The eeennnd !! ! (or the beginning?)

What is physics? It is the study of EVERYTHING from the universe, to light, to sound, to the mechanics of the human body, to motion. Physics incorporates big ideas from the other branches of science: chemistry and biology, and then explains why and how things are the way they are in our world/universe. It's all very fascinating indeed !!

I enjoyed the class a lot more than I thought I would because I feel like I learned a good amount of basic physic ideas. I usually have a hard time with all this type of material (with the equations and logic stuff), but because this was my only focus (for school), I was able to understand and keep up. I remember taking astronomy and asking basic physics questions, to which my teacher would tell me to "take physics!" if I was so interested. Although I'm usually not that interested in math, because it was all applied, and had meaning behind all the equations, it was all very fascinating, which made me actually want to learn.

My favorite part of the whole 6 weeks was definitely this past week when we covered light. I really wish we could go further into it, but I understand that 6 weeks would not be enough time to go any further. Because I now know the basic ideas of physics, I would like to learn more about other concepts such as the theory of relativity (and the speed of light), and more about how light works, and much more !

Overall I'm glad i took 6 weeks out of my summer to learn ! 

Unit 10: light refraction

  

The image above represents what happen when light refracts (or bends). The shape in the middle would be the lens, and the smaller cat on the left is the object, and the large cat on the right is the real image. The horizon line is the optic axis, where the two focal points sit. The green ray is the parallel ray, and travels from the object parallel to the optic axis then through the lens, and bends through the focal point on to the other side. The red ray, or the focal ray, travels from the object through the focal point on the object side, through the lens and then parallel to the optic axis.  The blue ray is the central ray and travels from the object through the center of the lens, and then continues without bending. t a d a

Unit 10 Light CONTINUED

Today, we learned about color mixing !! woo!
Everyone learns how to mix colors, but the color wheel for pigments is completely different from the color wheel for lights. The primary colors for pigments are, red (or magenta), yellow, and blue (or cyan), but the primary colors for light are red, green, and blue. So in the picture to the left, there are two shadows because there are two light sources ( blue and green). On one side, the shadow is blue, because this means that Mr. Blake is blocking the green light, so there is an absence of green light, and vice versa!

Unit 10: Light Behaviour !

So there are two objects above, with a light beam shining at them. The first object, the fishbowl, is a transparent object, so the light can go through it. The other object, the dead fish, is an opaque object, so the light cannot go through it. Light acts as an electromagnetic wave, and does not need a medium to travel, which is why it is able to travel through air ! (and water, and empty space, etc)

Unit 9- continued

Mr. Mcphee is going down a little hill. He's freaking out before he even takes off, and emits a gross screech sending out these imaginary red sound waves through the air. So these sound waves are moving at a constant speed of 340 m/s through the air. As Mr. Mcphee goes down the hill, the sound waves now look a little different. They are all closer together in the direction that Mr. Mcphee is moving, but are further apart to his left.
This is the doppler effect! exciiting !!

Unit 9: Waves

Today !
we learned about waves~~~~~~
So what exactly is a wave?
Well a vibration, is more of a "wiggle in time", while a wave is a "wiggle in time" and in space! It is basically this energy that moves through space and time in an undulating motion.
So how long is one wave length?

ta da! So from the first point to the second point is one wavelength. The wave started at point A and ended up in the same spot at point B (on the horizon line). 

So lets look at a certain situation to explain constructive interference (one of the interferences I can actually demonstrate with this wave and penguin example). So penguin guy is surfin and he notices a wave of the exact same size is coming towards him in the opposite direction. What will happen when the two waves collide?

The two waves collide and make a super massive one! But it doesnt last for long.. The two individual waves will then continue to go their separate ways, never meeting again. : ' (

End of quarter: Water Bottle Rocket Analysis

We made sure to include a heavy top, four fins placed evenly toward the bottom, a parachute, and a cone surrounding the top. The fins were the most consistent, until one of them broke off at the end. We had the most trouble with the parachute deploying correctly. We adjusted our parachute designs a few times. The first time we made the parachute a little more circular and even, as the first parachute design was not as even. Then we launched it, and had some issues with the bottle leaking, and the parachute just not deploying. Then we removed a rock from the top to try and lighten it, in hopes of the parachute deploying. When it did deploy, it was tangled, so it didn't work so well. So we retried and folded up the parachute in a way so that it didn't get as tangled. After a few more tries, it deployed, but it got tangled up with the cone. On our last try, the rocket was pretty worn down, and fell apart in the air. I believe in order to make it work, we needed a larger parachute and maybe even longer strings.

 

In the beginning we were filling up the bottle with too much water, so in our final tries, we filled it up with a little less than half of the bottle. From what I remember I believe the psi was about 45 at one of our launches.

 

I learned that the center of gravity of the rocket has to be pretty well centered so that the rocket won't tip over, and we were able to accomplish that pretty well. Also, having four fins that were an equal distance from each other also kept the rocket balanced. Although there were many frustrating points, it was a pretty fun experiment. I definitely had the best time decorating/creating the rocket aha. c: