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.  

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?