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kateh516
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Blog Entries posted by kateh516
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Around school I'm probably known as "that really tall girl who rides horses" which is really a pretty accurate description of me. It does leave out some other things that are an essential part of who I am. I love the two classes I am the worst in: Physics and Math. I love history. AP European has been my favorite history class that I've taken so far, but I also enjoy learning about local history in my free time. I've been playing violin for almost 14 years now and play in my school's orchestra. As stated above, I ride horses which is my true passion in life and is something that will shape where I go in the future. I use my mentioned height to help my team out on the volleyball court. I decided to take AP Physics C for a few reasons. I took AP Physics 1 last year and loved it. I've always enjoyed science but Physics is by far my favorite. So why wouldn't I continue taking a class that I love? I also think that it is a class that will influence what kind of career and college major I decide to pursue. I hope this class will make me a better learner and a harder worker. I know that it will be a very challenging class, but along the way I hope the challenge will teach me the skills I need in college and life to successfully tackle challenging situations. I think I'm mostly excited for the extended learning that I will be getting. Hopefully, this class will expand upon the topics we learned last year to give me a better understanding of them. I think that the scariest part of this class will be the self-motivation I will need to accomplish my end goal: a 4 or higher on the AP exam. I will really need to motivate myself to do the learning required to be "good" at physics. I know that sometimes I get lazy with schoolwork, especially when the work gets more challenging, and I don't want that to happen to me this year. Along with this, of course I am worried about failing tests. It comes with the territory of the class, so I know that when I fail I should use it as a motivator to go back and learn the material more. Overall, I can't wait to see where this year takes me. I get the feeling that this is going to be a great year!
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The other day, after gym class, a few of my friends (you know who you are... I'm just protecting your privacy) stopped by the locker of one of said friends. His locker is known for the large amounts of food that is kept in there. After emptying out a Capri-Sun* box and a box of Little Bites Muffins* someone had the brilliant idea to put one of the boxes on their feet. He tried skating around on one foot without much success. After meandering along the halls, I thought someone should try wearing both. After a bit of experimentation with that we decided to start pulling each other around. The person wearing the boxes held onto another person who ran along, pulling them behind them. While nervously watching the security guard I was sure was going to approach us to tell us to stop I realized, "Hey! This would make a great physics blog post!" So, let us discuss the physics behind why this extremely fun activity (that, yes, I eventually did try) works!!
If you tried to grab on to someone's back and have them pull you with your feet flat on the ground, you would most likely end up not getting very far. This is because the soles of your shoes are made to have a large amount of traction (a large coefficient of kinetic friction) so while you walk you don't slip all over the place. The boxes are the magic catalyst. When you put the boxes on your feet, the coefficient of kinetic friction greatly reduced, so while you are being pulled you can move across the top of the carpeted hallway without getting "stuck". It's also easier to start pulling someone because the coefficient of static friction is smaller that if you were wearing normal shoes. This means it is easier to get someone moving from rest.
I highly suggest trying this with your friends sometime... but please be careful. Sometimes physics can get a little dangerous
*DISCLAIMER: I was not sponsored by either of these companies, nor were any of my friends. I just thought it added to the blog
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In one of my late night musings, I asked myself, "Self, what would happen if gravity pulled us up towards the sky instead of down towards the ground?" and being a volleyball player, I wondered how that would affect the game. So let's create a situation to isolate some factors to get a better idea of what some possible outcomes would be. Let's say that, for this scenario, the court is the only area affected by the change in gravity. So the fans in the bleachers are seated and the coaches, players and refs on the sidelines are all able to stand like we do today. Pretty high tech court I'd say. So it would probably start off with a bunch of players on the ceiling. When the ball was served you would have a very hard time getting the ball to reach the other side because gravity would pull it up into the ceiling. Say someone did manage to get their serve over the net (which is still on the ground), once the ball gets to a hitter, they would have to hit with a much larger force to get a kill. Their arm swing would have to be greater than the force of gravity pulling on the ball. If the forces are unbalanced and the force from the hitter is larger that the force of gravity, the ball would be able to reach the floor of the court.
