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Mikephysics

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  1. During a sporting event, the players are the ones expected to perform physical activities. However, within the game and the stadium, there are many other types of physics. A few examples are waves. Waves range from the stadium fans, to the sounds of the players, to the light waves lighting up the stadium. One of the most common waves is performed by the fans, but must be done with a lot of concentration and coordination. A stadium wave has most, if not all of the crowd performing a transverse wave that usually has a very long period because of how long it takes to complete. A transverse wave is a type of wave where the direction of energy transfer is perpendicular to its oscillations. The sound waves created by the players and cheering fans are classified as mechanical and longitudinal waves. They are mechanical because they require a medium to travel through, and they are longitudinal because the air particles are caused to move back and forth. Finally, there are light waves which are classified as transverse and electromagnetic. They are electromagnetic because they do not need a medium to travel through , and are transverse due to the same reasoning as the stadium waves. There's a lot of physics within sports and the players, but the rest of the environment contributes to physics as well, as much, if not more than the actual players.
  2. One of my most favorite people in history, is Nikola Tesla. Mainly for who he was as a person rather than what he did, but he did have huge contributions in the Physics world. Unfortunately, he is often overlooked by the average person, because of what the American, Thomas Edison, did with Tesla's ideas. Perhaps, Nikola Tesla's most well-known invention is the Tesla Coil. The Tesla Coil could produce high voltage, high frequency electricity. These coils create large electric fields that then can power other electrical devices around them such as light bulbs. Another invention of his that is widely unknown he created, is the radio. Most people that don't know much about the radio's history, believe that Guglielmo Marconi was the creator of it. However, Tesla was the originator, and he showed this off at Madison Square Garden with his radio controlled robot-boat. Tesla would send out radio waves (which are classified as electromagnetic and transverse) to the boat's coherer, which received them, and would then transmit the waves into mechanical movements. This became the first ever application of radio waves in America. These are only a few of the many accomplishments Nikola Tesla had in the Science field. It's a shame he is not recognized more for all of his hard work.
  3. One of the greatest natural wonders of the world are the Northern Lights, which unfortunately for us in Rochester, are usually only visible in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. After having been introduced to them in the magnetism unit, I became interested in finding out more about them. Their official name is Aurora Borealis and there is a ton of physics involved. The lights are created due to the interaction of the Sun's solar wind with the Earth's magnetosphere. From the solar wind comes charged particles, that are directed by the Earth's magnetic field to create different colors. These particles then become very active in the different spheres of the Earth. Oxygen emissions in the atmosphere are most likely to create green or orange lights, while Nitrogen emissions create mainly blue or red lights. The colors are dependent on several factors like, how much energy the atoms absorb, going from an excited state to a ground state, and the addition of electrons after ionization. One day I hope to see them, although I know it'll be a challenge find out when they're happening.
  4. Now that spring is almost upon us, spring sports will be starting up again soon. One spring sport that involves a lot of physics is track and field. From the throwers, to the hurdlers, to the runners, everyone has some kind of physics they need to perform and improve on. The sprinters focus on acceleration, velocity, and time. If we know that the runner has to sprint 100 meters, his time is 12 seconds and his final velocity was 8.3 m/s we can find his acceleration. We use the formula a=(Vf-Vi)/t and then substitute to make a=(8.3m/s - 0m/s)/(12s). The acceleration becomes 0.694 m/s^2. As for the throwers they have to deal with power, work, force, and distance. The throwers throws the shotput 20 meters in 4 seconds and we know he did it with 25 Newtons of force. Using W=Fd we can find that after substituting W=(25N)(20m), the thrower used 500 joules of energy. With P=W/t we can find that his power was 6.25 Watts in total. Finally we have he hurdlers who have to jump off the ground just enough to get over the hurdle. They need to know height, force, and velocity. The height of a hurdle is roughly 1 meter and the hurdler is 50 kg. Using what we know, we can find the hurdler's velocity to jump over the hurdle. Substituting into the equation Vf^2=Vi^2+2ad gets us Vf^2=(0)+2(9.81m/s^2)(1m) which ends up becoming a final velocity of 4.43 m/s to jump above the hurdle. There is a lot of physics in many sports, and track incorporates many with all of its different events.
