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VagueIncentive

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  1. VagueIncentive

    Downforce

    By VagueIncentive,

    Formula 1 cars are well known for being among the fastest cars to be raced competitively, and their inner workings are just amazing. These cars are really wide and low, giving them a low center of gravity. This helps with turning, as the centrifugal force doesn't tip the car as much, since there is less torque. This isn't the thing that helps these cars go so fast, their engines are incredible, and the body is extremely lightweight. It's made of a very complicated composite, part of it being carbon fiber. Since the car is so light, it could easily flip or fly up into the air on the crest of a ridge. Because of this, the concept of using wind resistance to push the car down was developed.
    Called downforce, it's achieved by using large angled wings that are sloped up towards the back of the car. This way, the air pushes the car down into the ground, so much so that at a certain speed the downforce is greater than the weight of the car. Because of this, it is actually possible for a f1 car to drive upside down, although it would be a very difficult feat. Downforce is useful in many other ways, such as increasing the friction between the track and the tires, allowing for tighter turns. F1 cars are able to hold their speed through corners much better than other cars because they don't lose traction at speed.
    The general convention in racing is to slow down to get around corners, but it's the exact opposite with f1 cars, since if the car slows down the downforce decreases, making the speed at which you can turn at lower. This dynamic makes f1 driving one of the most difficult racing sports in the world, requiring incredible reaction speed and skill to drive.
  2. VagueIncentive

    Hotwheels

    By VagueIncentive,

    I spent a lot of my childhood with hotwheels, whether it be putting insane tracks together or just watching the cars fly around the track. Hotwheels are best described as miniature cars that can be sent around tracks at ridiculous speeds to do crazy things. Some of the stunts my cars did were jumping tracks, going through King Kong's mouth, and doing loops around other sections of track.
    The cars are usually launched by two spinning foam wheels that rotate in opposing directions with a small gap in between for the car. This pushes the car really quickly forward, launching it onto the track. Part of the difficulty with setting up a Hotwheels track was getting the "boosters" in the right spot so that the car would succeed in all the stunts and wouldn't get stuck anywhere. Because the cars are small and light, they can be easily launched really fast and can do crazy things. I haven't kept up to date with the new types of stunts and other new stuff, but all of the stunts my cars did blew my mind, because I always believed that if the cars were scaled up to real life, it would work the same way. But physics has taught me otherwhise, because it would be insanely difficult to send a 4 ton car around a huge loop, let alone creating a structurally sound loop to begin with. Hot wheels cars are much lighter for their size than full size cars are, meaning that the whole situation wouldn't work at all. Hotwheels has made some videos of minor attempts to recreate some stunts, and they have all been fairly successful. The way they accomplished this was by scaling down the stunts, and using heavily modified cars. Without this, the cars would have absolutely not completed the loop, and fallen on their roofs. A lot of car or bike stunts involve jumping, or doing a loop. Hotwheels cars are a good demonstration for young kids how friction and gravity affect motion.
     
     
  3. VagueIncentive
    Everything that goes up must come back down. This is true for everything affected by gravity, including buildings. Demolishing buildings is actually a business, because of how complicated it can be. Sometimes just a bunch of heavy equipment and a few machines will suffice, but with larger buildings like offices and skyscrapers, keeping,the rubble inside the lot as it collapses is a big deal.
    The way this is done is usually by using controlled explosions going off in sync. The way these explosives are placed is typically on the very center, on support beams and anything structurally integral. This way, all of the rubble falls inward, not intruding on roads and other buildings. Obviously, if a building collapses onto another one it can't end well, so the scientific destruction of buildings is a significant practice. Having been to watch a building being demolished, I can say that it is very loud, and the ground shakes a lot, so much so that it can be mistaken for an earthquake. After it collapses, the dust cloud it sends up is massive, and rushes out sideways. 
  4. VagueIncentive
    Our second lab was an interesting one: predict where the ball will land after one shot from a projectile launcher, and you get a 100. If you miss, its a 0. But, the whole class was involved, so the end result was a very disorganized lab. On the first shot, we measured the angle and change in Y, then the X distance and the time it took from launch to landing. This was used to calculate the resultant initial velocity of the ball. Then the angle and height of ball was changed, so we re-measured them. Using the velocity from the previous launch, the initial velocity in the Y direction could be calculated, and then the time the ball would take to hit the floor. This time, multiplied by the initial X velocity, gives the distance the target should be placed from the ball in order for it to hit. My calculations gave me an X distance of 1.99m, but since it wasn't calculated in time, I don't know what the actual distance the ball covered was. So, I hope my answer is correct, but there is no way of knowing.
  5. VagueIncentive

    About me

    By VagueIncentive,

    AP Physics C. It's hard to believe I'm taking a college level physics class for the second time, but here I am. I have always been interested in the topics that physics covers, because I love pretty much any type of deep scientific research. I've always been good at science, and with technology of most kinds. The relationship between technology and physics is often overlooked, but it plays a massive part in almost everything we take for granted today, like GPS and cell service. How else would we have gotten large hunks of metal to stay up in the sky for years on end?
    These kinds of things are why I'm taking physics, because I just love it. I'm a very curious person so I thoroughly enjoy learning how the world works, and being able to understand why certain things happen. I hope to learn even more about that kind of thing this year, because I learned a lot last year. That is why I was excited for this class, having the ability to gain a much deeper understanding of the world from a high school class is awesome, and I can't wait to see what this class will unfold.
    Although it isn't all sunshine and rainbows, with great power comes great responsibility, and in this case that responsibility is classwork, homework, tests, the usual. Except this isn't the usual class, so expecting a usual workload would be ridiculous. The horror stories of all-nighters from the survivors make me nervous, but I will do my best to avoid falling behind, and to work diligently to maintain a good grade. I can't wait to see what I'll learn, but I most definitely can wait on all that work.

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