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.