srossi14
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Everything posted by srossi14
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This weekend, I was watching a movie in which the main characters were driving in a heavy rainstorm and the car hydroplaned. This got me to thinking about the physics behind hydroplaning. Hydroplaning occurs when water prevents the tread of a tire to make contact with road itself. With heavy rainfall, a layer of water builds up on the road very quickly. When there is a layer of water between the car tire and the road, there is a smaller coefficient of friction, if any. Because there is little to no friction, the car cannot be controlled by the steering wheel, and the driver loses control. The car ends up acting like a cart on one of the "frictionless" tracks that we use in class. After it has been acted on for a period of time by a force, it continues to move at that same speed in the same direction. The faster the force the harder it is for the car or cart to be stopped, or steered. When a driver attempts to steer the car or hit the brakes when a car is hydroplaning, nothing happens because there is not contact with the road. This is why it is better to drive at slower speeds when there is a heavy rainstorm, or you could just stay at home and sit down with a good book:)
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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 ball is hit by a player, it gains momentum. It is easier to add speed to the ball when it already has a lot of momentum. When you play a team that doesn’t hit as hard, to get that speed requires more physical work on your part. Because we were playing such a good team, we were able to hit shots just as fast back to them. So yeah, we didn’t win, but we still ended the season with a well-played match.
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My family has never been one to go on vacations to the Bahamas or to go on a cruise, instead we go to national parks and go camping and hiking for a couple of weeks. Because of that I guess I've become one of those crunchy people that finds hiking extremely relaxing. While on a hike this past summer, my dad asked me, "why does hiking take so much longer than just walking on flat ground?" And of course my automatic answer was a mumbled "idunno" because I didn't want to have to think about a real answer. As I was hiking though, I thought about it and it's just simple physics. There is probably a lot of physics involved in hiking but one thing that I came up with was that as you climb higher, you gain gravitational potential energy, so less of your total energy is kinetic energy. Because kinetic energy is one half times the mass times the velocity squared, if there is less kinetic energy, then the velocity would decrease also. Therefore it would take longer to travel the same distance hiking a mountain, than it would to walk on a flat road. And that is one reason why hiking takes more time than walking on a road as proved by physics:)
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"There's always that one girl in your grade that's obsessed with horses"
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Everyone else started by saying that this was their first blogpost, and I’m not really sure how to start, so I guess I’ll do that too! This is my first blogpost for AP Physics C. A class that everyone told us was the most difficult, and yet here we all are. A few things about me are that I enjoy playing tennis and volunteering through girl scouts (nerdy, I know). I also play the violin in the school orchestra and I have an unfortunate love of puns. I would like to think that my strengths are in math and science, but unfortunately I don’t think that’s true. I’m an average student, but I still strive to do my best and get good grades. I’m not at all sure what I want to do with my life, but in college I’m hoping to do something with math and science, maybe biology? I don’t really know though. I decided to take this course because I have found myself too often “playing school” as Mr. Powlin would say. I always find that I learn how to go through the steps of doing things without really knowing the reason behind it, and I am excited to learn more of the “why?” through this course. I am most anxious about the time management and organization of the course and this year. However, I know that these are skills that will come with taking this class. I’m looking forward to see what this year has in store for me!
