Lochs

So today we had our Regents exam and I had yet to complete my last blog post. As I was sitting and waiting to be dismissed, I was thinking about how hungry I was (as usual). It then occurred to me that physics was involved in my hunger! How do you ask? Let me explain. Well, starting with last night, I had lacrosse practice. This required me to use mechanical energy. I then slept to regain my mechanical energy from chemical energy. I then added more chemical energy by eating some chicken pot pie for breakfast. This energy was then converted to mechanical energy so I could take my Regents exam this afternoon. Once I had exerted all of my stored energy, I was hungry for some more chemical energy. Thus, I needed more physics. Not everyone immediately associates being hungry with physics, but as a successful and educated physics student, it was the first thing I thought of!

i would pay to see you do that charlie, it would be hilarious!

i really do get so hype when i score bar down in soccer, probably the most accomplishing thing ever.

In the beginning of the year, we learned about mechanics and solving for initial/final velocity, distance/displacement, acceleration, and time. I remember Mr. Fullerton mentioning to the class something about the time it takes for a bowling ball to hit the ground in comparison to a tennis ball, dropped from the same height. Obviously, since acceleration due to gravity is the same everywhere near the surface of the Earth, these times will be the same, however I wanted to conduct my own experiment to test this theory further. To mimic this experiment, I asked my father and my little cousin, Caitlyn, to jump from my deck (about 4 feet high) to the ground and I would time them to see if their difference in weight would create a shorter or longer time depending on the person. At first, it seemed like Mr. Fullerton's theory was wrong, because it took longer for Caitlyn to hit the ground. I then realized that I asked them to both JUMP off the deck, not simply drop. Since Caitlyn is 16 and is able to jump fairly high, her time in the air was much longer than my dad's since he can barely jump two inches. I fixed my experiment so that they would just step off the deck onto the ground, and the theory proved to be true. It took both my dad and my cousin about 0.5s to drop to the ground. With my experiment, I put Mr. Fullerton's claim about mechanics to the test and I now understand how the bowling ball would take the same amount of time to hit the ground as the tennis ball. Seeing this experiment in a real setting helped me understand the concept of mechanics better so I am now able to visualize physics questions that are asking for this material.

Personally, I have never gotten in a fist fight before, but I have always wondered if I would be able to win. In order to win fights, fighters generally have to be strong and generate enough FORCE (aka physics) to hurt their each other. Now, we learned in physics that the force a fist has on someone's face is equal to the force that the face has on the fist, however because the fist has more momentum, the fist does the damage. So in order to be most efficient one must have a high momentum punch, but is it better to have a heavier punch or a faster punch? This is what I researched. Well, the equation for momentum is p=mv, or momentum equals mass times velocity. Looking at the idea of having a better punch, I took my very athletic friends, Anthony and Jennie and made up an experiment. Since Anthony has stronger muscles, he represented the heavier punch and with Jennie's lightening fast hands, she was the quicker punch. I made them punch a pad on the wall for a minute each to see who would make the most damage. After 3 trials of this experiment, with Jennie punching quickly for the minute and Anthony punching with a lot of strength for the minute, I found my results. It turned out that both Anthony and Jennie had about the same damage on the white pad after the time period. Because there is direct relation between momentum and mass as well as momentum and velocity, they both create a lot of momentum. While mass increases, momentum increases as well. While velocity increases, momentum increases as well. The best way to win in a fight is to increase both of variables to create the most momentum to create a great force to beat someone up.

swimming is such a specific use of physics, very interesting

i didnt know you know how to water ski and i never thought of it in a physics perspective like this!

It is cool to understand how the frequency is smaller and the wavelength is longer in brain waves when you're asleep then when you're awake. It makes a lot of sense now that I think about it!

I don't know how baseball players could read the projectile of the ball in such a short amount of time. I used to think playing baseball was easy but after reading your post, I would be awful at it!

In Elementary School, one of my most favorite things to do during PE was to play with the huge rainbow parachute. Everyone had a color to hold and we all shook the parachute up and down to create waves. Sometimes we would throw dodge balls on top of the parachute and make try to make them "jump" out the other side of the parachute. Obviously no one really thought of this game as a physics game. Everyone would try to shake the parachute harder to make the balls go higher. In reality, the real principle of this game was wave interference. Everyone around the parachute creates their own transverse wave by moving the parachute up and down. With everyone moving their hands at different rates, constructive and destructive interference are created. When the crests of two waves meet, massive constructive interference can propel the light dodgeball high into the air. When the crest and a trough of two different waves meet, the parachute is still and no energy is transferred to the ball. The best way to reach the highest launch for the ball is if everyone is shaking the parachute at the same time with the same, large, amplitude so when the waves interfere, the amplitude doubles. Another game we used to play is "cat and mouse." This was when one person, known as the "cat" would crawl on top of the parachute while another person, the "mouse," would crawl underneath the parachute. The cat's objective was to find the mouse while other people were shaking the parachute. The difficulty of this game was that it was very hard to see the person under the parachute because of the waves created by the other people. From a physics perspective, reflection and diffraction are two concepts that make this game hard. When the waves of the parachute hit the mouse, they would bounce off as the same waves. It isn't like the waves would just stop, they would reflect. Also, when the waves were to hit the cat, they would just curve around them, continuing to cover the other areas of the parachute where the mouse could be. This diffraction would create other waves that would make it harder to find the mouse. If only our Pre-School teachers knew and applied the physics of waves, they could have taught us not only the best strategy to win these games but also an interesting topic in physics!

Ew Nevin -__- Jay this was such a good idea to write about!

That's a really interesting way to think about working out, using work! I would have never thought of that.

When we learned about projectile motion, I put it to use with my lacrosse playing. I play goalie, and the only aspect of my game that I really struggle with is my clears. Clearing is when, after I make a save, I have to pass the ball out to my team so they can transition it to the offensive end to score. Generally, goalies are supposed to have very far "clears" so they can pass to almost anybody on the field. Considering I don't have a very far throw, I thought that if I were able to release the ball at closer to a 45 degree angle, I would get a farther throw, so that's what I did. I decided to test my theory during a practice with a bucket of lacrosse balls and my friend who is on my lacrosse team, standing at a reasonable distance to pass to. I took 10 balls and cleared them to my teammate the way I normally throw. Standing in the goal crease (circle on the field where the goal stands), I managed to throw on average about a 45 yard clear. My release point was about at the top of the arc created by the throwing motion of my stick. Next, I took 10 more balls and tried to release them at closer to a 45 degree angle. On average, my clears reached about a 35 yard mark. My projectile motion theory turned out to be false. My throw was actually farther when I cleared the way I previously learned. Sources of error could be a misread of the spot where my teammate caught the ball or the lacrosse balls weren't the exact same texture (some more slippery then others) so they wouldn't get traction in my stick. An explanation for this error could be that lacrosse sticks are designed to have maximum distance at the top of your arc, considering most goalies are not physics genius', like myself.

I heard AP was hard too, good choice of dropping to regents!

I can def see how physics interests you!