Reflection Decimation

Journal 16: Busy all weekend, I decided to relax in my free time by playing one of my video games.  Upon attempting to attack my enemy's base my forces were decimated by sets of "prism towers".  Amazingly, what they do is concentrate the light received from the sun and amplify it to the point of immense power that when they reflect the now amplified light it is able to burn through and melt objects.  Like the prisms we saw in physics, these prism towers reflect the white light coming in, put instead of breaking up the different colors the towers instead keep it as white light, somehow intensifying it so that the light becomes a weapon.  In addition multiple prism towers can reflect light off from one another, further amplifying the light as well as carrying the light across long distances via a line of reflecting prism towers.  Moreover, in the game there are mobile units called prism tanks that are able to cause destruction on the go using the amplified white light as a conduit for the towers, either charging them up or having the towers charge it up, with this, the tank can travel with a steady stream of reflected light from the towers.  Wow.  Yup that might just be the future in light technology applied to future weaponry.   (the prism towers are the things with the white rectangular panels on them btw).

Wonderful World of Waves

Journal 15: Over this crazy weekend, there was so much physics around me ranging from the mechanics of the rides during the fair, to the application of Newton's third law with the bounce houses, and even the correct use of physics with kinematics to the baseball and football game.  However, I will be focusing on my experience with the concept of waves.  During this awesome break, during the fair, when it was my 5 hour shift as a food runner, one of the calls called for two tubs of kalbi.  These tubs contained the meat and the marinade sauce and were extremely heavy.  Upon driving the carts, I had to go back and adjust the boxes, then I saw the juice sloshing back and forth and the rising of the kalbi created a wave opposite to that of the moving juice.  While the marinade as far as I could tell probably was not moving at its natural frequency the two waves made by the kalbi and the cart created super crests in the tub.  The sloshing of the sauce showed the waves to be transverse waves and not of the same frequency or amplitude since the waves were of different amplitude.  Then the waves would pass through one another hit the sides of the tub and then go back until they settled.  However, the jerkish movements of the carts, the constant stop-and-go, and the bumps would reinitiate the same cycle as the juice would naturally slosh and then the kalbi would rise and make opposing waves. Hope you guys enjoyed the fair I had a lot of food: 3 Waiola Shave Ices, 3 Smoothies, 1 Huli Beef Sandwhich, 1 Pizza, I Korean Mixed Plate, 6 Malasadas, 2 Teri-Cheese Burgers, and lots of Water.  Yeah fatty, but then I ran a lot and walked a lot and now I should work out.  Bye!  

Stop the Music

Journal 14: Today, after listening to music for awhile my ears began to ring incessantly.  I had learned that sound resonates and that the blast of my headphones had reverberated in my ears.  In addition I learned that, shown with tuning forks, by placing the fork against another object the sound became amplified.  The sound originally resonating from fork when in contact to the table bounces off and the sound waves travel further and are louder because its molecules are in contact and bump into others such as those of the table the tuning fork was placed against.  Likewise, i recently learned the build-up of earwax can also create such a ringing sound because as the sound waves travel rather than just simply bouncing and coming in touch with the ear drum, like the table, the earwax serves as another medium and object in which the sound waves interact and bounce off as well.  Thus the earwax can amplify the sound being heard and the ring you hear is the sound resonating as the sound molecules vibrate and hit against each other and the wax.  This is one explanation of ear ringing, others include the falling out of an sound receptor follicle, since overtime the vibration of the sound over time loosens up the follicles and a ringing sound occurs as one falls out.  The vibration of the follicle causes the ringing as it falls out and those sound waves resonate as the molecules move back in forth in compressions and rarefactions.  Also the continuous playing of music can damage the follicles and lead to a loss of hearing, aging also generally leads to a loss of hearing as a normal human's hearing range continues to drop from the high 20,000 Hz to lower levels.

