1st Semester Review

I learned so much in this first semester, from accuracy and precision to speed and velocity, from acceleration through projectiles and free falling objects to Newton's 3 Laws of Motion. In total, we were taught around 6 Units of Physics. The first one dealt with just the basic vocabulary we would need to learn, such as periods: "T" - the time it takes for one complete cycle to occur, accuracy: closeness in relations to the expected value (target), precision: how close a group of values are to each other, qualitative (appearance / descriptive) and quantitative (deals with measurement) observations, and conversion factors.

In Unit 2, we got into motion, we were taught about scalar: value with magnitude (how much of something you have), vectors: value with magnitude and direction, displacement, the distance you are from your original / starting spot, distance: the total amount you traveled, speed: how fast you're traveling (distance over time), velocity: displacement over time, and instantaneous speeds: the speed of an object at any given instant. At first, understanding this unit was really hard for me. I had trouble understanding the difference between vector and scalar units. The only difference between the two is that with one, direction matters. This was important to understand because through this it affects distance and displacement and also speed and velocity. Although challenging, through examples I got it.

Unit 3 was a continuation of kinetics except added in a new variable of acceleration, which is the change in velocity over time. Also through this unit, we were introduced to some equations (d, a, t, / v, a, t, / v, a , d,) to help us solve for certain variables like distance, acceleration, time, velocity, and the initial velocities, when having the given in some problem. Real life situations dealing with acceleration would be ones like with cars and such.

Unit 4, taught us the Vegas rule which is what happens on the x - axis stays on the x - axis and what happens on the y - axis stays on the y - axis, this rule helps with 2 dimensional things. This is when there are changes happening on both the x and y axes, so there are horizontal and vertical changes going on, like for projections. SOHCAHTOA was also taught to help us with these projects, through there diagonal path we could make right triangles and with using the angles and velocity, we could find both the horizontal and vertical velocities. In this unit, I really liked the way this break down and forming of the right triangles were taught to us. Mr. Blake would use his methods of the Bureku and Ukerub techniques which he supposedly learned from his "master", it was very entertaining and helped to maintain what we had to learn easier because it was more memorable.

Unit 5 taught us about Newton's 3 Laws of Motions and frictional forces. The first law, also known as the Law of Inertia, states that objects at rest or in motion will tend to stay at rest or in motion unless acted upon by an outside unbalanced force, inertia is directly proportional to mass. The second law says that acceleration of an object is directly proportional to force and acceleration is inversely proportional to mass. The third law says that with every action there is a reaction to it. For example, in class when Mr. Blake got on a skate board and Sho stood in front of him, when they both pushed each other, it really helped my understanding that they are both putting the same amount of force on each other, the only reason why one accelerates faster is because one has less mass.

In Unit 6, we just applied acceleration to Newton's Laws. We went more into how with bigger accelerations there are smaller masses, and with bigger masses there are smaller accelerations. We were taught how to find the accelerations with pulleys (which change the direction of tension), and how to find the tensions. The way it was taught, with the reggae voices made from our teacher was good because it made me remember "da whole ting" from how he would say it.