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What more can you ask for? Other than having vacation start now...I have 4 tests this week, and I'm not sure how I'm going to go about studying for all of them, especially because I have no real frees and the majority of my lunches are spent in club meetings. I'm kind of grateful that I only became officer of one club, because I have no idea how I would be able to put all my officer duties with the obligations of the other clubs. Moving on before this becomes a TOTAL rant...
So this will be a lame blog this time. Sorry guys. Saturday's been real busy and Sunday doesn't seem to have any prospect. So when I came home on Friday evening, a truck rolled up to my house. Apparently, instead of picking me up at school, my parents decided to go to town, buy a truck, and come back, making me waste over an hour on the bus when I could be at home sleeping or doing homework. There's tons of physics aspects in the truck, and cars in general.
The cab has a higher potential energy than the cars my parents have owned before it. This is due to its height off the ground. My father likes trucks because the higher perspective allows him to feel more comfortable at being aware of his surroundings. When the truck goes in reverse, the super awesome feature of the truck is the rear view CAMERA. That way, my father doesn't have to provide a force directed radially inward on his neck to see the back as much, and it'll help to see any potential dangers lurking low behind the truck. The tailgate has two steel cables to attach it to the trunk of the truck, each with equal tensions to hold the tailgate when it is at its released position. And most of all, it provides a radially inward force to keep me orbiting around it, pulling me towards it, and ultimately causing me to give into the "gravity" and drive it.
Of course, I just have my permit, and I haven't taken drivers Ed. And the last time I drove was in a totally different car during the SUMMER. I can't afford to scratch the truck's pretty exterior just yet. Wait 'til the insurance kicks in. But I seriously want to drive it!!! I think I inherited my father's love for V6 gas guzzlers (among other things), and I enjoy that trait :D. Oh and my brother's home from Chicago. I may post a blog about THAT Physics nerd next time.
Yay for a sibling that can actually help me with homework! YAY FOR SHINY TRUCKS!!!
Disgustingly slow? Exhausting and stressful beyond comprehension? A reason why I should not use my phone as an alarm or why I shouldn't just do all my homework before I sleep? A demonstration of why I should not be in Dance 3? Probably all of them. My ability to juggle my school work with after school activities and having to take the bus everyday is weak (which is why cross country had to be put aside this year...). It's not always good when I'm actually a giant procrastinator. Oh well.Sorry I don't have any pictures. My mother took a couple, but I'm not sure you'd like to see me and a few other people strangling ourselves or doing an oh-so graceful looking plie in second position. You know what I'm talking about. The toilet position.So during one of the performances, I kept on losing my balance during the double turns, causing me to prematurely stop my turn and land to regain my balance. It could be because the stage was tiny and we needed to do big movements with a group of 40 girls. Having only about a square foot of personal space ain't so good.
It's most likely 'cuz I don't practice my turns though, but all week it got me thinking about center of mass and equilibrium. When I turn on one foot, I go into a state of unstable equilibrium, and any deviation of my center of mass away from the point of support aka my foot would cause me to eat it. Which isn't very graceful. Granted, a song called "Battlefield" usually insinuates jerky movements, but still. I always feel a lot better when I am able to put both feet on the ground, so my center of mass is easier to balance between my two legs. Now if only I had the ability to not trip over air...Well, at least that nightmare is over for the semester. Now to hula and a demonstration of why I really need to see a doctor for my bum knees.Yay for stress week number 15 being over! Now to stress week number 16. Are those numbers right?
