The other day, my seven year old cousin asked me, “how do bubbles work?” and I didn’t really know how to answer. So, I decided to answer her question in a blog post, or at least try to (even though she’ll never see it). It turns out the science behind soap bubbles is a bit complicated and there’s a lot that can be talked about but I think I’ll just focus on one part for now. Did you ever wonder why bubbles are always spherical? Laplace’s law states the larger the vessel radius, the larger the wa
This past weekend my family flew to New York City, and as I thought about all the blog posts I had left to write, I tried to figure out what I could write about. And then, as we were landing, I realized that there was a lot of physics in the way a plane stops. Planes are able to travel at extremely high speeds and stop fairly quickly. What I didn’t know though, was what was used in planes as a braking system. It turns out that this can very with different planes. Some use a reverse thrust system
Another movie that I've seen recently had a lot more to do with physics. In the movie Gravity, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney (I forget their characters' names...oops) are astronauts that are working on the Hubble Telescope. In the whole movie, there was one scene that really stuck out, probably because I find it absolutely terrifying. When they are working on the telescope, another satellite in orbit is destroyed, and the pieces start to fly towards them. Sandra Bullock is attached to a cran
Just last week the varsity tennis team had sectionals. As part of our school’s second doubles team, we were not seeded in the bracket. This led to us unfortunately having to play the number one ranked doubles team in the section, first. There was no way we were going to win, but we started playing, and it was the best that we had played as a doubles team all season. Why is that? Why is it that it’s easier to play better against a team that is ten times better than you? Momentum. Each time the ba