Sizzling Smoking Saturday

Journal 13: On Saturday I went to my friend's apartment to relax and hang out. At 2:00, my friends and I smelt smoke in the air. Down the street at the condos lining Iolani a fire had started and a column of smoke billowed out from the door and it seemed the roof. While we could not see a fire, the smoke was most likely from a short circuit of an appliance. Short circuits occur when the path of an electric circuit is intercepted by an object which provides a shorter path of very little or no resistance. Thus the electrons bypass the original path of the circuit and quickly, heatedly speed through the low resistance path. Thus, this burns the wire and may start a spark, leading to a fire. This is most likely possibility to what started the fire.

Journal Jolts and Physics Phun

Journal 12: A few Christmas's ago, while stringing up the christmas lights around the house and on the tree, when turning them on, the lights all around the tree burnt out.  What I realized now, is that one of the filaments must have burnt out, due to the faulty wiring or that there was an overflow of voltage which the bulb could not handle.  As depicted in the equation: I=delta q/ delta t, the high voltage from the socket may be the reason for the high charge moving across the filament and wire in the short amount of time, thus burning the filament and blackening the bulb's interior, to us the glass part.  In addition the drift speed moving across it may have been too much for the bulb to handle.  Since light-bulbs act as resistors, and as shown in the equation, delta V=I x R(resistance), the amount of current running through, with not enough resistance on the bulb's part could relate to a high voltage difference, thus overcoming the resistivity of the filament that it burnt out.  Similarly viewing the equation R= (resistivity of material)(length of component)/(cross-sectional area), if either one of these components, such as a too thin or too short wire, the voltage flowing across it may have likewise burt out the filament.  That's all don't play with electricity, except in physics.

Troublesome Torque

Journal 10: Late as well.  Now to the physics application, about six years ago, when I still attended Maryknoll, the morning was off to the usual every school day routine.  Dressed, backpack double-checked, and packed into the car, my dad, myself, and my three brothers were off to a normal day.  Leaving our Waikele drive way, (we're the first right at the Champions near the Waikele mall, you can see our house from the intersection) my dad took the regular right turn and no more than one minute of driving and we all heard a huge POP.  My dad parked the car on the shoulder and assessed what damage had been done to the car.  He realized a nail had popped the back right tire, and used a jack to lift the car up.  The jack uses a fulcrum and a lever arm, in which turned, pushes up the side iron arms, which in turn begins to lift the car as to replace the tire.  My dad had imposed a torque by applying force on the handle of the jack, and with the long lever arm, placed a force forcing the car up.  In physics I learned that to increase torque you can increase force applied, the lever arm, and applying the force as perpendicularly as possible.  This example shows some the practical and helpful applications of physics.

An Electrifying Experience

Journal 11:Sorry for the lateness, the journals slipped out of my mind.  Anyways, this incident occurred four years ago.  During this point, I was still in swimming and my brothers and I were taking private lessons on that particular Saturday.  If you may recall this was during the forty days and forty nights of incessant, ceaseless rain.  Storm clouds amassed especially near Ala Moana stretching to Iolani.  At this point in time, my dad oddly recalled his hair standing on end and the forecasted high pressure system the news reported held true.  Then the rain began pouring extremely hard and we witnessed lighting and thunder.  From what I learned in physics during these lightning storms the underbelly of the clouds become highly negatively charged, and due to this highly negatively charged electric field the cloud contains, the ground itself becomes polarized.  In addition lightning has twenty-five Coulombs of charge and this build up with the polarized buildings and ground, the charged bottom of the clouds(lightning) is attracted to the positively charged surface of the ground and buildings and is drawn to them and strikes them as lightning.  In my experience lightning came extremely close hitting the building opposite the workout room and I thought I saw it strike the water ten minutes after we had gotten out because my instructor ended the class due to the weather.  Intense? I thought so, those days of rain were chaos and crazy.  Ok, enjoy life, shock yourself and friends with the Van De Graaff generator.