Day: 26

Throughout this semester, we learned a lot about different sound waves such as light waves as well as sound waves. We also learned a bit about lenses, reflection, mirrors, images, and much more that can actually be useful in life (unlike calculus for example) and I found it all pretty interesting which helped in the process of learning. I looked up the definition of physics on Wikipedia and it says that it is a branch of science that deals with nature and properties of matter and energy. This however, is not really how we learned physics and I think that it is much more than that. I believe that physics is the learning of everyday life and how things work in every day life. In the beginning of this class it took me a while to adjust to the type of thinking that physics requires but I soon got the hang of it and although the material that we learned got more and more challenging, I feel as though I was capable of dealing with it and learning it well. I also really enjoyed all of the labs that we did because not only was it really fun and made physics that much more interesting/intruiging, it also gave us a great chance to learn and apply all of our knowledge. I was also able to learn about how science really does apply to the real would and how everything we do is because pf physics itself! I also really liked how Mr. Blake was able to create such a great class for all of us to attend by making everything fun and nothing boring! I don't really  have any suggestions about changing the class because I thought that I was able to learn a great deal and yet have a great deal of fun! I will always remember this challenging but fun class! I will miss everyone and see you hopefully next year! THANK YOU EVERYONE!! <3

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-COW4lCULz6g/UAio0m39pmI/AAAAAAAAGco/ewgq_UkpzGQ/s648/20120719_140327.jpg

Day: 25

Today, we worked a lot with lasers and mirrors and learned about a lot of new things! We also learned about the characteristics of images and even lenses (which was actually pretty interesting to me since I just got contacts, which are pretty bothersome to be honest) We learned that images can be real, virtual, upright, inverted, magnified, and reduced! 

Real means that the image almost looks like the light is going through the mirror to the image. Upright is when the image appears right side up and inverted means that the image is upside down. Magnified is when the object or image appears bigger than it really is in reality and reduced is the opposite meaning the image is smaller than usual. We also learned about refraction and that is the changing of direction of waves which is due to the changes of speed which is then due to the medium! 

We also learned that with refraction comes the index of refraction. We also learned (through magic tricks!) that if two objects have the same index refraction, then they will both then dissapear! (woooo) We also learned that refraction allows you to hide the view of different objects. Another thing we learned is that the larger the index of refraction, the slower the speed of light in the medium is and that if a light is going faster to slower index, the light will bend towards the normal and the opposite for the other way around. 

With lenses, we learned that converging lenses (which look like strange oval shapes) make light converge whereas diverging lenses (which are in the shape of weird hourglasses) make the light diverge meaning spread out. 

The picture is of my eye with my contact in although you cant really see the contact since my camera on my phone (selfie side! hehe) isnt very good...

Day: 24

Today, was actually one of the most fun and exciting days of physics that we have had yet! We did a very cool activity/lab with lasers and different colored lights and even a strobe light! I thought that this was pretty interesting and I was even able to take some cool pictures, (the third on from the top is supposed to look like eyes!!) We learned about mixing colors and even "taking them away" or absorbing colors. Now we know what colors to expect when different lights with different colors are mixed and what colors to expect with a colored screen! I also learned a bit more about light years (yes, like buzz light year, just not an action figure) and we learned that the equation d=vt goes well with it. We also learned about x-rays and ultra-violet rays as well as other types of light sources though I thought that those were the most interesting! Physics CAN be fun guys!! "its physics baby!"

PS I can not believe that we have almost completed a whole year worth of physics :0

Day: 23

Today, we actually had a lot of work to do! We worked on our test (which I personally thought was kind of challenging) and we did a lab practical. I really enjoyed our unit on sound waves and am glad to learn more about it. Today, we specifically learned about electromagnetic waves. These were really interesting as electric waves and magnetic waves combined creates these electromagnetic waves are created! We also learned about opaque and translucent substances. This was a concept that I somewhat had known about earlier but I definitely learned more about it than I had known previously! We learned that opaque substances are those that no light can be transmitted through. Translucent is the opposite, meaning that light can be transmitted through those substances. This made me think about my fingers because although my finger itself is opaque, my nail is translucent and therefore if I hit
 it with a door (ouch I know, but for example) and if it bleeds beneath the nail, I can see the blood through the nail because it is translucent and light is bouncing off the blood itself and returning to my eye. I thought that this was really interesting and that it really made me think. This lesson is very interesting and I am excited to learn more. 

