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sputnam14

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  1. sputnam14

    Physics in Music

    As for many instruments resonance, or the vibrating due to an equal frequency, causes the sound. For an opera singer to break a glass with just his/her voice they would have to match the frequency or pitch that they sing at to that of the glass. When the opera singer hears the frequency of the glass, being trained they can match it to the sound that comes out of their mouth. This causes the glass to vibrate and eventually shatter once the pitch is perfectly met. For a guitar, the strings are what causes the music. When you put your finger on a string and shorten the wave length, the frequency then increases and you get a higher pitch out of that cord. This is true with most instruments such as trumpets, trombones and pianos because as you slide or press, you shorten or lengthen the wave length and in turn are changing the frequency...without physics, music wouldn't be possible!
  2. As I was listening to Kristen sing in the car, I was thinking about the physics in her making the noise and me hearing it. As she was creating this noise, the sound waves had to travel through a medium, being air molecules. As the wave moved through the air it vibrated them, creating the noise. As this happened, the air molecules hit my ears. I could also figure out how long it would take for me to hear Kristen singing by using velocity=distance/time. Velocity for the speed of sound is 331 m/s and I would have to measure the distance in between me and Kristen. Say the distance was 1.5 meters. This would mean that I would hear the sound .0045 seconds after Kristen produced the sound!
  3. We've all had those moments as a child where our parents tell us not to do something and we do it anyways. My mom never wanted me or my brother on a trampoline until my dad came home with one and she didn't have a choice but to let us jump! Come on---What's not irresistible about built up potential energy in springs shooting you upward and then you making a (semi) safe landing space as the springs fill back up with potential energy. The low spring constant in the trampoline springs sends you flying because the lower the spring constant, the smaller amount of force is required to "stretch" the springs. However, the heavier you are, the higher you'll fly! So next time your parents are apprehensive about letting you jump on a trampoline-- explain to them the physics of the trampoline! Or maybe just confuse the, with really big physics words until they agree to let you jump!
  4. sputnam14

    Christmas Lights

    So, everyone knows the struggle of a string of Christmas lights going out and having to check every bulb until you can find the one single bulb that went out. This happens because Christmas lights are set up in a series circuit. This means that there is only one path for electrons to flow, so if one light goes out, there is no alternate path to get around the one that went out and to the other lights. Putting Christmas lights in a parallel circuit would be more beneficial to buyers because when one light goes out, the other bulbs will still be lit. The reason for this is because in a parallel circuit, electrons are able to avoid the path with the bad bulb and move on to the next. So if you want to be super rich and never have to struggle to find that one bulb that's out, you should invent parallel circuit Christmas lights!
  5. My crazy 100 pound german shepherd loves playing and when we fight over his toys we both exert forces on each other and as the toy moves between us we are both doing work. When me and Shiloh play tug of war with his toys, he usually wins. Due to the fact that I am pulling as hard as I can to get the toy out of Shiloh's mouth, when I win I have done work. However, it usually takes me a long time which means overall I use less power. If I were to use more power, the time would be shorter and Shiloh probably wouldn't expect me to be ripping it out of his mouth so fast. If I exert a bigger force on the toy, my work done will be greater and hopefully Shiloh won't be exerting a stronger one on the toy against me. As long as I use my knowledge of power and work, I should be able to win against Shiloh every time we play tug of war.
  6. There are many ways investigator's can use physics to figure out what happened in a crime scene or an accident but one way is by using momentum. By using momentum they can figure out how fast the car was going to determine if that person really stopped at the red light or stop sign. This is possible because if somebody didn't stop at a stop sign and T-boned another car you would be able to figure out that they never stopped because the accident would be greater. The momentum in the car would be greater because the speed was greater therefore more damage would be done to the car that got hit. This is helpful because without it you would have to take the person's word if they said "I stopped at the stop sign". But there's a way to figure it out and therefore the person can be charged accordingly. Momentum is crucial in determing what really happened at a accident because it makes it easy to figure out how fast they were going and what really happened at the scene of the accident.
  7. When playing any sport there is a lot of impact on the players bodies which can cause them to get hurt. During a hockey game you seem more checks than you can count but if hockey players knew what to do when they were about to get hit the number of injuries would reduce immensly. If a really big guy is coming at you, he's going to have a really big momentum when he hits you and that momentum will turn into impulse on you as soon as he hits you. To reduce this, considering you can't reduce how much force the player hits you with, you should relax. When you relax your body has more time to absorb the hit and in turn will result in less direct impact on the player and in turn will result in less injuries. This works the saem way an airbag does. An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force and if you are stiff you are going to absorb all of the person who's checking yous force. If you relax and don't tense up then your body will have more time to slow down the person checking you. This will help reduce injuries in sports because if people know to relax the shock will absorbed over a longer period of time versus all at once.
  8. During the winter the roads here can get pretty bad. The roads can be covered with ice and slush making you slide when you turn or try to stop. The ice and your rubber tires together have a very low coefficient of friction meaning that when those two surfaces are moving (one on another) the amount of friction between them is very low. This is what causes your car to slide as you turn or when you try to stop. Plus, once you start sliding all frictional forces are acting against you, in the opposite direction making it very hard to stop. A good way to help yourself get out of the swerving, fishtailing, or spinning out is to "go with the flow". Your first instinct is probably to try to straighten yourself out, but when you do that, you're only losing more and more traction and sliding even more. What you want to do is go with it so you can regain the friction between your car's tires and the road.
  9. When you get in an accident in your car, have you ever wondered why the airbag goes off? This is to keep to more safe. As newtons stated, an object in motion will remain in motion until acted upon by an outside force. If you didn't have an airbag that outside force would either be the steering wheel or the windshield and both of those would hurt pretty bad. So what the airbag does is it allows for more time for you to stop completely. You hit the airbag and the resistance allows you to slow down instead of coming to a complete stop in one motion like you would if you hit the windshield. This keeps you more safe because more time allows the momentum to be lower and the impulse to be spread over a larger period of time. This means that with the airbag you take longer to stop, the force is spread over a longer period of time meaning less direct impact on you at once, and in turn you are safer.
  10. sputnam14

