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Soccer

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Sitting on my couch and watching television

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.

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zach_m

Auditoriums

The IHS auditorium is used for many events, including the talent show which is in a few days. This will involve a lot of singing and music. The auditorium is designed so that sound waves, which are mechanical and longitudinal, meaning that they require a medium to travel through and move parallel to wave velocity, only travel to people's ears. Normally, sound waves bounce off of the walls, which is where echoes come from, but auditoriums are set up to keep them from doing that.

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Insurgent

Over break, I went to see Insurgent. There was almost too much fighting, climbing, swinging and jumping around, and a lot of it was most likely physically impossible, due to the law of gravity. In one scene, the main character runs around the sides of a rotating house, and even though it's a fake simulation, it's still highly unlikely that anyone, especially the main character, could pull off those kinds of stunts. Two people also managed to fight off around thirty other people, and one girl som

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Snowmobiling

I went snowmobiling last weekend, and at one point I made too sharp of a turn and almost flew off. The physics behind this, is that the snowmobile was going at a certain velocity in one direction, and while I turned the snowmobile, my body continued in that direction and at that velocity. Therefore, sharp turns are a bad idea.

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zach_m

Mythbusters

This clip from "Mythbusters" explores the physics involved in car crashes. For example, they talk about how doubling the speed of a car before crashing it into a wall will quadruple the damage done to the car, and they prove it by creating different scenarios.

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Driving on icy roads

I was driving by my uncle's farm last weekend, and I went down a really steep hill which has a stop sign at the bottom. Since the road was pretty icy, I got a little nervous, but I stopped, and all was well. Clearly, the physics involved is that I was going down an incline with little friction, which made it harder to stop the car. The coefficient of friction for rubber on ice is 0.15, which is very small, even though the road wasn't all ice. My cousin also decided to do donuts in his icy drivew

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zach_m

Sledding

I always enjoyed sledding, and now I can see how physics applies to the activity. For example, you can calculate the velocity of both the person and the sled after they are "one object" if you know the momentum of both before the person jumps onto the sled. If I weigh 63 kg, and I jump onto a stationary sled that weighs 5 kg at a velocity of 8 m/s, then I can add up the masses to get 68 kg times the velocity of both me and the sled. I can set 504 (kg x m/s) equal to (68kg)(v), because the momen

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Odyssey of the Mind

I did Odyssey of the Mind for a year, and I never realized how much physics was involved in it. One of the requirements of Odyssey is to create a play that "solves" the problem that your team chooses. We had to make our own costumes, sets, and props, so we had to make sure that everything stayed in its place, and that everything moved/worked properly, which could be quite challenging at times. At the time, I didn't know how physics would apply to all of this, and having a deeper understanding of

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Aerosol Cans

The other day, while I was dusting my bookshelf, I realized that aerosol cans are used for so many products, and are used so frequently in our everyday lives. I wanted to better understand the physics behind these cans, so I did some research. I found out that a fluid called the product, which boils well above room temperature, is first poured into the can. Then, a fluid that boils below room temperature, called the propellant, is pumped into the can in its gaseous form at high-pressure, so that

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Catapult

After finding out that I had to somehow build a catapult, I felt a bit nauseous, because I am not experienced in woodwork, and neither are the people that were in my group. Somehow we managed to pull it off, even though it's pretty wimpy. If I could go back and rebuild it though, I would probably have done more calculations to make sure it launched at an angle of 45 degrees, and that there was a stronger launch force. I really enjoyed seeing everyone launch their catapults because many of them w

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zach_m

Soccer

I played soccer for about 7 years, and never understood that physics applies to all aspects of the sport, as it does to every sport. For example, kicking the ball into the air is an example of projectile motion. The ball is launched at a certain angle above the ground, or the horizontal, and lands back on the ground. During this entire time, the ball is being acted upon by gravity, causing the acceleration to be 9.81 m/s^2. Also, when the ball reaches it's maximum height, its velocity is 0 m/s.

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