L8on

Every Saturday, my family and I go to a children's ministry in the city called Bethel Express. I help whenever I'm needed, but my parents do a lot, which at one point included driving a sixteen passenger van around the city to pick up a ton of kids. One winter, my dad decides it would be fun to take this van full of kids and start driving in circles on the empty(thankfully) and icy parking lot. Driving in this motion caused the van to start sliding on the snow and we started doing doughnuts in the parking lot. "Why did the van start sliding in circles?" I'm glad you asked. This is in part due to the lowered coefficient of friction between the tires and snow, as opposed to the tires and pavement. This only makes it easier though. What is it that causes the van to want to spin around in huge circles? This is because of centripetal force, or lack thereof. The frictional force would normally be the one pulling the circling van towards the center of the circle, but with that force depleted, the tires just continue sliding to the side, pushed by the still low force of the tires spinning on snow. Needless to say this was a highly entertaining experience, and one that I will not soon forget.

This next post happened a little while ago, but I'm bringing it up now because it's kinda funny. My aunt was at the pet store with my mom, and as she was walking around the store, she suddenly lost her balance. This was due to the fact that she had stepped on a goldfish. Now goldfish, along with most other fish, are notoriously wet and slippery. This is due to the lack of friction between them and other surfaces because of the layers of water and whatever else they're covered in. This lack of friction caused my aunt's foot to continue moving forward when she expected it to stop on the ground, and thus the rest of her was quickly brought down to earth. Luckily she was fine, but this does make a great story, especially when you can throw some Phyzx in there.

@FizziksGuy I did pretty well on it. I did work up to the end of the test because I missed the beginning to go to the nurse though.

@FizziksGuy Apparently it was because the lug nut was loose, and the vibration/spinning of the wheel must have made it fall off.

Continuing on with my family and wheels falling off of vehicles, I turn to a tale told to me by my mother not too many moons ago. It begins with her, driving in her car. I don't recall many of the details, but she was on the expressway, or was it the parkway? I'm going to go with driveway. So my mom was doing about 65 on the driveway when all of a sudden out of the corner of her eye she spotted it (Shia LaBouf) (this is completely off topic and has nothing to do with the story but if you get the reference joke I applaud you) Anyway... She was driving along when she saw something speeding ahead of her. It was indeed her wheel. Now just to be clear, this was not just the rubber tire that fell off, this was the entire flippin' wheel. All those metal bits that connect the rubber to the car suddenly stopped connecting the rubber to the car. The wheel went careening off toward the side of the driveway, and my mother veered across a lane or two and managed to safely stop the vehicle without any serious damage being done to her. This is an interesting physics observation because, after the initial separation from the car which I am still unaware of the cause, the wheel went faster than the car, even though it no longer had any force on it pushing it forward. This can be linked to many things, the kinetic energy of the system (including rotational), the momentum of the system, friction occurring in the car that no longer constrains the wheel, allowing it to finally be free of the oppressive weight of the tyrannical car. Any of these, and more likely all of them combined, are the cause if this random observation.

Last year, as many of you may recall, we took some big tests in the gym that took up a bunch of time in the morning. Preceding one of said tests, I was at home, running late for school. In my defense, my mother (who normally drove me to school) had just departed for Greece with my sister and not me even though the initial plan was for me to go and I am definitely not bitter or anything, but I digress. Anyway, I was running late for the English exam and hopped on my handy-dandy bike to pedal my way to school. Now I'm sure you're thinking, "He's bringing up all this backstory for the physics of riding a bike?" but you would be wrong dear reader, for this was no ordinary bike ride. Seeing as I was running late, I was pedaling a bit faster than I normally would on my way to school, which was evidently not my best idea. For you see, the night before it had rained, and there were still puddles lining my path from home to school. Now I know what you're assuming happens next, "his bike is just going to skid on the wet pavement" but it is so much better than that. As I was riding up Titus, there was a puddle blocking my way back up onto the sidewalk. Not wanting to get myself all wet, I decided to lift the front tire of my bike over the puddle just long enough to clear the puddle before continuing on to school. The only problem was my front tire wasn't having that, and decided to remain on the ground, while the fork of the bike rose up in agreement with the force of me pulling back on the handles. This was the main source of my dilemma because I was not applying a constant force, I had only created an impulse, which was not enough to counter gravity long enough for me to come up with a way to avert disaster. Thus, as the saying goes, what goes up, must come down, and down I did go. Thankfully, I walked away with only a couple scratches, and still managed to make it to school on time for the test.

Last post, I talked about music and how it's just air vibrations, but I didn't get into what constitutes good music or what just doesn't sound good. "Good" music usually contains harmonies, which basically add another layer to the music. These harmonies are notes at one of the melody's harmonic frequencies. These notes amplify the melodic sound and have a resulting pleasant sound to our ears. On the other side of things, there are some notes that just don't sound good together. These are notes that are just too close to each other and create dissonance. This dissonance is due to the fact that when two sounds have similar frequencies, the sound waves cancel each other out at constant intervals, which can make that pulsing sound like the one heard last year in physics.

Music is something that has been pretty much ingrained into our society, and is as well in many others around the world. But no one really stops to ask "Why does this sound so good?" What is it that makes music sound good, or bad? The answer is pretty obvious because this is A-Plus physics so, duh, it's physics (and technically it also has to do with the music popular in the current society but that's psychology and sociology so we won't get into that). Sound comes from sound waves sent through the air, which vibrate at different frequencies. Music is just a thought out combination of these frequencies that pair together well.

So I know this is a bit late, but seeing as this is my first blog post, I'm going to do the first blog post stuff. Obviously I've been a bit of a procrastinator in the past, but I'm hoping to push past that and keep on top of things for the rest of this year. I'm more of a math and science guy, which is one reason why I'm in this class, but its also because I just want to know how things work. Why do planes fly? What is it that actually makes cars drive? What can we do to make them better? If you understand how something works, then you can improve upon it and maybe even come up with something no one else has. That's why I'm taking this class. So yeah, now i just have to crank out like 8 more of these or something like that. See ya next post. -L8on