space camp

A little more than five years ago my friend Emmy, who moved to Alabama, and I met up for a week at space camp. It was actually really a lot of fun and we got to try all these cool simulataions. We got to ride on hover crafts, experience what it feels like to walk on the moon, take tours of space crafts, perform missions, rock climb and eat space food! haha. One of the rides that I really enjoyed was the G-Force which is that spinny ride we talked a lot about in class where it spins so fast, that the centrifugal force pushes you up against the circular wall. Another ride that I liked was the Sapceshot (in the picture). I guess it's kind of like the Tower of Terror and Disneyworld except it goes like a million times faster. As we were dropping down, the seats we were secured in were dropping faster than our bodies would at freefall. So because we weren't strapped in so tight to the seats that we couldn't move, it felt like we were being lifted off the seats. But actually our bodies were just dropping at a slower speed than the ride. haha it was so thrilling! So much fun. Oh yeah and I'm the one on the left.

A while ago, my friends (Shantha and Lauren) and I got the opportunity to swing on swings! We hadn't done that in a long time so we pretty excited and we got our other friend, Kelsey, to take pictures. haha yeah. So swinging on swings could be an example of many physics problems, especially energy, in the form of a pendulum. When we first sat on the swing, we had zero kinetic energy and zero potential energy. As we swung and "pumped" our legs to get higher, we gained both kinetic and potential but at different times in the pendulum. At the peaks of the motion, we would have a high potential energy but zero kinetic energy. As we accelerated towards the ground, our kinetic energy would increase as the potential energy decreased.

collisions

Sooo last weekend I forgot to make an entry so I'm doing 2 tonight. Over the summer my friends and I went to Bayfest at the Marine Corp Base the night Three Days Grace was playing. And because it was Three Dyas Grace, there was a mosh pit...which consists of momentum and collisions! In the mosh pit people were running into us and getting thrown and shoved into us. These collisions were bouncy collisions; sometimes the other person and I were both in motion going towards eachother when we collided and other times, I was standing still when someone collided into me. I didn't get a picture of the actual mosh pit because that wouldn't be safe for my camera but here's a picture of us when we were standing in the crowd waiting for Three Days Grace to come on.

About a week ago my friends and I ended up staying late after school and we really didn't want to do homework so we went around taking pictures. My friend, Kelsey, wanted me to get an action shot of her jumping out of a tree. I held up the camera concentrating on when to click it so that I caught her while she was in the air. I snapped the picture and I was still focusing on my camera to see how it came out when less than a second later I heard hug BOOM. I looked down and Kelsey was on the ground cracking up and grabbing her feet in pain. I didn't excatly see what happened but apparently when she jumped to the metal bench below the tree, there was not enough friction between the bench and her feet so she slid off and gravity brought her to the ground. I'm glad she was ok because it was soooo funny. Unfortunately, lacking in photo skills, I didn't really get a good picture.

End of 1st Quarter

As a follow up to my last reflection, I was right about physics turning out ok even though I knew it was going to be challenging. I'm happy with the grade I finished the quarter with, though I will still try my best to improve it for this quarter. My test grades are a little lower than I like but the good thing is that the grades have been consistent and hopefully I'll be able to do better in that area this quarter. Free body diagrams on ramps still confuse me but the chapter we are learning about now is so far my favorite. I feel I have adjusted to this class and it's requirements in the past quarter and I'm ready for this next one. (ahh i know this is 3 days late already but i don't have a picture right now....but i WILL put one up later!)...haha good picture, yes?

Yesterday when i cam home from the beach i was SO hungry and all i wanted was something to eat and i was like "ooh! we have taquitos!" Our freezer is right across from our counter where a glass of water happened to be resting at the very edge. I reached to the bottom of the freezer, grabbed the box of taquitos turned around while holding them out to put them on the counter and before I realized what happened the glass of water went flying through the air and shattered across the kitchen floor. So following Newton's law, the glass was happily sitting in place until a big net force came and caused it to be pushed off the counter. So instead of sitting down and enjoying my food, I had to get the broom and the vacuum and clean up all the broken glass. Thank you, physics!

A few months ago my friends and I went paintballing! It was the first time I went so I didn't know what I was in for. Paintballing encompasses a lot of physics concepts. One example is a projectile. After the paintballs are shot at a high velocity from the gun, the only force acting upon them is gravity. This causes the paintballs to accelerate at negative 9.8 meters per second squared. Because the paintballs are shot at high velocity, it hurts sooo bad when you get hit (especially when you aren't wearing the proper hardcore paintballing gear). Another the physics concept which I happened to perform was the law of inertia: an object at motion stays at motion unless a net force acts upon it. I was running at a constant speed from one big inflatable shield thing to the next not really paying attention to where I was going (because I was watching for any paintballs that might come flying at me) and I ran straight into my friend. She was the net force that caused me (the object in motion) to stop. We both felt pretty stupid after that. Paintballing was a lot of fun but I got some pretty mean battle wounds. (This picture was taken before we got covered in paint, mud, and bruises).