Day: 22

emailed: couldn't get to post

Today, we did a lot of learning new things. We learned more about waves and how they work and how to draw graphs that represent the waves and how they add or subtract to create one wave. I thought that this was somewhat confusing in the beginning but they soon began to make sense and once I got the hang of it, it was almost just common sense. We also learned a lot about sound waves. This was really interesting to me because I have been playing piano since I was four years old (which I can't say I really enjoy practicing, but performing is fun) and has played a pretty big role in my life. I have never thought about how sound waves really work let alone learned about how sound waves work. We learned that sound waves are measured through frequencies and that determines the pitch of the sound (high or low). This lab was one of the more interesting ones and I actually had a lot of fun with the lab and especially the sound "forks" they never got boring to play with. I also was really interested in the fact that when there are two forks next to each other and if they are the same pitch, they will both begin to make noise (one makes the other vibrate without physcially touching it at all) :O ! I thought it was pretty cool.

Day: 21

Today, we learned quite the load. We learned about energy waves. I thought it was really interesting because although we weren't really talking about literal waves with water (though we kind of were, but we were talking about the energy waves) the fact that they were basically the same thing was really interesting. I also learned a new equation today which we added to the "board...not bored" which is v=frequency(wavelength) We also learned what the differences between wavelength, periods, and frequencies were! We learned a lot of new vocal words! However, the best part of the day was the lab with the slinkys by far! It was so fun to send "waves" across from one side to the other and me and Remi were pretty good at hitting the boxes (the ones we were supposed to anyway) if i do say so my self! Just kidding...but it was pretty fun and definitely helped me to learn since it is much easier for me to learn when i am doing something that is hands on opposed to a lecture, but i presume that is true for a lot of people. I hope we can do a lab with the slinkys again sometime because I swear I could play with those all day sending tons of waves and learning to create tons of nodes! It can definitely make your arms kind of tired though!

Day: Bottle Rocket!

Today, we basically worked on our bottle rockets and launched on the baseball field almost all day. To be honest it was pretty frustrating for my group and I (Remi, Taylor, and I) because our rocket wasn't working out the way we had anticipated and each time a different problem would occur which made things really frustrating. However, after finishing all of our launches, I can see that it was all just a kinetic process of learning physics and we did still do OK because we got 8.5 or so seconds out of a goal of 10 seconds.

I believe many things contributed to our not being able to make our goal such as wind trouble, we could never really attain a good water to air ratio, the pumps sometimes did not work the way they should have, and the most frustrating problem with our rocket was the fact that many a time our parachute would not come out as it got stuck in our cone at the top of our rocket and the rocket would just come straight down, which took much less time than if the parachute had opened up and our rocket had floated down. Our design (I thought) was actually pretty decent.

First, we used one full liter bottle of sprite (without the sprite before, but it was not cut or anything) and we taped the top third of a liter coke bottle over the bottom end of the sprite bottle. We then filled the sprite bottle one third of the way with water and cut a trash bag into a square (double layered) and put little pieces of tape on both sides on each of the corners and put string through and double knotted it to ensure that it stayed. We then taped the other ends of the string to the bottle evenly (four strings) and we bunched up the parachute and string and lightly put it into a cone that had a weight with putty around it attached to the top of the cone. We put the cone over the top of the coke side of the rocket and shot it up! (after setting up our launcher and pumping: which was much harder than it looked...)

We made our rocket with two bottles to make it longer and therefore shoot straighter (or go the way we aimed rather than tumbling around) and we also used the one with weight so that it would go up higher and when it flipped to come down, the cone would fall off and our parachute would come out. We decided to double layer our parachute so that it would not rip and basically used it for insurance. We used duct tape because we figured that that would be the best way to keep everything attached as opposed to a weaker tape and glue which can be really tricky and even time consuming.

I thought that we did pretty well with our overall rocket although I can not say it exactly the way that we had planned or anticipated. However, I think that because of this we were able to continue to redo and recreate, replan, and reconstruct our rocket to make it the best we could (this design is the one that got us to 8.5 seconds (not aunties)) I also thought that next time, we should maybe not use putty and tape instead inside of the cone because the parachute would sometimes stick to the putty and not come out due to the putty! The parachute not coming out was a pretty big issue because we would barely reach 4 or 5 seconds without it. If we ever get a chance I really hope I will have learned enough from this experience and be able to make 10 seconds next time!

