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  1. ally_vanacker
    Latest Entry
    blog-0455550001429300378.jpgOn the show The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon goes to a Halloween party and dresses as the Doppler effect. he explains his costume to people by giving them the definition "its the apparent change in the frequency of a wave caused by the relative motion between the source of the wave and the observer". throughout the episode he also makes the noise of a car going by when people try to guess what his costume is. This noise he makes is a clear example of the Doppler effect because it sounds louder in the beginning and then fades away. This occurs when a siren of a police car or fire truck passes due to the Doppler effect.
  2. When I was playing the trumpet the other day in band, I realized that I was using physics. As I blow into the trumpet it creates vibrations that move through the air ways of the instrument. The waves come out through the other end of the trumpet and generate a sound. if I apply more force when I create the vibrations then I would be increasing the amplitude. If I press down certain keys then I can change the path that the air waves take and change the pitch of the wave which would change the frequency.

  3. Physics is used in many movies! Movies are something that I constantly watch in my life. A movie that is one of my favorites is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory! Physics is constantly used in this movie when Augustus the fat German kid starts to drink the chocolate fountain and then gets sucked in the chocolate machine. If you watch the rest of the video you can see the physics in the movie!

  4. jazmine2497
    Latest Entry

    Light is invisible until it bounces of something. Light has to go through a medium such as air first, this is known as diffuse reflection. cool fact is visible light is usually defined as having a wave length in a range of 400 to 700 nanometers. also, if you put a straw in a cup with a liquid, refraction occurs. the straw appears bent.

  5. KalB
    Latest Entry

    Friday April 10th might as well have been Friday the 13th!!! Due to the very strong wind, the traffic lights on Cooper and Titus were knocked out. Unfortunately, several businesses around that area also felt the wrath of Mother Nature, suffering from power outages themselves. I work at Cam's Pizzeria as I have mentioned in my previous blog posts, and my place of work suffered from the power outage but heres the catch... only in half of our store. What does this have to do with physics you say? Well the part of our store that of course had the oven on it did not receive power. The fryers worked and of course the sub bench but nothing involving pizza. A few lights worked and a few switches didn't. Why is that?? I think it has to do with the electrical circuits. The lights that were still on probably operated by parallel circuits so they had more than one path to travel as a back up. The ones that were out immediately, like the oven, were probably powered by series circuits, and only had one path to go through, shutting the light source off completely. Eventually, (8 hours later), the power was back on. After dealing with rude customers who were not understand and turning away about 5 French foreign exchange students, everything was back to normal and we could serve pizza again. (:

  6. A roller coaster typically begins with a chain and motor exerting a force on the cars to lift the train to the top of the first hill of the ride, which is also the tallest. Once the train makes it to the top and is pushed over the top of the hill, gravity takes over and it becomes an experience of energy transformation.

    At the top of the hill, the cars possess a large sum of potential energy. That potential energy is equal to the mass and height of that object. After the first drop the cars lose a lot of this potential energy because of the loss of height, but they gain Kinetic energy, the energy of motion. Kinetic energy is equal to the mass and velocity of the object. So throughout the ride the initial Potential energy is just lost then gained, lost then gained until the end of the ride.

    Below is the worlds tallest roller coaster, The King da-ka, located at Six Flags Great Adventure in NJ. With a height of 139m. At launch you are traveling at 206km/h. Only 10 Km/h less than a Cessna 182, a single propeller airplane.

  7. devon000885
    Latest Entry

    I used to own a prism which split light into different colors. The prism works via Snells law. A ray of light enters the prism and it is refracted inside and seperated into the various different colors that are released from the other side of the prism. The prisms were used to show that regular light was not colorless but simply required a tool to demonstrate the various colors. There are several different types of prisms triangular, abbe, pellin-broca, amici, and compound. I hope we get to use prisms in an experiment later in the year

  8. If you have ever gone laser-tagging, then you will know that the space in which you are in has many mirrors. Why? well light can reflected off of surfaces that are flat and smooth very well. This is an example of specular reflection. However not everything reflects even if a large amount of light is concentrated upon it. Why? well it is simply that some surfaces are too rough to reflect light and so you cannot use everything around you to get your opponents.

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    thephysicsguy
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    space is very interesting mainly because of how different it is compared to earth which makes since but what's very interesting is how some waves are able to pass through the reaches of space while other waves are not able to like light waves are able to go from the sun to us with no problem but sound waves it is impossible for the waves to go through space and that is because in the world there are mechanical waves like sound would be one and that means they need a medium to travel through to carry the energy like on earth they would be air generally but in space there is no medium for it to travel through however something like light is an electromagnetic wave which means it can travel even if it doesn't have a medium this is why we are able to get light from the sun.

