kramsey

I love going on roller coasters! It's cool to be able to understand the physics of it!

I have never even heard of white holes, and that there are 4 sizes of black holes. This is really cool!

There has been a firm belief throughout my life that yawning is contagious, meaning that if you were to see someone yawn, it would then cause you to yawn as well. This is in fact true. Despite many believing it was only a myth, yawning is contagious. Yawning itself is your bodys way of telling you that you need more oxygen. It does not in fact have to do with being tired although it is associated with it. You could be wide awake and yawn just because you need more oxygen. the common belief behing contagious yawning is mirror neurons. For those of you who have taken psychology you should understand this concept, for those who havent, let me explain. Mirror neurons have to do with the saying "monkey see, monkey do". Throughout development these mirror neurons allow you to watch someone do something and then repeat it ourselves. So when seeing someone yawn, the mirror neurons inside of your brain become active and actually replicate the same behavior causing you to yawn. If you were to look at this photo long enough you may feel a yawn coming on yourself. Yawns are in fact contagious, but you don't always yawn because you're tired, but because your body needs more oxygen.

I remember when we did this in class. I used to love doing this as a kid! So much fun@!

I'm so surprised that so much physics goes into ghost hunting. I used to love whating ghost hunters, now I will never look at them the same.

As a kid I used to love watching Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner! When ever he chased the Road Runner and happened to run off a cliff, he would stay there for a few seconds, look at the audiance with a petrified stare, and then finally fall. To a six year old this all made perfect sense, but now, understanding the laws of physics, it would be impossible for him to not fall immediately. When an object falls from any height gravity takes over forcing the object to go down. Following the laws of gravity, Wile E. should fall as soon as he steps off the cliff. The other thing that Wile E. does that doesn't quit follow physics is when he falls and drops an anvil and it ends up hitting him on the head. We all know that when two objects are dropped, because of gravity, they both hit the ground at the same time, no mattter their mass. Overall, the cartoon doesn't follow the law of physics, and made my childhood very confusing!

There are many theories as to what could be inside a black hole. Although there is no official evidence, some theories seem plausible and could change everything we know about our universe. One major theory is that inside every black hole is a universe. Meaning that our entire universe is within a supermassive black hole, which is then within a parent universe. Some of the unsolved questions that correspond with the big bang have been answered with the black hole theory. There are two central theories that the big bang does not solve. First, general relativity has to do with gravity. It describes the universe at the largest scales. The sun for instance causes distortions in spacetime which alters the motion of Earth. It is the sun's pull that creates what we know as the force gravity. Secondly quantum mechanics describes the universe at the smallest scales. Since these are two separate theories, physicists have been trying to figure out a way to combine the two to make "quantum gravity". In order for physicistis to get a hold on "quantum gravity" and whether it could exist, they had to look at torsion. Torsion is what causes spacetime to twist. In the beginning, the tension between the spinning and turning of spacetime caused repulsive forces. The attraction from curved space would at first subdue the repulsion from torsion, causing matter to collapse into smaller regions. Eventually torsion would become stronger and since energy can be converted into mass, the high gravitational energy would create an increasing mass inside the balck hole. As torsion builds up the compression would stop and have a bounce back effect creating the ever expanding universe that we see today. In theory, the idea that every black hole contains another universe seems a little extreme, but it also answers several unknow questions. Could our universe be within another?

I always wondered why the beaches here and some other beaches get so hot, while others stay nice and cold. I never realized that it was what makes up the sand that causes it to get so hot.

I've always kind of wanted to try this,and now that I understand the physics of it all, it sounds like a ton of fun! I never realized that wingsuits travel to fast!

There has often been the question of wether cats see in color or not. Many believe, simply from myths they hear as children, that cats only see in black and white. This statement is in fact not true. Similarly to humans, cats have rods and cones in the back of their eyes, rods for seeing black, white, and grey, and cones for seeing colors. So based solely on the biological aspect of the cats eyes, they should be able to see color. It is their perception of color that is different from humans. In order to see color, light waves must travel through the air and reflect off of different objects. With different frequency, different colors are created. When light reaches an object, the surface of that object reflects one color and absorbs all of the others causing us to only see that color. People can see three separate types of light, red, blue, and green. The combination of each of these colors creates the large array of colors that we experience daily. Cats, however, only see blue, and green. This causes them to see less of the color spectrum than we do, and only part of the visible light spectrum. Despite their inferior cones, cats have superior rods, which allows them to see better in the dark and distinguish between a multitude of various shades of grey. The video bellow helps to explain how cats see color and what colors they do see. In conclusion, cats do see in color, but not the same colors that we see, and their perception of color is vastly different.

This is an awesome way to look at preception and how it affects drawing. I would have never considered that the colors we see are all actually just relfected light!

I never realized how much work really goes into Zumba! Great post!

I have always wondered to myself if cats ALWAYS land on their feet and if so, how they do it? By watching the video below, I have found the answers to my question. The process in which cats go through to land on their feet is amazing. Their "aerial righting reflex" is an instinctive trait within cats that becomes prominent after 7 weeks of age. The righting process begins with the cat's eyes and ears. Using their eyes and ears, the cat finds where the ground is. After, it bends the front legs and then the back legs under it's body, then arches it's back to reduce the force of impact. In many cases, they have discovered that cats who fall further distances, actually sustain less injury. This happens because during free fall the cat rights it's body and then relaxes for impact. By having more time to do so, the cat is more prepared and has a better chance of surviving the fall. As you can see, the comparison between humans and cats are vastly different. The differences in mass and anatomy allow cats to have better ability at landing on their feet than humans do. Compared to a cat, humans terminal velocity is much higher, averaging around 120 m/s, while cats terminal velocity averages around 60 m/s. Because cats have less mass, they fall slower, and they spread out their legs while falling, which distributes their mass and increases their air resistance. Finally, cats have four points of impact, compared to only two on a person, leading to less damage.

Speeding Lab Kasey Ramsey James Wilczewski Thespeeding lab involves tracking the speed of cars passing in front ofIrondequoit High School and indicate whether they are speeding or not. This labwas conducted to determine how many civilians actually follow the speed limitput in place within the area around the school. In order to figure out each cars speed wecreated a detailed procedure. Before the procedure we needed a measuring tape,and stopwatch. Our first step was to create a data table to record theinformation during the procedure. After we created a set distance from one landmark to another, which was our independent variable. We measured out thedistance between a light post and a sign which were approximately 10.7 metersapart. Next, we timed how long it took the car to cross the measured distance fromwhen the front of the car entered and exited the zone, which was our dependentvariable. After each car was timed, we recorded it’s time in our data table.The description of each car was also included in our data table to categorizethe vehicles. Once all the data was recorded we used the formula, speed=distance/ time, to calculate the speed of each vehicle. Average speed= adding all speedentries and dividing by the number of entries

After reading that first paragraph I feel like I know everything about you! I agree with your reasons for taking physics. :tyrannosaurus: