eclark
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Everything posted by eclark
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For the 7th day of Blogmas, I will discuss how long it will take Christmas cookies to cool to 75° F once they are taken out of the oven. For this calculation I will use Newton's Law of Cooling. This law states that the rate of cooling is proportional to the temperature difference between the object and its surroundings; therefore, dT/dt = k(T-TC) with Tc the constant temperature. To find this calculation, I first found Tc to be 70° F because my house temperature is kept at this constant. Next, I used the separation of differentiable equations method to integrate the Newton's Law of Cooling Equation. As a result, I found the equation to be T(t)= Ce^(kt) + 70. To find the value of C,I set Ce^(kt) equal to 350° F( the temperature of the cookies immediately after they were taken out of the oven) and set t=0. With this information, I found C to be 280. I measured the temperature of the cookies to be 300° F after 5 minutes. Using this information, k was measured to be -.0393. After finding all the unknowns, I finally found the time it takes to cool to 75° F to be 102 minutes.
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For the fifth day of Blogmas, I will discuss a specific scene in the movie Home Alone. At one point in the movie, two burglars enter the house because they believe nobody is home. Little do they know Kevin is still home and ready to protect himself. At one point, he swings a paint bucket and it hits one of the burglars. I thought it would be interesting to calculate the length of the string the paint bucket is attached to using the equation T=2π+(L/g)^(1/2). The period of the paint bucket is 4s granted there were cuts in the movie and human error ) and acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 m/s^2. With this information I found the length of the pendulum to be 3.97m.
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For the fifth day of Blogmas, I will be discussing the physics of singing Christmas carols. When someone is singing, they emit sound waves. Because sound waves are mechanical waves, they are required to travel through a medium. When traveling through this medium, the particles vibrate creating a frequency which is measured in vibrations per second or hertz. In turn, the higher the frequency, the higher the pitch of the singer. The loudness or quietness of the singer is measured by the amplitude of the wave. The larger the amplitude, the louder the voice of the singer. Who knew so much went into singing Christmas carols?
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A Christmas Story is an iconic Christmas movie, so today I decided to discuss the physics of one of its well known scenes. Ralphie's friend Flick is triple dog dared to stick his tongue to the pole by the kids in the school yard. Unfortunately, when he sticks his tongue to the pole, it gets stuck and the fire department must come to save him. The reason his tongue gets stuck is because the metal pole is a great conductor of heat. The thermal energy from your body is transferred into the pole faster than your body can replenish the loss of heat. As a result, your saliva, which is made up of 99% water, freezes due to the lack of heat on your tongue.
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For day 3 of Blogmas, we are going to discuss the physics of Christmas lights. It is important to find Christmas lights wired in parallel because the set of lights will still work if one light blows. This way you will not go through the struggle of hanging all of your lights just for fail when you turn them on.Lights that do not work when one bulb breaks are wired in series. In series , electricity must flow from one bulb to the next. In a parallel, each light is on its own circuit to the power source. This is why one bulb breaking will not impact the overall circuit.
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For today's Blogmas, I thought it would be interesting to calculate the force inflicted upon an ornament when it falls off of a Christmas tree. I have a 7ft Christmas tree so I decided to calculate the force exerted on an 35g ornament from this height assuming the ornament is placed at the top of the tree. F=mg therefore the force of the ornament when it hits the ground is .343N. I thought it would also be interesting to calculate the power of the ornament as it is falling. Using conservation of energy, I found the velocity of the ornament to be 6.47m/s. Then using the equation P=FV I found the power to be 2.21 watts.
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For the first day of blogmas I decided it would be interesting to calculate how many reindeer it would take to carry Santa's load of toys. First, I found that there are approximately 2 billion children in the world (people under the age of 18). The average reindeer can pull about 136 kg and we can assume that children receive an average of 5kgs worth of gifts. Using this information, if can be found that Santa will need approximately 73.5 million reindeer to help him deliver his presents.
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I have always found black holes interesting. I never knew about the possibility of time travel.
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I have a little black shih Zhou poodle mix named princess who loves to jump on and off of the couch. I thought it would be interesting to calculate the velocity of my dog right before she hits the ground. To do this I used the conservation of energy theorem mgh=.5mv^2. The Masses cancel out, g is 9.8m/s^2 and the height of my bed is approximately .91 meters. After determining all of the variables, I found her velocity to be about 7.67m/s
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I never knew why wings on planes are curved. It's nice to know the physics behind it.
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I love Tetris. It's interesting to know the physics behind it.
