This semester in physics we covered a total of 6 units. From general terms of physics that we see throughout the whole semester to momentum, and energy. In units 1-3 we covered general terms of physics, vectors, kinematics and 2D kinematics. The general terms are vocabulary and science laws that we use in physics. They are like the fundamental aspects of physics. The paper work began at kinematics, it was really necessary to take notes and be attentive during class. Kinematics is the study of motion of objects and systems. This topic deals with vectors, scalars, distance, displacement along with many other terms. 2D kinematics makes it hard on us. Kinematics to ways, on the x and y axis. We learned the rules and things to follow when doing these calculations. In unit 4 we learned the three Newton laws about motion, inertia and all those things. We applied them when going over momentum and energy in units 5 and 6. Momentum and energy cannot be created or destroyed it can only transform. Within each unit we learned formulas, calculations and many different details to solve certain problems. I learned how to apply physics to my life, I kind of look at the world around me a little different, more in a physics sense. Besides the general physics that I learned, I also learned how to be more responsible and attentive in class. I also learned how to take better notes and how to look for important details. This class also gave me a different sense of humor. I actually enjoyed physics, I look forward to this class in the next semester and will try to keep my grades up.

This week we moved from momentums to energy. They hold similar properties and traits but they are not totally the same. Energy like momentum cannot be created or destroyed it just transforms. There is different forms of energy like potential and kinetic. In this picture I am holding my bag above my head, the bag has stored potential energy. This type of energy is found by multiplying the mass of the object by the gravity by the height of the object. This is dependent on the mass and height, meaning the greater the height or the mass the more potential energy the object has. Kinectic energy is the energy of the object during movement, in this case the fall. During the fall potential energy transforms into kinetic and energy is conserved.

This past week we finished off the week with an egg drop lab. This brought together the whole unit on momentums. The purpose of the egg drop lab was to build a capsule that would be able to keep an egg inside it alive from a 30+ foot fall. The capsule could be no bigger than 35cm x 35cm x 35cm and all supplies must be from your own home. I used a simple setup. A bottom heavy leveled out portion, a collapse zone, and a platform with half a 20 oz. water bottle which held the egg inside. The bottom of the capsule was meant to absorb the majority of the shock from the impact. To keep it level I put in a can half filled with water sideways so the capsule didn't fall the wrong way. The collapse zone was just 4 drinking straws placed in the four corners of the bottom box with about 3 cm exposed. On top that was the platform that held the egg capsule. The egg capsule was half a 20 oz. bottle, a cardboard bottom, with cotton and some old shirt for cushion. The drop was a success surprisingly because it landed at an angle. I guess most of the shock was absorbed through the bottom anyway.

Continuing on the unit of momentum, we did a lab that showed us more examples of different types of collisions. Some elastic equations, examples of conservation of momentum, and impulse. Ultimately I learned to think logically about momentum. I learned that if you lengthen the contact time of any collision the more impact is absorbed and sent through the object, and the opposite for a short contact time. When golfing the impact of the club hitting the ball is absorbed through the shaft of the club, the shorter contact times tend to give more shock, but the longer you hold through the ball, the more it is absorbed and you feel less shock. This is an example that shows a collision of a still object and a fast moving object. Of course, the faster the club hits the ball the farther it travels, to an extent because in the physics of golf, it depends on the angle, and power of the impact zone. This is just something I see all the time when I golf, didn't realize it was always there.

Our class is on the second week of momentums. Again with the basics, momentum is mass x velocity. It is a vector unit. Large objects moving slow can have the same momentum as a small object moving fast. So it is possible that a drinking straw if picked up during a storm or something and gains enough speed it can puncture through wood. What do you think would happen in a collision between two cars if (1) the cars are the same mass, (2) one cart is two times the size of the other and (3) they have different speed variables? All of this can be found using formulas and basic physics. Take in to consideration the law of conservation of momentum also, that is Pin=Pout (momentum in=momentum out). The picture shows a head on crash between a big truck moving at around 10 km/h and a little car going 30 km/h. This is an example of a real life scenario. A lot of times if it is a head on crash it is fatal depending on the impulse of the crash, which is caused by the momentums of both vehicles. This is because momentum is transferred between objects, Pin=Pout. Its logic thinking from there.If one car is going North and one East and they collide the end result will be a lot different than a head on crash. You can find what direction the crash will end up at and what speed it was be using physics formulas to solve momentum problems.