The fact that I went to Ala Moana instead of staying at Pearlridge was probably not the best idea. Then again, Pearls has all the locals, Alas and Waikele has the tourists, and not sure about any of the other malls, so I guess might as well go to the shops that are in town because SOME PEOPLE don't like coming to my side. Just like everyone else at Iolani...Haha. Moving on.So as I kept shopping (I didn't buy a truckload of crap, don't worry. I still had to take the bus so...:P), it dawned on me. I am a total weakling. During the last four or so hours of the trip, I obtained a 5 or 6 pound package from a well-known store. One that Brit Lit has corrupted even further, thanks to Dr. Webb. Metropark! Just jokes (darn it), it was um...just see the picture. Hey, at least I didn't get a giant bag or splurge so much that I received that giant red bag thing. I mean seriously, a lot of people actually went back in after buying probably hundreds of dollars of goods. Women. -_-
Physics came into my mind instantly as I lifted up the bag for the first time. The strings used as handles had tension to counteract the weight of the bag. Despite the fact that the tensions were less than the weight since there was 2 strings, the fact that I had to carry the bag with those little things with my fingers, or allow it to cut off my arm circulation didn't exactly make my day. So after a while, I carried it like how guys carry basketballs. Although the weight didn't change, the counteracting force was coming from my arms and my hip, allowing less of the force to squish my hands to bits.Holy snap, this is getting long. Why the hell do I have a blog this long about shopping? Must think of something less girly! Ugh, men of the family in their rooms, can't channel their testosterone fueled thoughts! That's good in many many many aspects. :P On the bright side, I have another gir shirt! (sorry to people christmas shopping for me...)
Yay for gir! Ew shopping like a total girl. Still can't believe how many Iolani students were at Alaz, and how many I saw repeatedly.
My throne from the evening all the way to the early morning every day. We got it around the start of the school year, but it's already dying. Poor thing...Anyway...Side note: I told you guys my books won't survive the year. One of my english books died. The one that we're currently using for the next couple of weeks T_T. And I now have a week to read Mayor of Casterbridge. I'm not even 1/4 done. :D:D:DThe chair has many concepts of physics. The coefficient of friction between its wheels and the carpet causes me to exert more effort to move, while if I were to randomly push myself to the tiled kitchen (a convenient 10 feet away), I'd have to be slightly more careful in my movements since friction would be less. If it wasn't for the five legs, the chair would be in a very unstable equilibrium (the center of mass being above the points of support), causing much stress to me whenever I am to shift my weight. Pretty sure I wouldn't buy a chair like that, especially if I'm going to have to sit in it for multiple hours of the night. There's uniform circular motion in the wheels and the chair (which is why I called it spinny). The force allowing them to stay in their path is friction directed radially inward. The weight of my torso pushing on the back of the chair causes torque, but not enough to make the chair lean back too far that I fall or it breaks.I could also talk about gravity and normal force, and a billion other little things, but I think I should save your guys' eyes from dying. This is the 10th post! Wow, I've been so busy that I didn't notice the amount of blogs we just did. Happy 10th post everyone!Yay for my soft spinny chair!
You know, just a little bit. It has only two settings when it's on-low and high. Either way, my fan looks like a scary accident waiting to happen. I think someone already did a blog about a fan, though...nevertheless! It's hard to NOT talk about it when it's about 10 feet away from me and the computer, looking menacing (and dusty). There's also a mouse dying in a mousetrap right next to it, but the fan is my main point. My father bought the fan around 8 years ago (but the year on it says 1995 O_o), which is probably why it's a screaming deathtrap...The wires are exposed, it's rusty, there's probably lead paint on them, and even on the low setting, the fan is fast. Yup, screaming metal deathtrap.It (I think) has uniform circular motion. If it wasn't for the fact that the blades are attached to each other with yet another piece of sharp metal (VERY secure on it), which in turn is attached to the motor in the back, the blades would eventually lose their grip, so to speak, on the motor and destroy anything in their path (tangent to their original circular path). That would mean it would either destroy the tv, the ceiling, the carpet, or my leg. There's friction between the metal and the motor, and the motor provides force for the blades to move, keeping the force directed radially inward. Centripetal acceleration in action!
I'm glad it's getting colder at night. I'm also glad for the metal bars surrounding the blades, which would PROBABLY keep them within in the case of an accident.
Yay for my leg staying intact!
(I think my paint skills are getting better! I love that i can actually make lines without free-handing it!)
When you're playing badminton, of course! I still don't get the point of hitting a bird around when you could just as easily hit a tennis ball or something. During PE, badminton was one of the activities that I could actually do without making a giant idiot of myself. It's certainly a lot easier that its tennis or volleyball counterparts. And a lot less painful than the latter sport (getting hit with a birdie in the face isn't exactly ice-worthy). Anyway, so as we continued playing, it occurred to me that major physics were involved in the game (only Physics people would really be aware of that right? :P) If the person hitting the birdie wasn't trying to spike it, the projectile moved in a parabolic motion, one that could probably be measured to ensure a correct return.
