Because I have a habit of bouncing from activity to activity, I chose to participate in the musical this winter after my body failed to push through the pain of indoor track. With my luck, it turns out that the musical this year has multiple tapping numbers, so i get to learn how to tap dance! So I wondered, how do tap shoes make the noise that they do?
The physics is really quite simple. When the tapper pushes their foot to the ground, a lot of the kinetic energy is converted into sound ene
Although I had to quit indoor track because of an ankle injury, I did learn a lot about the precision of triple jumping form from my coach. Previously, I had run my approach with my chest not perpendicular to the ground but slightly more forward and my knees did not move very high. With this form, my momentum (which points perpendicular from my chest) was pointed into the ground, preventing me from jumping as far as possible. My knees also needed tweaking, since a lot of the power from jumpin
A dear friend of mine and I have recently started playing NCAA Football 12 on his 360 and most of the time I win, thanks to my knowledge of physics. Because I understand the concepts of conservation of momentum, work, and air drag, I very often run the ideal football play - the running back slip screen. For this play, the offensive linemen break their blocks on some of the defensive players who are rushing the quarterback. Lured into the illusion that they can have an easy sack, these linemen
I have always failed at writing down 50 equations in 4 minutes, both last year and this year, and I was never really sure why because I do know a good deal of equations. But as I think about it, I usually try to think of every little equation - getting me flustered and slowing me down - instead of focusing on the general equations that can help me figure out other equations. So, here's a simplified equation dump of equations that can lead you to most any equation we've learned in mechanics.
F
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
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
The brain is an incredible thing and is refered to as the world's smartest computer for a reason. I've recently grown to love muscle memory as it helped me greatly in performing in a musical this past weekend. Even though I would be in the middle of a dance number and completely forget the next part of the dance, my body would do the moves for me without me even thinking about it. This is because of muscle memory, as our bodies build neural pathways after doing a certain activity over and ove
In my computers class we looked up mind teasers on mindcipher.com in order to improve our problem solving abilities, but problem solving is certainly applicable to physics and this question was relatively easy but got your brain working a little bit:
You need to tell time for 30 seconds but all you have is a non homogenous rope (some parts burn faster than others) that you know burns for 60 seconds and a match. How do you tell time for 30 seconds?
And if that one is too easy:
It's said tha
Although I personally believe that the Nintendo 64 is the greatest game system ever, playing Mario Tennis and my understanding of physics has led me to realize that a big reason why "better" game systems have been created is the lack of realism in the physics world in games such as Mario Tennis. The game creators didn't exactly take momentum into account given the fact that the ball is only hit with 4 speeds with 4 shots - a top spin, a slice, a lob, and a smash. In the real game of tennis, pl
Looking at the stationary bike that my dad bought for my mom for too much money, I realized that all these bikes do is take a normal bike and add friction to it in order to give the feeling like you are actually riding a bike. The friction of some material on the bike tire requires work to overcome it, and since W=Fd, the work required is the frictional force times the distance traveled, so you burn however many calories the work you did is equivalent to. Therefore, you can create one of the m
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
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
As my last blog post of the quarter, I think the only reasonable thing to do is get sentimental (at least as sentimental as you can in a physics blog post) and think of the ups and downs of this quarter. This quarter was mostly independent units, which was good in the fact that it helped prepare us for college but also made me realize that I need to change a lot of my study habits - or lack there of. I also have discovered that E&M comes a lot less naturally than mechanics did, so studying
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.
As I go off to Tufts University in the fall, one of the things that I'm looking most forward to is joining the qudditch team, where I will be a chaser. One of the tuft-est (see what I did there?) things about being a chaser is that one hand has to hold the broom while you run, meaning that you have to catch the ball with solely the other hand. This is difficult for two reasons: 1) The force felt from the ball is directed onto one hand instead of two, so the force is spead across a smaller plan
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