The likelihood of anyone ever attempting to try this is probably very low due to the fact that it would make the game about 10000 times harder unless they changed some more variables of the scenario. It's an interesting idea to consider though, how a change in the direction of gravity would affect our daily lives. Especially when some variables of life are kept the same.
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In Orchestra today, two kids rode past our room on their scooters. After discussing why two 8th graders were getting to school late, we started reminiscing about the scooter days. Remember those Razor scooters that hurt so much when they accidentally swung into your ankles? Yeah, those scooters. So I was one of the fortunate kids to have a scooter and one memory I have of it is the day I learned you must avoid, at all costs, scootering barefoot. Oh yes, bare feet and scooters are not a good combination. I remember wheeling around my driveway and then needing to slow down to turn and head back. I stepped on the brake and all of a sudden my foot got very, very hot. I asked my parents why and they told me that brakes make things hot because of the friction it creates. Now that I'm older, I understand why this heat is created. When you step on the brakes, the friction between the metal and the wheel is increased greatly. Brakes work to bring the kinetic energy to a lower value (reduce the speed). To do so, some energy must be released. This energy is released in the form of heat which I felt on the bottoms of my feet through the metal brake at the back. So, next time you go out and scooter (don't lie to yourself... you know you want to bring that dusty scooter in the corner of the garage back out) think of the physics and enjoy scootering at a whole new level!
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A few days ago, my volleyball team traveled to another school for a match (which we won, even with the touch I called myself on that could have scored us the winning point if I hadn't) and for our trip home, the opposing team gave us a huge bag of apples. So as we rode the bus home we ate and then we had 15 apple cores and no idea what to do with them for the rest of our 45 minute bus ride home. An open window sparked an idea and with that I became the center for the discard of our apple cores. As I went to drop an apple core I worried about it hitting the car behind us. Luckily, my physics insight allowed me to realize I had no reason to fear. Although it looked like the apples were flying backwards, they weren't!!! Because I did not throw the apples, they moved in a straight (if we don't consider and updrafts, gusts of wind, etc.) path to the pavement below me. Due to our bus moving forwards and the apple moving down, the motion of the apple looked different than if we had watched it standing on the ground. So, due to the fact that apples are biodegradable and they won't hit another car if dropped out the window, you can also participate in an activity like this. Just please do not throw the apples at other cars or throw plastic out your window (the plastic is not biodegradable so it is littering).
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Physics is everywhere. There has never been a more true statement. So let me take a minute to discuss the physics involved in a sport that I love and are blessed to participate in: horseback riding.
There are many different disciplines in the Equestrian world, but for the case of this blog, I'm going to focus on the discipline I am most familiar with, jumping. The physics behind jumping is basic kinematics. To clear a fence, the horse and rider have to approach the jump with the right velocity. If the velocity is too small, the horse could refuse or knock a rail. In a competition, both of these would result in points deducted from your score. If the velocity is too large, you could over jump the fence, which, in the case of someone riding over multiple jumps, could mess up your approach to the next jump, not to mention use more energy than needed. When the horse and rider take off, there is a few seconds where the back hooves stay on the ground, creating an impulse force as they push away from the ground. While the horse leaves the ground to move over the jump, their kinetic energy changes to potential, reaching full potential energy over the maximum point over the jump.
I've attached a few images of the movement of a horse and rider over a jump, to help see the actions I've described.
