Leaderboard

"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music." —Betrand Russell Physics is, in essence, applied mathematics. It's how math applies to life, and the results thereof. And math is... beauty? That's not how one would usually think. However, there is a certain beauty to math and how everything resolves itself when it is applied. The way tree growth and snowflakes resemble fractals, light waves follow the simplicity of a sine curve, a top wobbles back and forth, light bends around a magnifying glass - heck, we learned some of these last year in physics B. But while analyzing the theory behind it, how many of us stepped back to think of the beauty? However I explain it, watching it makes it better.

Recently for Physics, we were assigned to create a catapult, which we then launched in class on Friday. This was a crazy experience to undergo! My partner and I had to create several Vi, Vf, d, a, t tables to figure out which catapult design would launch the softball producing the possible maximum distance. Unfortunetly, our plan didn't work out the best and the softball only went a distance of one meter, but that isn't the point. We figured out that if we were to launch the softball at an angle of 45 degrees, we should be able to get the maximum distance feesable from our catapult. To make sure that this theory is infact accurate, we tested out different angles in our equations like 40 and 50 degrees just to be sure that our calculations were true. The project, I felt, was very informative and taught me a lot. Not just with working with the equations but also working with tools to create a successful object using what we have learned in class!