  9. It is quite interesting how physics can be found in such random parts of your daily life. One such example of this is sleeping. When a person sleeps, they are exerting a force on the bed that they are sleeping on. According to Newton's Third Law, the bed then exerts that same force back on to the person sleeping. In addition to this, gravity holds the person down to the bed, keeping them grounded. When I need to wake up in the morning, I set an alarm on my phone and put my ringer on high. This way, the high frequency pierces through my sleep, and wakes me up. I have never realized just how much physics is in such a simple act!

  10. Every time I get groceries with my mom I try to bring all of them in the house at once. She typically says, "You should take more trips!" But physics is on my side. It requires more work to bring in several loads of groceries opposed to just one big load. If work is a force x a distance than one big trip will require the least amount of work. To make one big load requires me to move the huge load of groceries, and myself once from the car into my house and into the kitchen. Simply taking two trips would require me to move myself from the car twice and back out to the car once. Splitting the groceries into two loads requires the exact same amount of work to move the groceries once because the force is halved but the distance is doubled. The issue of splitting the groceries into two or more loads is the work required to move myself is added. If assumed the distance is 20 meters from my house to the car and the groceries weigh about 100 kilograms then the force of the groceries is 1000N. The work required to move the groceries 20 meters is about 20,000 J. I weigh about 80 kilograms then the force of gravity is about 800N so it takes about 16000J to move myself. One trip of groceries would be 20,000 J + 16,000 J = 36,000J. Two trips would be 10,000 J(half the groceries) + 16,000 J + 16,000 J + 10,000 J +16,000J = 68,000 J. This is because I must move myself with the groceries 20 meters, then myself back to the car, then myself back inside with groceries again. By doing all of the work in one load I save 32,000 J of energy. Regardless of the load of groceries one big trip would save 32,000 J of work. It may be too difficult to carry all of the groceries at once but a load weighing perhaps weighing 20 kilograms is definitely manageable and effective in conserving energy if all done at once.

  11. Monigle123
    Latest Entry

    While re-watching Breaking Bad, or as some call it the meth show, I noticed there was a lot of physics in it. One episode that relates to a new unit we just started was season 5, episode 1. This episode (warning spoilers) is the Giant magnet episode. A short summary of what happened: “That night, Mike hot-wires the gate into the APD parking lot. Walt and Jesse drive the magnet-equipped truck next to the building to the wall outside the evidence room. The magnet disables the guard's computer, alerting the police. In desperation, Walt cranks the magnet up to its maximum voltage, sending a force so strong it tips the truck over. The police security guard finds the evidence room destroyed by the magnet and sends officers outside to apprehend the crooks, but Walt and Jesse escape with Mike, leaving the truck behind.†(Breakingbad.wikia.com). This relates heavily on physics because they constructed a giant electromagnet to create electromagnetic waves. With this they are able to destroy electronics with magnetic fields.blogentry-3421-0-40493600-1429280386_thu

  12. there is all sorts of physics in sun light. for instance the sun light we see is actually delayed and comes in waves. what happens when a reflective surface meets sun light is that the light is refracted and shines on another surface. this actually occurs on several glass sky scrapers in cities and has been known to actually melt other objects such as parts of cars because the sun light is reflected back on an object.

  13. The first law of Thermodynamics holds that in any situation the total amount of energy with in is equal to the total amount of energy out. This also means that you can't create energy or destroy it. So well what happened to all the energy we have put in our bodies? The long story short, most of the energy is stored in your body, and on average a human carries around 7*10^18 joules of energy on average. If all that energy were to release all at once, it would have the same effect as setting OFF 30 HYDROGEN BONDS AT THE SAME TIME!!!!!

  14. We all know the type of people who have never met a mirror they didn't like, get it? Well not only do they like their own reflection, but they obviously like it because of the physics that it bestows! A mirror is an example of a specular reflection because it is a smooth surface that easily allows reflection to the point of visibility.We can see how the angle at which the wave strikes the mirror is equal to the angle at which it reflects off of the mirror due to the law of reflection. And no matter what angle we use, this will always be constant! Now if something is ugly enough and the mirror happens to shatter, hypothetically speaking of course, the gravity in the shards of glass falling and the force with which they hit the floor are components of physics too! :D

  15. When I sit on my couch and watch television (Netflix), there is a lot of physics involved. For example, I do not do any work, because I stay in the same place for hours. Sometimes I get up to go to the kitchen for food, but then I go back to the couch, so my displacement is zero. Also, sound waves, which are mechanical and longitudinal, travel from the television to my ears, which are about ten feet away from each other.