    Physics of soccer

    When I played soccer I never realized how much physics there was. For example, if I want the ball to go its maximum distance, I should kick it at 45 degree angle. Also, There is horizontal and vertical motion involved, all while I'm moving! As I'm running, I would apply force to the ball, causing mainly horizontal motion. However, if the ball came off the ground, vertical motion would now be involved and the force of gravity competes with the time the ball is in the air before gravity pulls it down. Throughout soccer, so many things are revolved around physics. The goalie: When the goalie wants to save a ball that's in the air, he or she may have to jump. They must time it just right so gravity doesn't bring them back to the ground before they're able to save the ball. The goalie also may have to jump sideways to catch a ball. If their save involves jumping and moving to the side, the goalie would have both horizontal and vertical forces acting on them. All in all, without physics, goalie's wouldn't be able to contribute to the team, the balls movement wouldn't have much explanation and the players motion would be a mystery.
  11. Over the past year and a half I've watched the pizza makers at Cam's, and even made a few myself, and never even realized how physics can apply to my job. While stretching the pizza dough (the part that everyone loves....throwing the dough in the air!) the pizza maker throws the dough up and catches it again, stretching the dough out to make it however big it needs to be. This involved vertical motion because the pizza maker throws the dough up with a certain velocity and the force of gravity pulls it back to his/her hands. However fast they threw the dough up, it will come down with that speed too. Therefore, the harder to toss the dough up, the faster it'll come down, and the faster the pizza dough can be stretched. Here's a short video showing somebody throwing the pizza dough up:
  12. Until I took physics, I never thought that there could be science involved. I used to just watch my brother and all of his friends play hockey and think it was so cool how with a little bit of force, they could hit a puck so far. There is physics in ice hockey in many different forms. For example, if one of the players hits the puck, the puck automatically has a velocity, depending on how hard he hit it, and follows a parabolic shape if it comes off the ice until it hits the ice again. When the puck reaches its highest point, its velocity becomes zero because for a split second it stops before the acceleration due to gravity forces it to come back down to the ice. If the hockey player wanted to hit the puck the farthest distance, he/she would have to hit it up at a forty five degree angle. This allows for maximum distance because there is a balanced ratio of time the puck is the air vertically and horizontally. Unfortunately, hockey is an extremely fast game and it would take time, and a lot of practice, to get the puck to go exactly forty five degrees up!
  13. Physics is very important in the air force because if you need to bomb a particular place, or drop any sort of packages to a certain place, you need to know when it would be best for you to drop whatever it is that you need to drop. whoever is dropping the package is going to need to know the velocity, angle and know the accelerations in the vertical and horizontal directions. Using this information, the people can figure out how long it's going to take for the package to hit the ground. Using the same information, you can also figure out how far from the plane the package will land when it does hit the ground. You can also find with what velocity the package will hit the ground with. This may be important depending on what is inside of the package. Physics is used in the military through planes and also tanks. Physics is very important to a person in the military because it can help them figure out everything they need to know about what they're dropping in a fast and easy way.
  14. sputnam14

    Intro to physics

    I'm nervous for tests too! I'm glad we're in the same class. Having people I know in the class made the switch easier!
  15. sputnam14

    Introduction

    Hi, I'm Shannon and I am a junior this year. I used to play soccer and softball until I hurt my hips and now am no longer able to play any sports at all. I work a lot at Cam's Pizzeria, either making pizzas or taking care of customers. I love my job there and have made many friends there. I really do enjoy school however my weakest point is test taking. No matter how hard I study, I never seem to do very well. I am hoping to find more effective ways of studying this year in hope of becoming a better student. I am taking physics this year because science has always been one of my stronger subjects. I also would like to go into something in the future that was in the science field. While I really enjoyed chemistry last year, I wanted to take physics to make sure I am not missing out on something that I could potentially find very fascinating.
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