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I never knew there were different temperatures inside a lava lamp. That's really cool
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What causes lightning?
eclark commented on NathanKenney's blog entry in So, I guess I signed up for another year of ap physics...
I never knew exactly how lightning worked. That's really cool! -
Before writing this blog post, I could not think of anything to write. After sitting in front of my computer for about 15 minutes thinking of an idea, I started to stare at my toaster. Finally, I realized I could write about the velocity of toast when it pops out. I then proceeded to do further research and in the process I discovered that toast always lands buttered side down. The reason for this is due to the height of kitchen tables. Usually they are about waist height. As a result, the toast's period of rotation-the time it takes to make a 360 degree spin- is interrupted. When the toast falls off the table, it is only able to achieve a 180 degree spin. Assuming that the buttered side is facing up when it falls, that side will be the one to hit the floor. The only way to prevent toast from landing buttered side down is to double the height of the table.
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Today is Halloween, so I decided to calculate the speed of a fun sized snickers when dropped into a trick-or-treater's bag. The mass of a fun sized snickers is approximately 17 grams. The average height of a 10 year old is 138.4 cm. With this information you can either use kinematics or conservation of energy. I chose to use kinematics and used the equation. Vf^2 = Vo^2 + 2aΔx. Assuming that the candy is dropped from rest, falls completely vertical and neglecting air resistance, the final velocity of the candy is 52.08 cm/s.
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The Pringles Ringle is one of the latest challenges that people are trying to undertake. Thanks to physics, this interesting experiment is able to occur. The key to building it is to make sure that the base is sturdy. Once you have a solid base, you must insert a Pringle in between two other Pringles to achieve the circular shape. By doing this, the Pringle will stay clamped down because there is a force applied to hold it down. From there, you can keep building up and up The Pringles on top stay in place due to static friction.
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This is very fascinating I never knew this about sailing.
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The Physics of Hydroplaning
eclark commented on VagueIncentive's blog entry in Actual Physics from an Actual Physics Student
Very interesting! I never knew that -
Recently I watched a documentary about the possibility of teleportation. Scientists have discovered that through entanglement and superposition particles can be teleported transported to different locations. Entanglement is the idea that links the quantum states of two particles even when they are separated.The distance between the particles does not matter, so they can be on other sides of the universe and still be entangled. Many particles have been teleported by scientists recently because that is not the hard part about teleportation. The part that troubles scientists is maintaining entanglement. Superposition is the idea that a particle has unlimited possible states until you measure it. Once it is measured, you limit it to a single possibility. Because of superposition and entanglement, particles can be transported. This new knowledge is important because it could be the future for human teleportation. There begs the question however; if you are teleported, will it be the same person as before who arrives on the other side?
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About a month ago I shattered the screen on my phone. Fortunately however, this meant that I could get a new phone. From this experience, I learned why my phone shattered compared to previous times it dropped. I realized that the impulse it experienced was much greater compared to the times I dropped it on carpet. The equation for impulse is Impulse= force x Δtime. Because the force of mg was constant throughout its fall (neglecting air resistance), that meant that Δtime was the reason for the different impulses. When my phone fell on carpet, the time to stop the fall was slower than the time it took when my phone fell on tile floor.
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Your cat is very cute! Your calculation was very interesting.
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To be competitive in the sport of dog sledding, speed it key. To achieve maximum speed, it is important to reduce the friction between the ground and the runners. Runners are the part of the sled that come in contact with the ground. They are sort of like skies that the basket of the sled is attached too. Normally, runners are made of metal, but racers add a rubber strip to reduce the coefficient of kinetic friction between the runner and snow. Because the coefficient of kinetic friction is less between rubber and snow rather than metal and snow, racers decide to add a rubber strip to achieve maximum speed.
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While eating a Butterfinger, I pondered the question, "What is the physics of eating candy?" Through further investigation, I found that hard spherical candies such as lemonheads decay at a constant rate. Andreas Windisch's, the man who conducted the experiment, found that the mass of candy decreased exponentially while the radius of the candy decreased at a consistently. Windisch did note that the density of the candy does have to be equal throughout for it to decay at a constant rate. This information is useful in that it helps candy companies make their candy longer lasting. Additionally, candy companies should note that spherical candy last longer because the have a smaller surface area compared to rectangular candy.
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The Physics of a Football in the Air
eclark commented on jwdiehl88's blog entry in Physics in the Real World
It is nice to learn the physics of football. -
It was very nice to see why you chose to take physics. We will miss you in class.