Physics Review and Reflection

Overall I really liked this class, it was always very fun and entertaining. We learned a great deal too, 10 units of physics in 6 weeks. We went from knowing nothing to knowing all about kinematics (the study of motion), acceleration, forces of gravity, momentum, sounds, and light. I never knew about Newton's 3 Laws of Motions before, the first one states all objects will tend to stay at rest or in motion unless acted upon by an outside unbalanced force, the second one saying that force equals to mass times acceleration, and the third stating that with every action there is a reaction. It was amazing learning so much in so little time.
Mr. Blake made things very easy to understand. I liked all his examples and ways of teaching. Like when we learning about colors of light and couldn't believe that red and green makes yellow, he proved it to us by turning off all the lights and windows and using projectors to shine the colored lights on the screen. It was really cool because with every light color that would go onto the screen we would play a song that would go with the colors. Like when he showed green he played a kids song, I think by Kerby the frog singing, "It Isn't Easy Being Green." When he put the red and green on the screen, it shocked all of us by making yellow and when he stood in front of the lights, he casted two shadows, one that was a bright red and one that was green. Once these three rasta colors went on the screen, he changed the song to reggae. It was amazing to look at and really helped us learn about the colors of lights.
From this class, I feel like I can apply everything to physics basically. It's actually really sad how often I do it. Just last week on wednesday after class, my friends and I went to the beach in Waikiki. When we were driving around the area looking for parking, we were on the street and almost ran right into a bus when switching lanes. After all of us panicked for a little while, I then applied physics to the situation. I told them how if we were to run into that bus because it has a bigger mass, it has more inertia and would take out our car easily. I even explained to them what inertia was, the objects ability to stay in motion or at rest. After explaining, my friends just kind of looked at me but I'm glad I know now what happens in these kind of situations.

This picture is one of my friend and I sitting in the truck on our way to Waikiki.

Unit 10: Electromagnetic Waves, Color, and Light Properties

Light rays can create two different kind of reflections, specular (regular) and diffuse. Light rays can change directions from hitting surfaces, but they are always straight lines. A specular reflection is when a light ray hits a smooth, reflective surface like mirrors or such. Diffuse reflections happen when a light ray hits a bumpy, scratchy surface such as screens or doors. Specular reflections reflect the light rays following the rule of the reflection with the light rays being the same angle as the initial light ray to the normal on the opposite side of the normal. Diffuse reflections don't follow these rules and with these bumpy surfaces sometimes don't even reflect off the light rays. That's why projectors shine their light onto screens with diffuse surfaces so it doesn't reflect off the screen and is able to show what is to be seen.

Unit 10

In class we learned about the primary colors of light. it was very surprising to me finding out that red, green, and blue were the 3 main primary colors. Usually (or at least what I learned in art class this last semester), the 3 primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. Learning the color wheel today felt so new to me because everything was so different. The new 3 complementary colors are yellow (mix of red and green), cyan (mix of green and blue), and magenta (mix of red and blue). At first I was barely able to believe that these colored lights were able to make these colors when put together, but then in class, with the help of 3 projectors, we were able to see all the complementary colors. When we put all the colors together though, you get white. We found out that white is actually a reflection of all the colors. We found in the shadows from the light to be a black color, this is the color that is formed with an absence of light. It was amazing to understand how the colors of lights work with or without each other.
This picture below is one I took of a sunset. I found out that skies are normally blue because of the scattering of that color in the upper atmosphere and also because there is a less amount of other colors like red, yellow, and green up there too. Around sunset, since this is when the sun goes through the most atmosphere to get to where we are, with more matter around the more the color changes. Sunsets are beautiful and it was cool to know about why it changes and why it is the color it is.

Unit 10

Today in class we learned about electromagnetic waves, these are the waves emitted by light.  There are two types of light sources, ones that emit it and ones that reflect it. With visible light, we are able to see colors, which include red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. White and black aren't really colors, white reflects all of them while black absorbs it. That's why when you wear a black shirt, you get hot more easily standing out in the sun rather than a white one because it attracts the light. Objects can be transparent or opaque to light. When it is transparent, the electromagnetic frequencies can go through the objects like windows. When it is opaque, the electromagnetic frequencies cannot go through the object like doors.