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On Saturdays I usually have a riding lesson, which is always the highlight of my weekend. On my drive home from the barn, I was reflecting on the lesson and what I could improve on for next week. The goal of riding is to make all your cues to your horse invisible and move with the horse as much as possible. Sometimes, after asking for a faster speed from their horse, a rider gets "left behind"- as the horse gets faster the rider doesn't move with the horse and look like they aren't moving together. It can happen when the rider asks and is off balance or unprepared for the change or sometimes, as in today's case, you are riding a young (in the horse world it's called "green") horse. The horse I was riding today, Mystic, decided a few times to go a little bit faster than I had anticipated so I got left behind. After taking him over some ground poles at a trot, he started cantering (a faster speed than a trot). I could have helped him by making my clues more clear. In any case, on my drive home, my reflections turned to the physics of the matter. An object in motion wants to stay in motion, initially. When riding, two objects are trying to act as one, but when the horse changes speeds abruptly, the rider continues to move at the previous speed causing him or her to get "left behind". It's sort of like when you step on the brakes of the car and come to a stop really quickly, your body lurches forwards because it's trying to move at the same speed as it was before. The seat belt keeps you in place. With riding, it just works in the opposite direction with your body moving slower and the horse moving faster. And there is no seat belt keeping you on
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I believe most living things are born with some a basic understanding of physics. If I jump up, I'll come back down. We certainly know gravity, as it effects us every moment we are on Earth. I'd like to share an example of this. Recently, as I worked on some homework I had, my cat jumped up on the table. She walked around on it, exploring, for a few minutes then went to jump down. I noticed she did not do anything other than simply sliding her front paws off, the rest of her following after gravity took over. When her front paws left the table there was no longer the force of the table acting upon her. The force the table exerted up on her four paws was greater than the force of gravity acting on her in the downward direction. Once that barrier was gone, the only force left acting upon her was gravity. She landed, then trotted off, on some unknown mission that cats often have.
To conclude this blog post, I would like to share a physics joke with you. It involves cats (which is how I'm tying it into this blog). Here goes:
Two cats are sitting on a roof. Which one slides of first???
The one with the smallest mew!!!
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... unless you are instructed to do so by your physics teacher
My fellow blogger, zlessard, has also just posted a blog about a similar topic, as we both had to write one up for class. Our mistakes were different but we both had the same goal.
The purpose of this lab was to figure out what height the arm on which the rubber band and egg were attached had to be so the bottom of the egg just touched the top of the paper (resting on a table) below it. To find out what height it needed to be, the potential energy of the system had to be determined. Potential Energy (U)= mass (m)*Acceleration due to gravity(g)*height (h). Once potential energy was found, it would be possible to determine the height, since the mass of the egg was known. To find the potential energy stored different masses were used to determine a different displacement of the rubber band as well as the force applied. On earth we know the acceleration due to gravity is 9.81 m/s^2 so the force applied is easy to find (F=ma). When the different masses were added to the rubber band the displacement was able to be found by measuring how far the rubber band. The area under a force vs. displacement graph is equal to potential energy. This is where my group messed up. Instead of integrating by weight, we integrated by mass. This would give us the wrong value for the potential energy causing the rest of the calculations made to find the height at which to drop the egg from. So after integration, you find the potential energy to be .8932J. Then using the equation U=mgh, you can figure out the height, which in our case would be 1.3007m since our egg had a mass of .07kg and the acceleration due to gravity on earth is 9.81 m/s^2. Yesterday, when we dropped our egg we were lucky enough to make an educated guess that was correct. At least, my group has discovered our mistake (integration... it's important) and can move forward with this knowledge.
I highly suggest trying this at home (be prepared to clean up and broken eggs!!!) because it's a great lab to do for fun. Even if you do trial and error drops
You'll need a few rubber bands, a place to attach the rubber band to. And then something to attach the rubber band to the egg. Good luck!
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On Easter, I had the pleasure of celebrating with a friends family (because all of my family lives in a land far, far away). Her cousins really liked playing on the tire swing they have in their yard. I don't blame them, tire swings are pretty swanky. For some reason they really liked when I pushed them. Maybe it was just because I was a new person that isn't family. Or, maybe it's because of physics. My friend and I, being the oldest kids there, ended up supervising after we ate Easter lunch. When my friend pushed them, they seemed to enjoy it but they really did when I pushed them. That's all because of potential energy and it's transformation into kinetic energy. Being 6'2" (an entire foot taller than my friend) I was able to pull them to a much higher height before letting them go. This means they had a larger potential energy as P=mgh. The height they could reach with me pulling them was much larger. Due to the conservation of energy the kinetic energy would also be much greater with me pulling them allowing to reach a larger velocity, K= .5mv^2. And when you're little, faster means more fun.
