Reiterating Charlie's most recent blog post, this independent unit has certainly seemed more difficult conceptually than the previous independent unit. As soon as I thought I understood something in the unit, another curve ball was thrown at me. Luckily, I discovered that Ampere's law and the Bio-Savart law are extremely helpful and applicable in this unit, and the right hand rules and simple force equations (like F=q(v x and F = I(B x L)) are easier this year because of the practice we had w
After spending quite some time with the Kerbal project, I am starting to understand how the program works. Building the biggest rocket possible doesn't really work; you need a balance between fuel level and weight, aerodynamics, the necessary seperators and parachutes, and a knowledge of when to hold off on burning fuel, the SAS, and other things like that. Thus, our first couple launches were not as successful as we would have hoped, but as we learned to decrease the drag force by improving the
Hot Rod, arguably the greatest movie ever created, actually has quite a bit of physics incorported into it. The part I will focus on is when Rod fails miserably to jump the local pool. Barely making it halfway, Rod slowly spins forward while in the air and lands face first, bike and all, into the pool. His demise results from two things - lack of kinetic energy and conservation of angular momentum. While he did have a ramp leading up to the jump, it was not nearly big enough to clear the poo
In the wake of the costly hurricane Sandy, its interesting to look at how physics explains the dangers of those extremely powerful winds. In my backyard, the gusts snapped a horizontal branch off of one of my trees on monday night, so I wondered how dangerous it would be if I was standing under the branch when it hit the ground. The branch was about 4 meters high. Assuming that the wind was moving completely horizontal and perpendicular to the branch, the branch would have had no vertical for
So good thing I spent half an hour trying to figure out how to make a post, and then thought, 'hey, maybe I should actually look at that sheet that Mr. Fullerton gave us,' only to realize that all I had to do was verify my account, and that I wasn't supposed to make my real name my user name. But anyways, here is my post. The first thing to know about me is that I love Jesus, and really the reason there's any need for you to know that is because that is why I'm taking AP-C Physics. I would lo
Well this is kind of bittersweet, finally being done with blog posts but also realizing that high school is completely over, as is Physics C with a fantastic teacher. I've learned so much during the year, from angular analogs to retarding forces to induction to the sheer brilliance of Walter Lewin's ability to draw a dotted line; it's been quite a year. I've appreciated this blog posts as much as I've hated them, mostly because they forced me to truly learn the stuff that I write about. And n
In the famous Bible story of feeding the 5000, Jesus and his 12 disciples feed 5000 men with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. But, the 5000 only counts the men, and since these people have been following Jesus for over 2 days, it can be assumed that they are with their families. On average, we'll say that each man has a wife and two kids, speaking that some of the men weren't married and some of the men had much larger families. That means that this story is actually the feeding of the 20000.
Although Albert Einstein's mess of hair was most likely due to the fact that he rarely slept well because of the equations constantly rattling through his brain and that he really didn't care what he looked like since he was too busy making history, electricity also plays into effect.
Due to the likely rolling around that Einstein did at night, his hair felt a lot of friction from his pillow case and the sheets on the bed. This frictional force led to the passing of electrons from the shee
Many people do not enjoy plane rides because of the uncomfortable feeling of their ears popping as the plane rises. This has to do with air pressure, a concept that is not really covered in AP-C Physics but we did deal with last year and is certainly important in understanding the general physics around us. As the airplane increases in altitude, the air becomes less dense (since less air is being pushed down by gravity), leading to a decrease in air pressure. Because of this, the air trapped
As I perpare myself mentally, physically, and spiritually for the upcoming CYO basketball season, I can't help but think of the physics that partner with a fluid and successful basketball shot. Players that have perfected their basketball shot, like Ray Allen, have found a combination of enough leg bend, a straight-armed follow through, and an effective wrist flick. With these three key components, the ball travels with arc and backspin in a projectile motion, sailing through the hoop. The poten
So, we all know that everyone in our AP-C Physics class has to be a nerd to be crazy enough to take this class, and i think we could come up with a lot of great nerd costumes. For spring potential energy and conservation of energy, someone could attach a spring to the front of his or her clothing and then run into people and bounce off with equal kinetic energy. Or, for centripetal motion, someone could carry around a rope which he or she hands one end of to random a random person and then run
Depressingly, I followed the whizzing ball as it flew past the 50, the 60, the 70, and even the 80 yard mark. Our costly (both with time and money) trebuchet could not compare to the spring loaded demon of a catapult that bested our yardage by 44. But, this project certainly did improve my engineering knowledge. Comparing my trebuchet to another very similar one that flung the softball farther, I saw that with a stiffer structure, we could have had more success. If we had used screws instead
As we dive into impulse and momentum in this independent physics unit, I am reminded of my only car "crash" I've ever experienced, if you can even call it that. When I was backing up in a small parking lot several months ago, the back of my car bumped into a small pole that I didn't see, jerking my car to a stop. Due to the minimum speed my car was moving at (5 mph or 2.24 m/s), my car was not damaged at all. So I was interested in finding out what speed it would have been damaged. Given tha
To add to the benefits of the Kerbal space program listed in the previous post, it helped us with the bottle rocket mostly in terms of simplicity. Instead of trying to make a giant rocket with parachutes or other complicated things, we decided to go with a simple rocket because we learned the importance of aerodynamics and weight balance through the Kerbal space program. My group realized that all we really needed was the two liter bottle, fins, a nose cone, and some weight on the top of the roc
So, we've lasted half the year in Physics, and what better time than now to discuss how I'm feeling about this class?
Ups:
1) Physics C and BC Calc go well together. As I learn more in one class, it helps me understand something better in the other class.
2) It's interesting to learn more real world physics, such as air drag and taking friction into account, instead of learning the mechanics of a perfect world that doesn't exist.
3) Doing the same topics as last year, like momentum and ener
1) Don't worry about the time, it will just make you work slower.
2) If Mr. Fullerton says it's going to be on the AP, it's probably going to be on the AP.
3) Since the AP changes every year, test taking strategies can often come in handy more than trying to hammer in every single thing we ever learned in the entire year.