I like waking up early to watch the sun rises, that is my favorite part of the day. I love watching the way the sun peaks over the mountains (I live in Manoa) and starts creating a shadow onto the valley. This shows how opaque the mountains are in relativity to the air and the clouds. Although the clouds can sometimes create a little shadow, it is not as dark compared to the one of the mountain because some light is still able to pass through it.

Unit 9: Waves & Sounds

Waves are mediums disturbed by vibrations, there are two types of different waves. There are transverse and longitude waves. Transverse waves are waves that has their energy moving perpendicular to their velocity. Longitude waves are those with energy moving side to side with their velocity. Transverse type of waves include ones like the ocean, longitude are ones that happen more so in springs, slinkys, and such. In transverse waves, the area where it is tight or compact are areas of compression, the areas where it is looser and not as compressed are called rarefactions. An example of a transverse wave would be like when people line up, and move side to side. When my sister had her baccalaureate this past year at central union church, we stood outside the church and lined up as a family to take a picture. When taking it my mom accidentally tripped and hit me, which made me hit my sister, and my sister hit my dad. With this movement, and then stepping back into place, we make a transverse wave.

Unit 9

Waves are mediums disturbed by vibration, they basically look like squiggly lines. Waves can come in many forms, like the ocean waves, radio frequency waves, or spring waves. They are found everywhere in so many situations. Waves can go at different velocities and can have different lengths. The wave length and velocity have a directly proportional relationship so that with an increase in one, the other also increases. This can occur with ocean waves. Living here in Hawaii, we are a little island surrounded by miles and miles of water so most of us know a lot about it. With little swells coming through the ocean, maybe from a small storm, those swells can come to us a day later. With big waves, like the tsunami one that hit Japan, it can take only a matter of hours for the huge wave to make it's way out over here because with it's bigger wave length, the velocity of the wave is very, very fast, sometimes hundreds of miles per hour. The bigger the wave, usually the more dangerous. Like when pro surfers go out on waves that are 30 feet high, it's super dangerous, life threatening because with all the water moving so fast, the wave can drown a man by pulling them under at a very high speed. The reason why waves break at the shore and not really in the middle of the ocean is because the rocks and sand at the bottom affect how they break. If you were out in the ocean and two swells / waves were coming towards each other, both of the waves once hitting would make a wave the size of both put together because both of their energy is put into that one part of the water. It's important knowing these facts about waves, especially living in Hawaii.

Rocket Building

When Kim and I were launching our rocket for the first couple times, it wasn't working so well. We had big fins and a skinny manilla folder cone attached to our bottle rocket. It would only stay in the air for an average of maybe 3 seconds, barely. To help lighten the mass to keep the rocket up longer, we would cut down the fins by an inch and then prepare to launch. We learned that big fins are only good to a certain extent, when it comes to being too long where it's weighing the rocket down and is unnecessary, it is useless.

Still after cutting and cutting down the fins, we then tried using less water. We figured with more air inside, the more the pressure can build and get a higher psi. With a higher pressure inside the rocket, the launch would go off with a higher velocity, going higher into the air.

After getting wet from the wet ground and the water accidentally getting poured on our cone, it got really muddy and a little soggy, it wasn't too sturdy so we came back in the class room to make a new cone. Having no more folders, we used a honey bunches of oats cereal box for the cone. It felt so much more stable than the other cone. As we launched, it's time in the air passed doubled from 3 seconds to 6.75 seconds. We figured out that it was the cone that was holding our rocket back.

We tried really hard to get our parachute to come out and tried many different folding techniques. We tried one that I found on the internet where I fold the rectangular chute the long way, then into many triangles. We tried to just loosely fold it and stuff it into our cone. We tried leaving a little piece or pieces of the chute out of the rocket so hopefully the air would pick it up and throw off the cone once at the top. However through all these tries, we couldn't get a successful parachute. The technique that probably worked the best though was to leave a little piece of the plastic parachute outside the cone, but when we would do this, we noticed the velocity of the rocket going up was slower and the rocket would go less high.

This applied to physics with the variable of air resistance, or the force of friction with the air. When launching up the air would push against the rocket, because with an upwards force against the air, the same force is coming back onto it, this is due to Newton's third law of motion, every action has a reaction. With air resistance, we would have to make the shape of our nose cone very pointed so it can cut through the air easier, having less friction on it to slow it down. Also with earth's acceleration of -9.8 meters per second per second, we really needed a nose cone because gravity is already pulling down on our rocket, we don't need air resistance to slow it even more.