The birdie isn't exactly an ideal object to having a lot of velocity. The holes in its tail cause a lot of air resistance, and its light mass also can be caught by wind and taken off course. I guess that's why we play it in the gym. But it's always hilarious to see someone with a mean face hit the birdie as hard as they can only to have it travel slowly, almost pathetically, to the other side, making it even more sad when someone tiny spikes it to the ground after.Yay for a sport I can actually be good at!
I mean, I guess I COULD have went trick-or-treating or have gone to the Homecoming dance with friends, but with the upcoming deadlines on a couple of papers, I figured it was better to (try to) start/finish them before I had to stay up on Sunday night/Monday morning. Anyway...I was looking over a few paperback books for proof for one of those papers. I later put it down in order to do a little physics homework, placing my calculator on it. When I remembered to do my paper again, I lifted one side of the book in order to let the calculator off without me having to put the effort into lifting the calculator up and off. It slid off the book, and I was able to continue with my paper. Right now, the paper (actually both aren't yet, but I have time!) is still not done, and I needed to think of a blog topic, so my awesome calculator gets to be in the spotlight!The book is smooth in appearance, but the calculator has those little rubber thingies to keep it in place, or to keep the plastic from slamming on the table every time I put it down. Those little pieces created a little higher static friction coefficient than there would have been. Therefore, I had to pick up the book's side a little higher to get the calc off with the force of weight, which wasn't fun 'cuz once I lifted it up enough, the calc went on its side and slammed on the plasticness -_-' (and seeing as I used it for the blog, I had to reinact it. sorry, calcy!). There was still another factor to it not moving: the slightly trashed cover of my book. It's not THAT bad, but it added a little more bends that increased the static friction as well. My poor stuff never make it a week before they start getting bust up like mad.Boo for static friction sometimes...
Don't diss my awesome paint skills! It's too awesome for you to even comprehend its beauty!So as we all know, us juniors had class day on Thursday at Kailua. Thankfully there wasn't as many jellyfishes as last year, but staying in the water for hours gets to be a little repetitive, so a few of us were burying a friend's legs in sand. We got it up to her knees, and even made a little seat for her so that she could sit comfortably as the weight of the sand slowly crushed her toes for an hour or two. Unfortunately, the water came up a LITTLE too close to the growing pile, continuously causing structural failure and the frantic piling of sand to replace and attempt to seal up the massively growing cracks. Then someone pointed out that this pile had a little physics going on.Doesn't everyone think of Physics on a non-school day? Apparently us AP guys do, or anyone having to do a blog on it. That day, we gave many grains of sand a potential energy by placing them higher and higher from ground level (sand level?) in order to cover up our friend's legs. When the waves hit the pile and receded, they took some sand with them, giving the grains a velocity and reducing their potential energy until the water pushed them onto the beach or let them sink to the bottom of the ocean blue, causing us to give handfuls of sand potential energy to cover up for the losses. Eventually, some of us gave up, knowing that it was hopeless to keep trying, and the pile, in time, disappeared with the waves. At least we learned a few good lessons there, like not starting a sand pile next to the water...
And yes, it has a football helmet and a football that, other than being part of the material the duck is made of, has no real way to stay on the duck, seeing as the wings are kinda bent the other way. So why do I have it on my desk rather than the bathroom? Or a better question is, WHY do I have a rubber ducky? I got it as a party favor at my mom's coworker's child's 1st birthday, even though it really was meant for the little 5 year olds running around, expending their massive amounts of sugar that they were somehow born with. It's never really left my computer desk, probably since I'm too lazy to do anything else with it.
As I was randomly moving it back and forth between my fingers, I became aware that I was doing (actually, NOT doing) work. When the duck is pushed to one side, it becomes displaced, and I'd be able to calculate just how much work has been done in that one move alone. But as it is pushed back to its original position, displacement becomes zero, and no work has been done. Although I continue to displace the ducky, as long as it goes back to its original position, no work would be done. On a random note, because I spend my time playing with the ducky, no home-work gets done either. >.< Yay to one-year olds and my brain being easily entertained by one-year-old toys!
