, the battery will be very bulky and hard to carry around.  But it doesn't matter, I probably won't do that anyways.  Anyways, I hope you learned something.  And join me next week when I'll be teaching you about hopefully something new.

Blog Post #16

Hey so its been another week of school.  I was tired, so I took a bath.  I dragged my sock-covered feet across the bathroom rug and I walked to the door.  But then something hit me.  Or shocked me for that matter.  Do you know what that is?  Of course you don't.  You see my body was neutrally charged (refer to last post for definitions).  And so was the door.  However, when I dragged my feet across the carpet, it created a charge.  Either positive or negative.  Anyways, when a charged object and a neutral object meet, their charges want to equal out.  This means that if an object has +3 charge and another object had a -5 charge, their ions want to distribute so when they meet the charge for both of them would be -1 for each.  In this case, when I touched the neutral door with my charged up body, it created a shock, trying to equal out.  I believe that this is right.  But it's been a long break for me.  So go easy on me.  Anyways, no school tomorrow.  Enjoy your holiday and please study physics.  Oh for anyone in my grade who is reading this is going to AP physics C next year let me know!

Blog Post #15

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!! I wanted to say that I am so happy to have lived through another year! Anyways, today I'm going to talk to you guys about charges.  No, not monthly phone charges.  I'm talking about magnetic charges.  There are three different types of atoms, the first is called protons, those are positively charged.  The second one is called electrons, those are negatively charged.  And finally, we have neutrons, which have no charge or neutral.  The picture on the left is of one of my refrigerator magnets holding my baby cousins Christmas picture from 2010.  I think what I'm about to say is right.  But I could be wrong.  But this is to my understanding and plus we just started this unit so I might mess up.  Anyways, I know, that if I am correct, the magnet should have a specific charge.  And the refrigerator should have a neutral charge.  This is because when the magnet and the refrigerator come in contact, they stick together or attract.  I can almost guarantee that the refrigerator is neutral though.  One time, I got any actual magnet (one with a positive and negative side) and stuck both sides on the refrigerator.  Both of the sides were attracted together.  It says that both negative and positive charges are attracted to neutral charges.  Therefore, it should be neutral.  But I'm not completely sure if thats true or not.  Anyways I sure hope that this helped a little.  And sorry if this confused you even more.  But it makes sense to me.  Anyways happy new year again.

Blog Post Everything I learned this semester

Things i learned this semester, lets see:

1. MASS IS NOT WEIGHT!!!
2. mr blake is a secret jamaican ninja (da whole ting and bureku technique)
3. There are two types of collisions: elastic and inelastic
4. Sheila the Amazon is greatly hated amongst the piranha men
5. Blog posts like to ruin my weekends... (just kidding)
6. PA's are only for those who enjoy 9-15 difficulties every week
7. Procrastination is the key to success
8. Balancing books on your head makes a great princess
9. Eggs are for eating not for throwing them off a three story roof
10. Mr. Blake and Da Freitas was part of the band Tenacious D but got kicked off a cliff for being too awesome...
11. The board not bored is never bored unless it's on a board
12. Free body diagrams are like someones icky aunt Clare, no one likes or wants them...
13. Never shoot something up in the air while moving, it'll only end in tears and/or broken bones or limbs or internal or external organs...
14. Never drop a bowling ball from the second floor, the people upstairs will be very mad
15. Apparently Da Freitas is very massive
16. Pulleys changes the direction and is not welcomed by most students
17. We will fight to the death with Nutter Butters!
18. Don't ask a science teacher for an answer, they will always manage to turn "how do you find PEg?" to "wow you know when I was your age, we never had iPods..." 
19. Don't play with the carts, unless you want to pay twice as much for a cart...
20. Finally I learned that physics is life, we live, breath, work and see physics everywhere.  That is why we do these blog posts, to compare everyday things to what we learned.

I realized some of the stuff I said may come off somewhat offensive.  I apologize to anyone who reads this and I hope you don't sue me.  I love all that read and follow and don't really want to go to jail for a few jokes.  I hope you guys have a wonderful Christmas and a wonderful New Year.

PS: Next year is the year of the dragon! For those of you who follow the Chinese zodiac.

Blog Post #14

Hey so this is me with another blog post.  So today I'm going to be talking about potential and kinetic energy.  So potential energy is basically when the energy when an object is not moving and kinetic energy is when an object is moving.  Also energy is never created nor destroyed just changes form, also known as the conservation of energy.  This means that if the potential energy of the football is something, that means that when it is thrown, over time, the potential energy will turn to kinetic energy, because its in motion.  So the energy will always be the same, as long as it stays in the air.  Once the ball lands, the energy is changed and when it is thrown again, there may be a different amount of energy.  So this is basically energy.  Sorry if it's a little confusing and grammatically incorrect.  It takes a lot of understanding to fully get it.  So enjoy this, I hope you learned something new and now you can say that I learned about energy.