  5. Although an uncommon sport in America, rugby is a huge sport in the British Isles and southern countries like Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The great thing about rugby is how much power and work it takes to play. One of the main occurences in rugby that cause for so much work and power is a scrum. Scrums involve eight players from each team trying to work together in a pack to push the other pack backwards and get the ball from the middle. On average it is believed that a single scrum can generate a total force of 13,350 Newtons.However, if we were to look at a single team perfroming work in the scrum, it would be very minimal beacuse of the very short distance they need to gain. So let's cut that force in half to equal the force of one team (6675 N) and say that the same team got the ball by moving a total of 0.5 meters. When using the equation W=Fd we can find that the total work done was only 3337.5 Joules of energy by a total of eight players combined. Now we can calculate power by saying that the time it took for them to reach that 0.5 meters was a whole 1.4 seconds. Using the formula P=W/t we can see that the one team generated over 4672.5 Watts. The scrum is a big difference from American football. Instead of one-on-one battles for advantage, rugby utilizes half the team in an eight-on-eight.
  6. In most sports like football, basketball, and volleyball, being tall is usually very advantageous for the athletes. However, in weightlifting the complete opposite is true and people that are short have a much bigger advantage. That is because short people have a lot less work to do than tall people. Work is defined by the formula W=Force x Displacement. That's why it's so much easier for short people, they have a lot less distance when needing to lift something. To prove it I'm going to give an example of someone who is short and someone who is tall. Billy and Tom are lifting the same weight with the same force of 50 newtons. the only difference is Billy is 1.6 meters tall and Tom is 2 meters tall. When plugging the numbers into the equation Tom will have done more work than Billy. Billy: W=(50 Newtons)(1.6 meters) which ends up being a total of 80 Joules. Tom: W=(50 Newtons)(2 meters) which becomes 100 Joules. So based on this information, if you ever want to lift weights, make sure you shrink before it so you can do less work.
  7. As I was trying to see where potential and kinetic energy are found, I realized that both show up within the liftoff and landing of planes. Starting from rest, the plane then gets onto a runway and starts to speed up rapidly. The speed of the plane and the huge mass of it lead it to have a lot of kinetic energy. As it sarts to lift off the ground and fly, the kinetic energy starts to turn into potential energy. Let's say that the plane which we'll measure at 1000 kg, gets up to a height of 1500 meters. Using the formula PEg=mgh, we can substitute the information we know to find its potential energy. PEg=(1000 kg)(9.81 m/s^2)(1500m) which gives us a potential energy of 14715000 Joules. Now let's find the kinetic energy right before it lands. If the plane is landing at a velocity of 80 m/s we can us the formula KE=1/2mv^2 to find its kinetic energy. KE=1/2(1000 kg)(80 m/s)^2 which gives us a kinetic energy of 3200000 Joules. That is the type of energy output planes can yield.
  8. Over the holiday break I traveled on a train to and from the city of Chicago. The rides were very long so I started to think as to how physics applies to trains. What I noticed is that the train was beng acted upon by Gravity going down towards the Earth while the Normal Force was pushing up with the exact same force in Newtons. Our initial and final velocity changed frequently from around 35 meters/second to 0 meters/second because of the constant train stops and start-ups again. Our trains couldn't go much faster than the 35 meers/second because the faster it goes, the harder it would've been to keep the train on the tracks since they have steel wheels and are not magnetically connected to the track. However, the faster the train goes results in a shorter time to get to everyone's destination. Now that we're coming back to school I'm interested to see what next we will learn.
  9. After discussing circular motion and how it works, I started checking where circular motion happnens in the world. One place that appeared interesting was on a helicopter's blades. When I started checking pictures, I noticed that at the centers of those spinning blades was a rotor that had a lot of mechanisms. That would make sense since the rotor would have to be able to handle a large amount of centripetal force. What is really unique about the circular motion in the blades is that they are strong enough to push the air around them and can also make a very heavy object fly in the air. The amount of centrifugal force performed by the blades on an average-sized helicopter is around 6-12 tons, which is equivalent to 5443-10886 kg. The average speed that these blades go is really dependent on the size of the helicopter and the strength of the rotor, but they have been reported from around 100 RPM's-400 RPM's. It's cool to see that circular motion plays a big part in transportation like tires on cars, bicycle wheels, helicopter blades, and plane turbines.
  10. First thing's first, if you have not watched the series of Quantum Leap, I highly recommend it and it's even available on Netflix for all you Netflix lovers. After watching the series I realized I was never actually educated in what Quantum Phisics is. The show makes several references to string theory, and the main plot of the story, which is time travel, but I never had a good understanding of the important details. That being said, now that I am taking physics I am hoping that we might learn a little bit about what Quantum Physics deals with and how it works. I have done very little research of my own, but have found that it can also be called Quantum Mechanics and deals with physical phenomena at nanoscopic scales. It also deals with The Planck Constant which I have little to no idea of what that is. I'm looking forward to what we learn this year and I would be very interested if this is a topic we will learn about.
