Color

This is a picture of a plant. The flowers and the leaves show physics. The physics of color and light. Light that shines from the sun is white light made up of red, green, and blue. When a object looks a certain color it is because one or more of the parts of light are being either reflected or absorbed. In the flowers, the petals are white which mean that all the colors of light are being reflected. The inner part of the flower is yellow which means that blue is being absorded while green and red are being reflected which creates the yellow which you see. The leaves and stems which are green are formed by the absorbtion of red and blue while only green is reflected which is the color you see. In the bottom right corner of the picture you can see a little bit of a purple flower from a different plant. Purple is a combination created from the absorption of green and the absorption of green. The blue and red reflected will create magenta ideally but if more blue is reflected then the color perceived will be purple.

The Doppler Effect

I know this post is really late but here it goes anyway. This is a picture of my car steering wheel. From this wheel comes the power to blast a very loud car horn. This horn involves the Doppler Effect. The Doppler Effect involves the "perceived" change that a listener observes in frequency and wave length. As the object producing the sound (car horn) is moving toward the listener, the waves of sound increase in frequency as the waves are compressed with shorter wavelengths which gives the impression of a higher pitch horn. As the horn moves away from the listener the sound becomes a lower pitch as the waves emitted from behind the source have a lower frequency and longer wavelengths. This is the Doppler Effect.

yeah I was tired and its an old meter

This past week in class we learned a little about motors, more specifically ac or alternating current motors. These motors use magnets and torque in order to spin a wheel that powers an object. In an ac motor two magnets are placed away from each other creating north and south poles. In between the magnets is the motor which is usually made up of finely woven wires that can be magnetically charged. The third item that is needed is a battery or electric source for power. When the motor is running the motor is being charged by the magnets and, with the electricity moving through the motor, current is flowing in a certain direction. When the motor turns it switches sides but the current always goes in the same direction. Since this happens the motor should flip back the same way so in order to counter that there are many magnets placed so that the attraction force is always there making the motor spin. This is a picture of my garage door opener. It uses an ac motor to open my garage door and although you can't see it from this picture, it is connected to a power outlet on the roof of my garage. This is an example of how we use magnets in our everyday lives.

I can see the light

This past weekend was Presidents Day weekend and i went to a beachouse so i didnt do any homework. I came up with this idea for my blog because i turn on and off lights everyday and i understand now that it is physics. Lightbulbs are made out of glass on the outside and on the inside are wires and metal that are attached to the bottom and side of the bulb base. These two wires at the bottom and side carry a flow of electrons from a power source like a battery. In the middle of the bulb is a filament made out of tungsten which is coiled super tight and then coiled against for a long and small space for the electrons to go. While the electrons flow across the filament they bump into each other and create heat which is so intense that it burns a bright light. This is the light that we see when we turn on lights and also why lightbulbs are very hot to the touch after they have been on for a while. The majority of the heat stays inside the bulb because glass is very resistant to heat so it holds it within. I never knew that so much stuff in life could be related to physics.

In class on Friday we learned about voltage and a little about electrical sockets and how they carry voltage. Voltage is a ratio of potential energy to charge measured in volts. Potential energy is measured in joules and charge in coulombs. Although different objects may have relatively similar voltage, the way people feel the shock is dependent on how many coulombs of electrons are carrying the charge of the voltage. An example of this could be a Van de Graaff and power lines. We learned that power lines have a voltage of around 500,000 volts and a Van de Graaff has a voltage of around 400,000 volts. The feeling that we feel from the two are completely different because of the number of coulombs carrying the energy. In a Van de Graaff there are about a millionth of a coulomb while power lines have an infinite amount of coulombs. So in the Van de Graaff you only feel around half a joule of energy while you feel a whole lot more from power lines. The same goes for electric sockets in comparison to the Van de Graaff where there are not as many coulombs carrying the joules so you dont feel a killer shock.

Static Electricity

I know that this is a lame picture but it was the only thing physics related on my computer. This is a picture of carpet. As we learned in class static electricity can be generated from shuffling our feet across it with socks on. When we shuffle our feet we are charging by friction. In charging by friction, when two materials rub against each other one of the materials will want electrons more than the other. In the case of our feet and the carpet, the carpet wants electrons more than our feet and so we become positively charged. After we are charged and we touch something like a doorknob or someone else sometimes we get shocked. This is due to a want for our bodies to become neutral again so some electrons from the doorknob or person flows to us resulting in a shock and affter we get shocked we become neutral again.

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.