The potential energy of a (giant) pile of sand

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...

Yes, I have a rubber ducky on my desk.

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!

Hooray for Nature (Uh-oh, Macbeth reference)

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)!

My Phone!

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.