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.  

Centripetal Force and Flying Stuff

Journal 7: Ok so, evidently blogger doesn't like my photos and won't upload them...that's a problem.  Sooo, anyways, last night my dad and his friends had their annual Family Christmas Party and it was hosted at our house this year.  It's tons of fun, since they've been friends since highschool and such, they decided to have these get together parties, full of games, gifts, and food.  While the adults were down stairs, the kids were upstairs playing around and one of them began swinging one of those squishy balls with the the squishy string attached to it, almost like a sticky hand.  Then, while whirling it around, it flew out of his hand, and flew tangent to the point of where it was released.  This reminded me of the example Mr. Kohara used in class with the tennis ball and the string, and how he always yelled "I saw that, TANGENT!" whenever someone dropped the pink ball from the loop toy, our class to dextrously played with (not).  From this example I saw centripetal force in action as the circular path the ball made and its distance from the center (the boy's finger) was the radius, and how fast it was going was its speed.  Yeah, its pretty simple, nothing too awe inspiring here.

Journal 6: Momentum is Masked.  Momentum can be found everywhere around us as most of physics can. This principle/ concept of physics is a vector quantity of motion as is defined as an object's mass times its velocity and is represent by the small letter p.  Thus the equation for momentum stands as p=mv, its units in kilgram times mass divided by time; kgm/s.  This concept can be found in moving cars, pool balls, actually generally anything moving.  Now, although seen with the example of the clicky-clack balls as Mr.Kohara stated this automatically reminded me of them.  My brother created this bola to throw and trap my brother in, though it is too small to do its intended purpose.  So when he threw it at me I easily caught it at the black handle and I saw the green and red ball hit each other and the clicky-clack balls came to mind.  Now these balls just as this bola exhibit the law of conservation of momentum, basically none of the momentum is lost.  In a real clicky-clack ball set up, the metal balls would continue swinging for quite awhile, however, the balls in the bola would swing for only less of the time.  Although the green ball may look bigger I confirmed with my brother he used the same amount of clay, just that the green one was smashed a little bit.  In this example, kinetic energy is also conserved and the energy remains constant throughout the system.  So the clicky-clack balls and the bola are basically the same physics example of momentum hiding where you would least expect it. -Seriously anyone know how to get the pictures up? Blogger continues to show the "uploading images" screen and I've waited fifteen minutes...-

Work and the Wonderful World of Physics

Currently, in Physics we are learning about potential energy, kinetic energy, and work.  In this simple example of lifting a calculator, we can see work and energy in action. Anybody recognize which problem on the weekend's homework it is?  As I exert force on the calculator and move it in the direction that the force is exerted, I am doing work.  This definition shows that by simply holding an object in place, no work is being performed.  The force I exert is in an upward motion and is the same for the direction the force is pushed in.  This is kinetic energy in effect or the energy of something in motion.  This also exhibits potential energy or the energy an object has relative to the a set point when not moving.  If we set the ground as our reference point of zero, and for this example say I am exerting 10 joules of kinetic energy in my work.  This 10 joules will later transfer to all potential energy when I hold the calculator in place above my head.  There will be no kinetic energy at this point, as there is no movement.  In relation to the ground, if I hold the calculator above my head without moving it there will only be potential energy.  Likewise, if i set the calculator on the ground and move it horizontally there will only be kinetic energy.  However, any combination of horizontal and vertical movement will result in the object having potential energy (PE) and kinetic energy (KE).  Kinetic energy for those of you who have for some mysterious reason have not realized it yet relate to kinematics thus movement.  Potential energy is the "potential" for the object to move.  Through these mundane examples of lifting a box or a bag up or throwing a ball or riding a roller coaster, we see that PE and KE are in effect and that work is applied to all of them, except riding a roller coaster.  SORRY FOR SOME REASON BLOGGER ISN'T UPLOADING MY IMAGES.  How do yours' work?

Physics is Fun and so is Friction

Friction is fun, yes it is.  Friction first of is noted as "f", a little f so as not to be confused with the big "F" of force.  f=(mu)(normal force); mu is pronounced as "mew" as appears as a lower case "u" with a longer first stroke, thus f=un (the u is the mu-best attempt).  Friction as defined as "a force that resists the motion of one object sliding past another."  Friction enables us to walk, run, and sit.  If there was no friction we would slip and slide and not be able to stand up.  Friction can be broken up into static friction, a "force that resists the sliding motion of two objects that are stationary relative to one another" and kinetic friction "when an object slides along another".  Static friction requires more force to overcome it and make the object move.  Kinetic friction requires less because the object is currently in motion and has moving inertia.  This explains why it is harder to get things moving at first then it is to continue to move said object.  In the background, I am moving the block of wood up the wall.  As stated in the definition of friction, in this example, friction would be working against my force in a downwards direction.  Conversely if I were to hold the block in place the block would want to move down and friction would then be upwards.  Not the best example of friction, I'm sure, but this just goes to show that Physics is always all around us and sometimes goes unnoticed.

Newton's 3rd Law and its Numerous Applications

Sitting around wondering what to do for my journal I realized that any picture I could possibly take applied to Newton's second law.  BTW: the reason for the exact same picture setting is not only for my convenience but also to show how physics can relate anywhere even right at home.  Moving right along, Newton's second law is defined by Kinetic Books as "A change in motion is proportional to the motive force impressed and takes place along the straight line in which that force is impressed."  As seen in my picture that blogger was not letting me upload, but hopefully by the time I post this it should be up there.  Anyways, the clear box I'm holding up has a net force acting upon it, or the sum of the force impressed by me carrying it and its weight of the box opposing my force.  The force of holding up the box would be signified as an upward arrow labeled with a "F" pointing up from the box.  The weight or mg would be pointing just the opposite.  The equation net force equals mass (of the object acted upon) and the acceleration or acceleration equals net force divided by the mass can help find anything having to do with Newton's second law.  In fact, this equation is the epitome of the second law expressing all the factors engaged in any action thinkable.  (well mostly)  In the picture this extends to all the objects, even me.  On anything that  is moved there is always at least two always acting upon it; the force applied to it i.e. push, pull and the weight of the object exerting its own force, both of these added together is the net force.  If the force applied is greater then the mg "all other things held constant" (ceteris paribus) the object will move.  If it is less the object will stay where it was.  So a net force is being applied in my picture to the box, to me, the chair, the shelf, the trophies, the book, and all other items you can name.  Hah well that's it for this journal, have fun with your journals and look out for Newton's laws in action!