  16. Special request for Mr. Fullerton to recreate this magical performance in class.

  17. piglet&WINnie_fan42
    Latest Entry

    Sound is produced when something vibrates.. The vibration causes the medium around it to vibrate. Vibrations in the air are called longitudinal waves, which can be heard by humans. Sound waves consist of areas of high and low pressure called compressions and rarefactions. The wavelength and the speed of the wave is determined by the pitch or frequency of the sound. Wavelength, frequency, and speed can be determined if you know the other two. The equation speed equals frequency times wavelength is the equation used to do this. Since sound travels at 331 m/s at standard temperature and pressure. Also, longer the wavelength, the lower the pitch. The height of the wave is known as the amplitude. The amplitude determines how loud a sound will be - as amplitude increases loudness increases.

  18. blog-0776171001429219758.jpgDuring my pursuit of wormhole knowledge, I came across an article by Stephen Hawking discussing his research and opinions on wormholes and travel. I actually found the article quite interesting (and even humourous!), and felt that his findings should yield a separate blog post.

    While Hawking definitely believes the data that wormholes exist as a connection between different parts of spacetime, he definitely does not believe in time travel using these wormholes... ever. He states that most wormholes are only billionths or trillionths of centimeters long, not nearly large enough to fit a human, let alone an entire space crew. Wormholes are far too unstable to enlarge by any means, he believes, and even if humans could create a wormhole, it would be far to unstable to leave open long enough to travel through.

    Stephen Hawking is also a strong believer in paradoxes. He believes paradoxes caused by wormhole travel are one of the major reasons it could never work, even if the wormhole was large and stable enough to travel through. His example demonstrating paradoxes in wormhole travel involved a scientist looking back at himself minutes earlier through a wormhole; if he decided to shoot himself, who would be the one shooting? It would be a paradox. And this type of paradox is why time travel through a wormhole could not work. It would violate the very theory that cause comes before effect, the theory that governs the universe. In the end, the universe would descend into chaos if time travel through worm holes was possible. And according to Murphy's Law, if that could happen... it would.

    Hawking also points out that feedback would prevent wormholes from long term existence. As a wormhole expands, it would suck in more natural radiation, which would create a loop of radiation absorption that would eventually cause the wormhole to collapse.

    However, Hawking does see time travel using a black hole as a more possible alternative (although not entirely possible). At the center of the galaxy lies a supermassive black hole, and the gravitational pull around it is so strong that it slows time around it. Flying a space ship around the black hole would cause time to move substantially slower for passengers, which would make the crew travel into the future as they return to Earth. However, it is difficult to do so because the ship would have to travel the speed of light to avoid being sucked into the black hole, which is 2,000x faster than the fastest human space travel. If this were possible, however, there would be no paradox.

    Space travel is quite the debated topic in the science community! I will leave the link at the bottom, since it is an excellent article with some fascinating information! Until next time, Fizzix communtiy, until next time.

    blogentry-1411-0-96092500-1429219746_thu

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1269288/STEPHEN-HAWKING-How-build-time-machine.html

  19. blog-0949870001429214166.pngWaves in water are produced in many different scenarios. For example, when someone goes to the beach and decides to skip rocks, they produce a wave in the water. The water particles then move and continue to move creating a mechanical wave. these kinds of waves require a medium to pass through. who knew such a fun experience could experience so much physics.
  20. The observation of interactions is basically the foundation of science and physics, but often times this observation directly alters the phenomena being observed. This concept is aptly named the observer effect.

    In circuits, the voltage and current can be measured by the use of voltmeters and ammeters, respectively. However, the placement of these devices into the current alter the actual voltages and currents of these circuits. This is why voltmeters are very high in resistance and wired in parallel, and ammeters are very low in resistance and wired in series. This is to minimize the essential error or alteration they are causing, and since there is really no "zero" or "infinite" resistance, these errors will just have to be diminished by improving technology, though obviously we have come very far in this respect.

    There are other examples, such as measuring temperature with a thermometer. The thermometer slightly changes the temperature of the liquid it is placed in. Also, electrons are detected by using photons, and this interaction alters the path of the electron.

    This is often confused with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in quantum physics, so I'll mention that briefly. Basically, the precision of a pair of physical properties of a particle (complementary variables) can be expressed as an inequality. blogentry-1405-0-82467100-1429147024.png

    Here, x and p are position and momentum. As the precision of one gets higher, the precision of the other gets lower, and this relationship can be expressed as a fundamental limit using inequalities.

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