Blog Post #13

Hey guys.  It's me again with another blog post.  Sorry but I'm going to be talking about egg drops again.  So this week we finally did our egg drops.  My partner and I made a type of box with tons of little foam cushions in it.  We made sure that the box was secure but has enough room for the impulse to push through.  There are a lot of physics involved in stopping an egg from breaking.  My partner and I realized that an average egg has a certain mass.  We used this to calculate the momentum of the drop.  We also realized that whatever we build has to not only cushion the egg from the bottom, but protect it from the impulse pushing down on the egg.  Therefore, we made a box full and placed the egg in the center.  This makes the egg experience the cushioning from below it and protect from the impulse pushing from above at all sides.  We also had to make sure that the egg doesn't shift around in the box.  So we made sure the the egg was secured in a protected foam wrapping and placed styrofoam packing-peanuts in the box.  This is because when the egg shifts around, it has inner liquids inside it, therefore if the liquids shift around a lot, the shell could crack from the inside.  We also had another problem that we never expected.  There was a ton of air pushing against the box.  This made the box shift slightly to the right.  However, this actually helped.  You see, when the air pushes on it, it increased the time of impact on the egg.  This will also help cushion the egg in a sense that the box will hit the ground slower.  But whatever the cause, the egg survived.  I believe the only modifications I would make on the contraption is maybe making adding a parachute, if possible.  If not, I would have just left it.  And that was our egg drop.  Sorry it was so long today.  But I hope you guys could try an egg drop.  And be creative on how to make it.

Hey guys I'm back with another installment of my blog.  This time I want to talk to you about egg dropping.  So, did you ever talk to your friends and go, how do I make an egg drop from a certain height without making it break.  So i have prepared a picture that I drew on my awesome Wacom tablet, of a person dropping an egg of a ledge.  You can easily find the velocity of a single egg by using various equasions.  We are going to say that this ledge is about 10 meters.  But to save space I solved for it already and got about 14 m/s.  Using this, we can solve for momentum and find out how much we need to slow it down, in order for it not to crack.  Anyways, I really haven't fully mastered it so I cannot say for sure that I know what I am doing, anyways, hope you enjoyed it.  I basically showed you the steps on how to not crack it, but it's really up to you to be creative in finding new and different ways.  So have fun and always be creative.

Blogpost #11

Sorry if this doesn't work I will upload it when I get a chance to use my computer again. Anyways tonight I will be talking to you about momentum yet again. Today's focus is on conservation of momentum. This is basically saying that in a select system or operation an object will not change when acted upon a different object. Confusing? Yeah I know. Let me explain through example. These balls are flying directly at each other. When they hit they will basically trade velocities or speeds. Meaning that if the first ball had a velocity of 4m/s and the second had a velocity at 5 m/s, when they hit, the first ball will bounce back at around 5 m/s and the second one will go at 4 m/s. So the next time you and your friend are throwing balls and your friend decides to throw a ball at you, don't be an idiot and throw the ball directly at that ball expecting it to bounce off and not hit you in the head. Anyways I'm hoping to get off of this chapter soon because it's making my brain hurt but for now I hope you enjoyed this demonstration of the conservation of momentum.

Hey there! I'm back with another blog post this time we started a new unit.  Today I'm going to talk to you about what I think is momentum.  I think momentum is that one moment in life where you go umm... Just kidding.  I think momentum is when an object is projected and as Newton's 1st law states, "an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an opposing force".  So that motion is momentum.  In this case my friend, I don't know if she wants me to tell her name online, is the object in motion and she wants to stay in motion even at the bottom.  But friction will make her stop.  But thats besides the point.  Anyways thats what I think momentum is.  I hope you don't listen to me because I am probably wrong.  Anyways until next week.

Blog Post #10

Hey it's me again with yet another blog post on force.  Today I am going to talk to you specifically on Newton's 1st law.  This law states that an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside unbalanced force.  This basically means that if an object is in motion, taking my picture of a cross country runner as an example, and say he is running at a constant velocity, the moment he crosses the finish line, he will be acted upon by an opposing force.  Meaning he will stop.  However, he is not only stopping, but he is decelerating or accelerating in the opposite direction.  Because if he were to stop suddenly, he would most likely fall over or trip.  I believe this is due to momentum or something (we didn't learn that yet).  But anyways I believe that is what you need to know about Newton's 1st law.  Next week I will be hopefully going over Newton's 2nd law.  