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As mentioned in a few of my earlier blog posts, I am on my school's varsity volleyball team. Lots of the time, we have to do sprints across our thirty foot wide court as punishment for losing a drill or messing up too many times in row. I am always the last one to finish (it's absolutely terrible). Yes part of it is a lack of stamina, but the other day while running a very long set of sprints (we had to do 12 consecutive "down and backs" across our court), I was thinking about the physics and why I might be slower than the rest of the team. Then it hit me! As the tallest girl on the team (I'm 6'2") I have the largest mass of all the girls. Objects with larger masses have a harder time changing directions. It's momentum (p=mv)!! An object with a larger mass and some velocity will have greater momentum than an object with the same velocity but smaller mass. A larger momentum means a larger force is needed to stop the object. For a larger object to stop and change directions, it takes a longer amount of time to apply the force to stop it then start it again. So, although I am doing the same sprints as everyone else, it takes me a few seconds longer because of the extra time it takes to stop and then accelerate my larger mass
(Or maybe I'm just terribly unathletic)
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Today as I was rushing out of the house to my car, I dropped my water bottle on my driveway. As it hit the floor and bounced back up to me, I realized that it was an inelastic collision!! Actually my first thought was to get it from under the car so I could take it to school, but that's besides the point. Anyways, I knew it was an inelastic collision because some of the energy the water bottle started with, which was all potential energy because it was not in motion yet, was changed into sound energy as well as the energy used to create a dent in the bottle. So, the water bottle starts off with PE=mgh then is dropped and the energy changes into kinetic. When it hits the floor, the loss of energy is experienced as the bottle is deformed and the noise is heard. Due to conservation of energy, the bottle keeps some energy as not all of it is dissipated which is why it bounces back up off the ground.
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Nowadays, almost everyone has a camera right at their fingertips. With the invention of the smartphone, even the camera phone (remember when you were the coolest kid if you had a camera phone... or even just a cell phone?!!) pictures and picture taking has become an intricate part of everyday life. We've come a long way from the first ever camera phone to today's iPhone. The quality of the picture has improved greatly while remaining a lot smaller than a DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera. An iPhone will always be more convenient and more practical than carrying around a large camera, but the DSLR will take better pictures, hands down.
This may seem obvious to most people. Yeah, a camera is going to take better pictures than the phone will. Let's discuss why this is true.
In an iPhone, the lenses used are fixed. They do not have the capacity to zoom. The zooming you see on your screen is a digital zoom. The computer part of the camera takes the image and makes it larger. In a DSLR, the lenses rotate so that the focus is clear even after zooming a large distance. The DSLR lenses move individually so that the light being focused on the digital processor in the back of the camera is in it's best form. The mix of concave and convex lenses are what allows the camera to achieve the best possible zoom, and maintain the highest image quality. The iPhone is just to small to allow for space that would let the lenses move by themselves. They have to fit within a fixed amount of space. Yes, the iPhones have gotten larger in the past few releases (compare the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 6 plus- HUGE difference) but not enough to have a camera capable of what the DSLR is.
So, DSLRs are a good investment for special occasions, but the iPhone will never be replaced by a DSLR simply because the iPhone is a more practical, everyday device.
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Guitars, violins, violas, cellos... all examples of stringed instruments. There are many different ways to play them, but for the sake of this blog post I'm going to focus on plucking. Plucking is when whoever is playing the instrument uses their finger to pull up the string and let it go. I believe this is more commonly seen with guitars (I play violin and it doesn't happen to frequently in the pieces I play). All of these instruments have strings that are fixed on each end. When a string is plucked, the string vibrates at a given frequency. The vibration gives off a sound. As you place fingers down on the finger board, you change the length of the string. This will change the frequency (see the equation attached below). As the length changes (represented as lambda) the frequency will change producing different pitches.
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Since we have moved out of the era of brick phones and indestructible Nokias, and have entered the world of fragile iPhones, the market for good phone cases has widened greatly. Cases used to be just stylistic choice. Now they are almost necessary since you are investing hundreds of dollars into an iPhone (they are totally worth it though). How does the case work to prevent damage to your phone though?
When you drop your phone on a surface, the surface will act with an equal and opposite force on the iPhone. A large enough force is able to dent or shatter a phone, if dropped without any protection. Cases are built so that, on impact, the forces are distributed evenly across the phone. The materials used are also able to absorb some of the forces, again lessening the force that is exerted on the phone itself.
