Torque

Last week Friday in class we learned about torque. Torque is a measure of angular acceleration and the change in angular velocity. Using the formula T=rf someone could find the torque that a center object has when it is rotated. In this equation t is the torque, r is the distance from axis to force and f is the force exerted. Torque can be found everywhere in life including in this picture of an engine. This engine is part of my dads "project" to build a quarter mile race car and it depends largely on torque in order to go fast. The unit for torque is Newton-meters but pound-feet in America. In the torque of a car, the engine is the source of the force exerted and the axis of rotation is the turning crankshaft which cannot be seen in the photo because it is underneath the engine. Torque in cars is slightly different from regular torque in everyday life because the location of the force and axis of rotation are in different locations. But the concept is still the same in that there is some force exerted which causes an object to rotate therefore creating torque.

Potential Energy

Today as i was walking into the a room i knocked a book off the ledge onto the landing. As i watched this i realized that i was watching physics in action. Before i hit the book it had three types of potential energy. It had a zero potential energy with the ledge, a potential energy with the second floor and a potential energy with the landing. When i hit the book i transferred some kinetic energy of mine into kinetic energy for the book. As the book fell it transferred its potential energy into kinetic energy and the moment right before it hit the landing it transferred completely all of its potential energy into kinetic energy. When it hit the ground all the kinetic energy was turned back into potential energy where it lay until i picked it up and put it back in the ledge.

Physics Evaluation

So far physics has been pretty rough for me. I think it is a really interesting subject with lots of information to be learned. The ideas and information in physics are difficult to understand sometimes for me but after a while i begin to understand it. The labs and class discussions are always a part of physics that i enjoy. I think that i am slowly getting the ropes of physics as time goes on and hopefully i can improve in it. The rest of school is just as intense as well as there is a LOT more homework now then there was last year. But just like in physics, hopefully i can adjust and get used to these new stresses. This picture shows my feelings about physics because although it is a challenge, i know that i can be successful in the class.

Baseball

Today was a pretty boring day. While i was watching tv i happened to turn to the Boston Red Sox vs. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim game when it was in the 11th inning. As i watched the game i realized that there is a lot of physics involved in baseball whether it be pitching the ball which creates a projectile, or hitting the ball which uses many physics properties like newton's laws and which also creates a projectile. The game was very intense but in the end the Angels won which forced a game 4 of the ALDS. THe game lasted more than 4 hours and ended around 1:45 a.m. Eastern time. This gave me the idea for my physics blog and i found these pictures of a game i played a couple years ago. Before i slid into home plate, i was at third base and i started accelerating to home and right before i got there i slid which caused me to slow down until i came to a complete stop and then i jumped up. In the action of sliding there are many uses of physics. The first of which is Newton's first law of motion. Newton's first law states that an object at rest stays at rest and an object at motion stays in motion unless acted upon by a net force. In this case i am the object in motion and the net force is the ground. Another physics use in sliding is acceleration. Before i slid into home i was at third base where i began to accelerate to home plate. I continued to accelerate until i started to slide where i became a projectile of sorts. As i began to slide into home i was in mid-air where i then fell at -9.8 m/s/s . I continued to fall at this rate until i hit the ground where my vertical acceleration was 0 m/s/s. I had no idea there was so much physics in baseball.

Sir Isaac

This past weekend was a football-filled weekend. Whether it was playing football on Friday, or watching it on Saturday and Sunday, there was a lot of football. While watching football today i became so excited that i knocked a water bottle down. As i watched the bottle fall, i noticed two principles of physics in action. The first was what we just learned about acceleration and velocity. The second principle was Newton's second law of motion. For acceleration and velocity, the bottle had an initial velocity of 0 m/s until i knocked it down where it fell at -9.8 m/s due to gravity. The bottle then hit the ground where it stopped. Newton's second law of motion states that an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. In this case, the bottle went through Newton's second law twice. The first time the bottle was at rest on the table. My hand acted as the outside forced which caused the bottle to go in motion. The ground was the second outside force which caused the bottle to go from motion to rest. If the ground had not been there then the bottle would have kept on falling until it hit some other outside force.

velocity

Today as i was standing outside my balcony i noticed cars driving down the street in opposite directions. Everytime a car is in motion it is in some form of acceleration and velocity. I noticed that they were either positively or negatively accelerating, or travelling at a constant velocity with no acceleration. At the time of the picture the van is moving at a constant velocity of around 30 miles per hour and continued at this rate for about 3 seconds. Before the picture was taken the van was accelerating to this velocity of 30 miles per hour. At the end of the road there is a slowdown zone where the van decelerates with a negative acceleration until it comes to a complete stop and it's velocity becomes zero. The van then positively accelerates increasing it's velocity until it reaches the speed limit.