In the middle of starting my Macbeth paper for Brit Lit, I decided to visit my pet birdies outside. Little did I know, a dead bee was being carried off by a bunch of harmless red ants by the cages. I knew they wouldn't hurt my pets, so I was about to go off back into my paper. And then I realized, the little bugs were doing work! I immediately got my camera and spent 5 minutes getting the darn tiny creatures into focus for the picture (why my flash went off in the middle of the day beats me). First, they gave their victim a little potential energy by lifting her up in the air (mgh), then started going off to their nest somewhere. They did work by lifting her several millimeters high, but I'm pretty sure measuring the potential energy of it would need an extra-sensitive mass measuring tool. If they had continued on their way, they would have had a measurable x-displacement so that I could say they had done work. But I think they to be a bit organized in their movements. They were going in weird directions, like a pencil creating a doodle. By the time I left, they were back to were I saw them originally. If we assume that that is where they started, one can effectively say that no work has been done (at least in the horizontal direction). Poor ants, they're working so hard to put food in their nests, but they don't know where they're going, so they just waste their time. At least they demonstrate their monster strength. And I can go about my day without those ants killing me and taking me into their nest for food (I swear, they're scavenger ants or something since I haven't seen them kill or bite anything ever).Yay for non-murderous insects doing work (sorta)!
Oh no! I keep dropping it, and the fact that I can't hold my phone for 5 minutes without it slipping through my grasp isn't helping either! The pictures above were taken in demonstration of what I do, on a rug to cushion the impact (I don't wanna risk total destruction, do I?). It's not that I drop kick it or throw it to the ground, it just kind of...free-falls from my very weak hands.It reminded me of Physics, because without that darn gravity, my phone would have plenty less scratches. (or would it have more since it would bounce off the walls?) Or maybe if gravity on the Earth didn't have a gravitational acceleration of 9.80 meters per second per second, I would become such a coordinated person that I could actually be able to catch it before making that cringing impact with the cement, or asphalt, or whatever it crashes into. At least I'm not tall, so that the velocity in which the phone gets to when it hits the ground isn't nearly as much as if I dropped my phone from the second floor of I-building to the first floor.Oh well. As long as my phone can still make calls, I'll be fine. I guess.
Friday's game against Punahou was disappointing at first, but became the highlight of my week as our team won by over twenty points! Say what you want, but 'Iolani has beaten Punahou in something other than academics! Although it was not intentional, my friends and I found ourselves dancing with joy on the Punahou side as our team got a touchdown from a fumble. While I was there, I also thought of Physics.Pictured here is Punahou's Reid Nomura catching a pass, courtesy of the Honolulu Advertiser. Although I'd rather not think about school as such a high-energy sport, projectile motion kept running through my mind. The quarterback may not think about values, but he has to put enough force and aim his throw so that the ball can accelerate and travel those yards without having the ball reach the right height at the wrong place. He must take into account gravity, and if it's windy, air resistance, to get his pass completed or risk an incomplete pass, or even worse an interception.Nobody really thinks about that during a game, especially when we keep scoring and intercepting. But physicists can appreciate the physics involved in this American sport.
I still am in disbelief that I have survived this much (yes, I do realize that it hasn't been that long, but still), but I (and we) have! At first, I thought that this course wouldn't be as confusing as it is now, especially because both of my brothers took AP physics in high school and one is still in physics at his college. But it's proving to be difficult when one forgot the concepts and the other is in Chicago -_-'. When someone explains the concept to me, I can understand a little better, but so far it's still a massive scribble in my head that sometimes untangles, then squishes into a big mess again. Combine that with my other subjects, and that's one giant ball.
The labs are pretty fun, and it's great to have such great lab buddies to help with them! I'm really excited to see what else we are going to get through during the year, but seeing the workload so far, I'm also kind of scared at how much more the course is expecting us to accomplish. At least I know there's others to help me, and we'll get through it together! Fighting!~