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A few weeks ago, I went to see the movie The Good Dinosaur with some friends. It was a great movie and I definitely think that if you are reading this you should go see it. Since this is a blog about physics, let's talk about that!
As the movie begins, a asteroid gets dislodged from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. This asteroid starts moving directly towards Earth. As it gets closer to Earth, it enters the Earth's Gravitational Field. It bursts into flames as it enters Earth's atmosphere as there is a sudden change from the vacuum of space where there is no friction to the friction filled air. This sudden change causes a change in energy. Energy is lost in the form of heat. The heat is strong enough to cause flames. So it starts off a pretty accurate representation of physics. Then, by some chance, the asteroid misses Earth. This is impossible since there was no force that acted upon it to change it's direction. The asteroid was already feeling the affects of Earth's gravitational pull. The asteroid should have hit Earth, but that would mean the movie would have been over in the first few minutes. So we will have to pardon Pixar's incorrect physics since they did do a good job of telling a story.
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I don't know what it is, but I always seem to have candles burning a lot more frequently around Christmas time than any other time of year (which in my case means more than one time a day which is my norm). Maybe it's the whole lighting of the advent candles at church that influences me. Or maybe I'm a pyromaniac whose tenancies increase in December?? Either way, candles are very important to me and since physics is everywhere, it's definitely in candles!
Let's start with the lighting of a candle. I use matches. On the side of the match box is a strip of rough material. When you apply a force to the matchstick as you push it across this strip, the friction in between the tip of the match and the strip causes a release of energy. Due to the conservation of energy, the loss of energy in the match has to go somewhere. As you probably know, striking a match causes flame. Flames create both light and heat. That's where this energy goes. This energy is then transferred to the candle. From here, the candle experiences a phase change. The energy, in the form of heat, continues to add to the stored energy of the candle. When the energy gets high enough, the object begins to break down. So you'll notice as a candle burns longer, it starts to melt due to the addition of this form of energy.
So next time you light a candle- maybe while singing Silent Night in your church's Christmas Eve service, or maybe while writing a blog post- make sure to thank physics for making it possible.
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Yesterday, on the way home from a colleg interview, the weather conditions took a turn for the worse. Luckily, I was not alone, and my mom was able to drive home. What would have been a two and a half hour trip turned into four and a half hours because we had to drive at a much slower rate. We also had to leave a greater amount of space between the car in front of us. Because of how snowy the roads were, there was a greatly reduced coefficient of friction between our tires and the pavement. It takes a greater amount of time to stop when the conditions get snowy or icy. The more room you leave, the greater chance you have of stopping before you hit the car in front of you.
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I'm all for reusable sources or energy because, one day, the world will run out of oil and without preparation for that day there will most likely be an energy crisis. It's one of the biggest tasks I think my generation should be taking on. One example is a reusable energy is wind. Wind is cause by the uneven heating of the Earth. Wind power has been harnessed to do work before. Windmills used to be used to grind grain down into a flour. So, how does a windmill or wind turbine work? Well, the wind will be moving at a certain velocity and hit the surface area of one of the blades on the turbine. Energy can be measured in power multiplied by time. So the amount of energy created depends on how much power is created over a certain amount of time. The amount of power created depends on the area the wind hits and at what velocity. Then, due to conservation of energy, whatever energy created by wind can be transferred into another usable form.
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It's common for lasers to be included in high intensity, spy movies (so I've heard). I've really only seen them in kids cartoons since I'm not well versed in current movie culture (I really only watch romantic comedies-whoops). KIDS!! You are being fooled! You can't actually see a laser beam when it's pointed across a room. Those red lines that you have to tentatively step around to avoid setting off the alarms would not actually be there in real life.
Why is this the case?
Well, lasers are very different from everyday light. It has one specific wave length and is very concentrated. You can only see light that enters directly into your eyes. Because the light emitted from a laser travels in one direction, you aren't able to see it. You can't see it until it hits a wall and the light particles are reflected in multiple directions, ultimately entering your eye. Or, you can clap dust into the air and the light particles will reflect off the dust and enter your eye.
