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krdavis18
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Blog Entries posted by krdavis18
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In class we learned about how electric motors work and we talked about a couple examples of things with electric motors such as your air conditioning. To review, moving charges in magnetic fields experience forces. When the charges move perpendicular to the magnetic field, they experience a force which is applied to the wire. With electric motors, moving charges are sent through a loop of wire which creates motion when you examine the forces acting on the wire. There are several everyday household items that use an electric motor. Starting off in the kitchen, the refrigerator, the freezer, the blender, the disposal, and the fan in the microwave all use electric motors. In other areas of the house, the ceiling fan, bathroom fan, the garage door opener, the hair dryer, the washer and dryer, the vacuum cleaner are other examples and the list goes on and on.
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Flight is a magnificent natural ability of birds and what seems like a tremendous accomplishment for man-made aircraft's that average at a weight of over 300 tons. So I thought I would explore more into this amazing ability and the physics behind it. Here is what I learned.
In order to fly, a bird or a plane must overcome both the force of gravity and drag forces as it is moving through the air. The force that opposes weight is known as lift and the force that opposes drag is called thrust. Lift is generated from the shape of the wings that cause air to move faster over the top of the wings and slower underneath. This means that there is lower air pressure above the wings and higher air pressure underneath them. The force from the pressure difference which is called the life force, exceeds the weight of the bird and the bird is able to fly. Here is an image demonstrating what is called the Bernoulli effect.
When you look into an amount of lift that a pair of wings can produce, you have to take in to consideration factors such as wing size, air speed, air density, and the angle of the wings with respect to the direction of the flight. A wings lift is directly proportional to the surface area of the wing, so a wing twice as large can carry twice as much weight. To simplify the relationship between lift and airspeed and air density, it can be said that if a bird flies twice as fast, it can generate four times as much lift. And if a plane flies where the air density is a quarter of the density of the air at sea level, then it must fly twice as fast to maintain the same amount of lift. Lastly, lift increases as angle of attack increases, but only up to a certain critical angle. The angle of attack is the angle between the wing and the direction of the oncoming wind. Past that critical angle, stall occurs as the air stops flowing smoothly over the top surface and instead peels away, leaving a turbulent wake.
Prettu interesting!! To read more on this topic and where I found most of my information, check out this presentation:
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As we approach the end of the first quarter, it was a bit of a scramble to get all of my blog posts done. First quarter is always rough for me because it is very busy and hectic; nonetheless, I neglected doing blog posts and held off until the last moment possible to complete them. I regret this decision now that it has come to the final hour. I think it would greatly benefit me to try to work on one blog post each weekend so that I can stay on track and not have to cram at the very end. Over the course of the week, I can develop ideas about what the post should be about and over the weekend I can blog about it and post it. This isn't a new idea that I am suddenly coming up with to solve all my problems. The idea had already been presented to me, and I failed to follow through with it. Going into the second quarter, it would be a large help to have this routine down so that I can confidently complete all the necessary posts for physics class.
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This year, I really pushed myself with new challenges that were difficult, but also very rewarding. I took on the challenge of a flipped classroom and learned a new way to be a student that will help prepare me for college. While at times it was a struggle to keep up, this course kept helped me prepare for college by forcing me to work on my time management skills. I think that I have a lot more of improvement to do on this, but I have come a long way from the beginning of the year. I think before I go to college, it might be a good idea to review Dr. Chew's videos and brush up on some of the proper learning techniques that he taught. Another new thing that I took on this year was completing blog posts for this class. This activity taught me a lot of new things about how what we are learning in physics applies to the real world and I really appreciate all that I have learned. Going forward, I will have to apply the math and physics of the classroom to the real world, and doing the blog posts gave me a little bit of insight into the connections between the two. Although it may have been a challenge at times to complete the necessary blog post on time, I enjoyed learning new things about the world around me.
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On Monday during physics class, we were asked to create a “top” that would spin for a long period of time. The materials we were given included two small paper plates, a pencil, six pennies, and tape. At the end of the lab experiment, we were asked to answer the following questions in a blog post:
How did today's opening activity relate to the engineering design process?
The engineering design process involves designing, building, and testing something. This relates to what we did in class because we had to brainstorm solutions to the given problem, and then we built, tested, and redesigned various models. For example, we tried moving the pennies closer to the center of the plate, and then we tried moving them farther to the outsides. We also experimented with moving the plates farther up and down the pencil. Unfortunately I carelessly poked a hole through the plates that was off-center and this impacted our results. Oops!In the end, we learned that the task would've been much easier if we had snapped the pencil in half.
How did today's opening activity relate to moment of inertia and angular momentum?
If friction did not exist, the top could keep spinning forever. But because there is friction, you want to maximize the angular momentum of the top so that it takes longer for friction to stop the top. You can increase angular momentum by increasing pieces of rotational inertia such as mass and how far away the mass is from the center (or the radius). We did this by putting all six pennies evenly spaced on the outside edges of the plate.
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