  11. Now that we have started learning about forces in class, I have been able to relate that to an everyday activity of mine, which is working out on a punching bag. I have a stand-up punching bag which is affected by both the force of gravity as well as the normal force of the floor. Once I add an applied force of any type of strike, it will move in that direction at the same velocity of my strike. However, I realize that no matter how hard I hit the bag it will always offer an equal reaction to my strike.(Newton's 3rd Law is applied here) For example, if I hit the bag with a force of 100 Newtons, the bag will have a reaction of 100 Newtons in the oopposite direction. The law of inertia can be also added into this process, because in order to make the bag heavier all I have to do is fill it up with water in the base. The more water I add, the harder it will be for me to offer a more impactful strike. Therefore there will be a much larger resistance to change and I will have to strike harder in order to get the similar results of when the bag had less mass.
  12. Throughout the fall and winter seasons, I watch a lot of football games. I think physics is applied to football in many ways like, when the football is thrown, acceleration of players from rest to when the play is going on, and also in kicks which have similar characteristics to throws. Kicks and throws both have the football moving in a parabolic path to its target with an initial velocity and with gravity forcing the ball back down to the ground. The players themselves constantly go from rest at the beginning of a play, accelerating, and then usually get hit by a player of the opposing team. Although, we haven't learned this part yet, I know that with a collision of objects there will be a force that is not gravity acting on an object, in this case a football player. I'm interested to see how we will work to solve these kinds of problems, and if there are any new formulas to learn.
  13. Breaking News This just in from Irondequoit High school, we have found the acceleration due to gravity. Physicists Peter Martin and Mike Vrooman discovered this finding with a state-of-the-art lab. Materials consisted of a gator skin ball, a stopwatch, and a meter stick. They conducted the experiment first by measuring a set distance to drop the ball from. Then one of the physicists would drop the ball from that set height and start the stopwatch at the same time. They would stop the stopwatch when the ball hit the ground. They replicated the test several times to filter out the error. Then using the kinematic equation of d=vit + 1/2at^2 and their knowledge of the time it took for the ball to drop, the distance the ball fell and the initial velocity of zero, they discovered that the acceleration due to gravity is a force of 12.6 m/s^2. However fellow physicists informed them that the accepted value was 9.81 m/s^2. They found that their percentage error was 28% and they attributed it to a lapse between the stopwatch and after the ball hit the ground or starting too early.
  14. Over the last few weeks I have learned a lot about physics. I learned that speed and distance are scalars and velocity and displacement are vectors. A scalar has only magnitude, while a vector has both magnitude and direction. Speed is the rate at which distance is traveled, whereas velocity is the rate at which displacement changes. Distance is a change in position, while displacement is a straight line vector from start point to end point. While taking physics I have struggled mainly with the writing portion of the lab. This was my first lab all year so I'm sure I'll improve, but I didn't quite understand a few aspects of the format such as the abstract and the discussion/analysis. Hopefully, I can do a better job next time.
  15. For this project we measured the speed of cars on cooper road. We wanted to see whether cars were following the speed limit. We measured out 10 meters2 people used stopwatches measuring the time it took for the front of the car to go 10 meters. Also when people were timing the car, another was recording the details of the license plate and color. Took the average of the 2 measurements Converted our data into meters per second This is the data we found Car Distance (m) Time (s) Speed (m/s) B7E 2186 10 0.9 11.11111 FY75391 10 1.02 9.803922 BRC2005 10 1.14 8.77193 C62 2538 10 1.33 7.518797 M28 993 10 1.11 9.009009 L88729 10 1.03 9.708738 AKT3042 10 0.95 10.52632 AKH2389 10 1.1 9.090909 BLL4728 10 1.36 7.352941 ESM6120 10 1.35 7.407407 11.1+9.8+8.7+7.5+9.0+9.7+10.5+9.1+7.4+7.4=90.2/10=9.02 m/s Our results show that people drove from 7.3 m/s – 10.5 m/s and the average was 9.02. If we were to do this again we should not be as visible so that our presence doesn’t alter the speed which people drive at and there should be less people conducting tests so the test takers can see more clearly. These results are quite a bit different from our instructor who didn’t show his presence to the cars and got higher speeds because of it. According to our data, there is not a speeding problem on Cooper Road. The data shows that the average speed cars go is well under the speed limit. This could also be due to many of the cars having to accelerate coming from the traffic light they were at. Based on the data, cars may be going too slow on Cooper Road; at least when there’s civilians measuring their speed.
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