So, next time you see a character rolling under and jumping over laser beams, just know that they shouldn't really be able to see them, unless the air there was very dirty.
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More horsey physics!!!
Horses are big animals and with that comes a lot of food that is consumed. Lots of food means lots coming out the other end. Mucking out stalls and pastures is a daily task for horse owners/stable workers. It's not a terrible task, honestly. It gets a bit tiring when you have 20 stalls to clean along with all the other tasks to do around the barn and wanting to ride for a couple of hours. Physics can make the job a little easier. It all comes down to torque. So you have the mass at the end of the pitch fork you are using. The force applied is usually pretty close to the opposite end. It takes a lot of energy to lift the end of the pitch fork up into the air and dump it into the wheel barrow. To make the job easier, you can add a fulcrum (your other hand). The closer it is to the end of the pitchfork, the easier it is to lift. This is because W=Fd. You can apply the same force as you would if the fulcrum was nearer to the top but because there is a greater distance between the force and your second hand, more work will be done, which in turn feels like a lighter load to lift.
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While Mini-Golfing with some friends on a trip to Cape Cod over summer vacation, I decided to take a video of a, surprisingly, challenging part of the course. It involved a loop that you could either hit your ball into or try to go around it. For most of us, we ended up hitting into the front part of the steel loop and getting our ball no where. None of us were really playing by the rules so we let each other have multiple shots until our ball finally went through/passed the loop. In preparation for this class, I took video in the hopes someday it would show up here (will see if the attachment works). So, how does the golf ball not fall when it reaches the top of the loop? Physics, of course!!
To keep the ball from falling the centripetal force must equal the weight (mg) of the golf ball. Centripetal force is found by multiplying the mass of the golf ball by centripetal acceleration (this equals (v^2)/r). You end with an equation like this:
mg= m((v^2)/r)
Since the only value that can be controlled by you-unless you want to break your golf ball or smash the loop, both of which would take you out of this situation- is velocity. Changing your velocity is the only way to get your ball to go through the loop without dropping from the top!
IMG_1309.MOV
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I would like to start off by apologizing for the title. Sometimes I try to be punny and I should know by now I'm really bad at it.
Anyways...
I was on spring break this week and a group of my friends (they're some really cool people) took a day trip where we found a pretty gnarly place to take a hike. It was a pretty awesome adventure and with any adventure, there has to be physics involved. We all hiked to the top of trail but, did we all do the same work? No! Why you ask? Because work is equal to the force*displacement. We all were displaced the same amount (since we all started from the bottom and hiked to the top) but since force is equal to mass*acceleration this number would vary. We all walked up at about the same pace but we probably aren't all the same mass (I did not weigh everyone who went on the hike so if we all turn out to be the same mass I apologize). Let's at least think of each person having a different mass. Keeping acceleration and displacement constant for each hiker and changing each hikers mass would lead to different amounts of work needing to be done to get to the top of the mountain. Next time you take a hike, consider the physics behind it. It's pretty cool.
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In the English style of riding, sometimes you may notice a rider wearing extra material around their calves. These are known as half chaps (I've included a picture below for better reference). Riders may choose to wear half chaps as a way get a better "feel" of the horse and keep your leg in the proper position. The coefficient of friction is increased by riding with half chaps as most have a grippy (for lack of a better term) fabric on at least the inside of your calf. The coefficient of friction is much greater using chaps than it would be wearing jeans, breeches or any other pant. When riding the goal is to keep your shoulders, hip and heel all in a straight line from top to bottom. Half chaps aid in lessening the movement in your calves as you ride, which allows you to keep the straight line from shoulders to heel.
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Popcorn is a tasty snack that has existed for many centuries. The other day I was wondering how exactly it worked and figured there must be some physics behind it. After experiencing pressure created by the temperatures it is put under, the hull of the kernel splits and turns inside out. The water vapor that is released makes the popping noise. If you have ever made popcorn in a pot you will have seen that popcorn "jumps" in the air. I figured that the release of the water vapor directs a force against the bottom of the pan. As we know, for every force there is an equal and opposite force. The force released from inside the kernel points down towards the pan and then a force is exerted back in the opposite direction on the kernel causing it to "jump" up into the air. What a great physics snack!
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