Blog Post #9

Hey there I am not sure if I used this pic yet because this pic was taken back from a month ago.  Anyways I will be talking to you about force today again.  I am going to talk about "freebody diagrams" (without the diagram).  So as you can see this is a picture of a runner.  You may not know this but this was taken at the finish line.  So he is decelerating.  Free body diagrams measure anything that force pushes or pulls against.  So there are two forces that we are able to find.  That would be the mass of his body pushing down and the force of the ground pushing up.  This causes the body to stay up right and not fall over.  Now, because he is decelerating, he is accelerating in the opposite direction, or backwards.  So when drawing the diagram we will have an arrow pointing down labeled "mg" and an arrow pointing up labeled "N" for normal.  Both of which are the same length.  Also there will be an arrow pointing opposite the runner's direction.  So if we was running to the left, the arrow would be pointing to the right.  And vise versa.  Also this arrow should be labeled "F for force".  And that is basically it.  So I hope you have enjoyed yourself.

Blog Post #8

Hello fellow bloggers.  I am back with a new segment of my blog.  Today's focus is on force.  So, this video is of my baby cousin pushing his baby walker.  The definition of force is simply a push or a pull.  More specifically we are going to focus on contact forces today.  Contact forces are caused by contact of contrasting 2 objects.  Basically this means that the baby walker is one object and my baby cousin is the second.  When my cousin pushes against the walker, it causes a contrasting force, making the walker move.  And that is what a contact force is.  There is another force that I didn't cover.  This is called "at a distance force", which is forces that are not touching.  This could be like an object falling.  There is nothing pushing it, however, gravity is acting upon it, making it move.  But I won't get too much into detail about that.  So thats it for this week. I hope you learned something and that you had an idea of what a contact force is.

Extra Credit Blog Post #1

Hey so my teacher Mr. BUREKU (ブレク its actually an english name but for privacy purposes I spelt it in Japanese plus it was something that we learned in 2D kinematics) told us that this was an extra credit blog post.  We had to make sure that our parents have seen our blog.  But he wouldn't believe us if we were to get a note from our parents because anyone could forge it.  So I decided to make a video of my mother at home reading my blog, while simultaneously cooking dinner.  And of all the blog posts, she had to read the one that I turned in late.  Go figure.  Anyways, you can watch the video, I think you will laugh at the background noises and the fact that she was unable to keep a straight face when speaking.  So enjoy, and I hope I get extra credit.
P.S. I didn't exactly know if i were to write a hundred words so I did anyways.

Blog Post #7

Hey sorry this is late.  Anyways, today I will talk to you again about vectors.  So this weeks focus was on displacement vectors.  Displacement is basically the distance from the starting point to the endpoint of the distance traveled.  This picture was taken this Saturday at the cross country meet at CORP.  The runners were to run a set course going west for a certain distance, then northwest for a certain distance and end somewhere around the south for a certain distance.  We can use displacement by starting from the starting point and measuring the distance traveled to the endpoint.  So that was basically displacement in  a nutshell.  Hopefully I will remember to make a blog post on Sunday this week.

Blog Post #6

It's me again with another blog post.  So, after about three weeks, we are finally on another unit.  Today I will be showing you all about vectors (or at least what we learned so far).  Vectors are basically the direction and what magnitude something goes.  Magnitude is just how far something goes at a certain direction.  The picture I posted is of my sister holding an arrow that reads vector.  The arrow represents a vector because it points at what direction it travels.  If we were to measure the arrow, we could also measure the magnitude.  For example, if the arrow was about 3 inches and the scale reads 1inch= 4miles we can tell that we went a distance of 12 miles to the left (or west if we were pointing in cardinal directions).  So that is just the basics of vectors.  So I hope you learned something today about both magnitude and vectors.

Blog Post #5

Hey this is me again with another post on kinematics.  This week I'm talking about tossing objects in the air.  This has to do with velocity and acceleration.  My friend (who I shall not name), is tossing a Gatorade bottle in the air, and then caught it. We did a similar exercise with a ball for a lab this past week.  Anyways, when you toss an object in the air, the object would have the same velocity going down, but would go in the negative direction.  So, for example, if he throws the bottle in the air at a velocity 9 m/s, then the bottle will drop at the same velocity, but in the negative direction.  Therefore, the bottle will drop -9 m/s.  One more thing.  If when dealing with velocity, when the object is thrown up and then drops back down, the speed goes fast, slow, stop, slow, then fast.  So when graphed on a distance vs. time graph, it will show up as a parabolic shape.  And when graphed on the velocity vs. time graph, it will show up as a kind of diagonal line going in the negative direction.  This is because when the object is going up, it will go fast, then slow, then stop, so when it stops, it will hit the zero line on the graph.  Then, when the object is dropping, then the object will start to accelerate again but this time the line will go stop, then slow, then fast.  So it basically when in a straight line.  So there you have it, velocity/acceleration in a nutshell.