Day: 19

Today, we worked a lot on our bottle rockets which we (Remi, Taylor, and I)  spent a lot of time planning out! We decided to use one liter bottle of sprite and taped the top third of a one liter coke bottle on the top so that both ends of the rocket had a top (nozzle). We also created our parachute today using a trash bag and tying four strings to the side of them. We also decided to put a cone over it so that our rocket would go up but also the cone (in our wanted scenario) would fly off on its way down and the parachute would come out so that it would stay in the air for a longer amount of time. We also decided to add two fins which we also lined with tape (mostly to look cool but hoping that it will make it more aero dynamic!) I hope ours turns out well tomorrow so wish us luck ;)

I thought that this picture would better suit my blog post and since I wanted to save a picture of my own rocket for a surprise tomorrow night after we see our results, I decided to show you what I am trying to model my bottle rocket after although Im sure it will look much less professional and look ghetto :0

Day: 18

Today we learned more about equations and work, joules, and momentum. I was able to further expand my knowledge on the "power" of people. Today we did a lab about power and mass which we found out the relationship between the two through timing each other running up stairs and using our mass and calculated our "power". This lab finally helped me to understand the difference between power and work and I think that this was a really important thing to be able to know the difference between. We also practiced more equations. Today also really helped me to see how everything that we do really can be measured by a unit...called work! I am really excited to work on our rockets tomorrow and I hope we do well and can beat 10 seconds!!!!! Good Luck everyone! :) This turtle here is not doing any work because he is not moving in height or using any energy at all. Lazy turtle....do work!

Day: 17

Today we learned a lot of new things! We learned about energy and work! I didn't know that there was such thing as work besides the one referring to occupation. We also learned about joules (pronounced jewels) and we even learned about Hooke's law and learned a lot of new equations! (looks like things are getting trickier) We also learned that "the energy that an object has due to it's position in a gravitational field is a product of mass x gravity x height. We also learned a lot of springs and I am excited to finish our lab on Monday! It was pretty interesting to learn about work, energy, and joules and I'm ready to learn about more!! And yupp, the picture is my necklace with jewels since we talked about joules! ...not too great of a pun in know ;(

Egg Drop!

GUESS WHAT!? Our egg surprisingly lived!! We were really happy because like many other egg drops, we were really gambling on it not landing on the open side (with only tape to hold the sponges and egg in). Luck was on our side though and it landed on the side of the box which created a lot of friction when it landed which helped the force to not be so sudden on the egg (otherwise it would have broken really easily). Our plan/layout for our capsule was that we used very light supplies so that our contraption would reach terminal velocity faster (as compared to a heavier contraption). However, we still needed our capsule to be durable so that it did not break (including our egg) from the impact. Our contraption was to wrap the egg in bubble wrap first, then in sponge to increase the contact time. We then put that into a box of styrofoam in order to hopefully absorb most of the shock! We placed the sponge in the middle of the box so that no matter which side (except for the opening which was only covered with a cross of tap to keep the sponge (including bubble wrap and the egg inside) it lands on, the sponge will have more time before it hits the side. The sponge would also have friction to slow it down which creates more contact time. I believe that the one thing that would have probably been a better idea was to cut a styrofoam top out to cover our open side because there was a chance that the box would land on the side that was not protected by any styrofoam which would have resulted in a dead egg :( Good thing we were lucky!

Day: 15

I can't believe we are already halfway through physics and can't believe that we have today off! It's a great treat for 4th of July! Don't forget to wear red blue and white and get in the spirit! (hence the picture) I also found that picture a while back so I can't find the link although I tried looking for it... But yesterday we learned a lot about momentum which we also learned actually has a lot to do with crashing (such as cars) and coincidentally, explosions. Tonight, I am looking forward to watching the fireworks and I will undoubtedly be thinking about those sUpArFuN equations and I am yet still surprised to see just how much physics has to do with everyday things that we just accepted and never really thought about for over a decade and a half of our lives! Crazy

Day: 14

Today was the first day of a new semester! It was pretty challenging as we began to learn about a new unit, momentum! Our lab today with the balloons was pretty fun and really helped me to see how impact of an activity as simple as throwing a water balloon has a significant and direct relationship to physics, and more specifically, momentum! I thought that this picture was pretty funny and (yes another jumping picture!) that this really can put impulse, momentum, mass, velocity, and impact. I am really interested to see how the egg drop turns out and hope to learn more about momentum and hope to get better at the equations as well!