Momentum. I can describe momentum as a force or something moving in a direction that builds force over time. In sports, especially football, the ball carrier develops momentum through his run. If he is fast enough to build momentum quickly, he/she may be harder to tackle. That is why if someone 6'2", 230 lbs, gets into open field and starts running down hill its going to be very hard for someone to tackle that person because its going to take a lot to change the direction of the ball carriers momentum. The key to taking someone like that down is hitting them in the hole before they develop anymore momentum. That is one example I can think of, off the top of my head. Other things like cars, trains, any type of transportation of moving thing has momentum. Scientifically, momentum is a vector quantity. It is the product of mass and velocity. But overall that is my explanation of momentum. A force that develops over time in one direction.

As we learn more about the different Newton laws, we had assignments to draw out free body diagrams, which show something happening and all the forces acting on it. One example I remember is something being suspended in the air, its like the opposite of something resting on a table. The picture above shows a light bulb being held in mid air by a wire. The reason that the light bulb isn't free floating is because gravity is acting on it. It causes the light bulb to hang freely. The reason it doesn't fall is obviously the wire, but the wire has tension, the normal force. Just as if a box resting on a table. The normal force is the table pushing back on the box, causing it to stay at equilibrium. The tension in this case is the same thing as the tables force normal. When going over examples on a work sheet I didn't realize how common these things are, it shows how physics works around us everyday.

This is week two of unit 4 and we are studying forces, friction, and different scientific terms that have to do with Newtons Laws. In this picture I am trying to push a chair across the room so I have room to sit. I had to sit up and change my angle of push because the chair wasn't moving at first. This is because inertia, objects at rest want to stay at rest unless acted upon by some unbalanced outside force. When I attempted to push the chair, friction due to gravity caused the chair to resist my force and bite the ground. Gravity is constant and it holds the chair on the x-axis. In order for me to push the chair I had to push level to the ground and slightly harder. This is an example of how something in the real world can be related to physics. I never really thought of it this way but Newtons laws are pretty accurate.

This week we started a new unit on Newtons Laws of physics. In class we learned various terms such as inertia, newtons, net force, and also new equations that we need to solve problems. In the picture about I am pushing down on a little box. I am applying force on to the box pushing it down on the table, but it is not moving down nor is box or table about to break. The more force I put on the box the more force it pushes towards me. This is a balanced force, the table supports the box. Whenever I put more force on or take away the table returns the equal amount of force. The result, the box still hasn't moved, but if I keep applying force to the box to the point where the box its self cannot return, the box will break and that becomes an unbalanced force. Obviously in this situation the box will break before I apply enough pressure for the table to break, because the table can return more force than I can push, but if I use other methods to try and break the table, at the breaking point, it also becomes an unbalanced force. This type of balanced force happens a lot and we dont realize it, when we rest on things, lean on things, sit on chairs, and just applying pressure to anything, there is always a counter force that balances things out.

The blogposts for the first quarter are all in. This last extra credit blogpost was to interview a parent and show them what the blogposts are and what the requirements of, and what we have to do them for. From my first blogpost to my last I shortly explained the purposes of each blogpost and briefly talked about what it was on and gave some examples. I explained that each blogpost had to be relative to what we learned that week and it needed a picture and a minimum of 100 words. I briefly explained the pictures and examples and later on talked about what kinematics vectors, and 2-D kinematics are.

Vectors are measurements of direction and magnitude, and they are always measured relative to something. Equivalent vectors have the same direction and magnitude. For example, a vector drawn (as an arrow) 45 degrees above east or (NorthEast) with a magnitude of 3 m/s, is equal to any other vector anywhere that is pointing in the same direction and going the same speed. If I threw the ball at 45 degrees into the air at 20 m/s relative to the ground. You would need to find horizontal and vertical velocity to find out how long the ball is in the air and how far it travels. The way you figure it out is using 2-D kinematics, or in other words kinematics on both the x and y axis. This is a relation of vectors. Taking something this simple( throwing a football) and relating it to physics to find out the properties of the flight of the ball. I think that there is a lot to talk about and explain about vectors and 2-D kinematics but this is just one example to what it actually is and what it can help you do. The picture above is just a drawing of a question. To help us solve problems it is required to draw a picture of it so we can see what is happening.

The new unit we are starting this week is on 2 dimensional kinematics and vectors. 2-D kinematics is basically kinematics on both the x and y axis. To figure out problems you need measurements on the x and y axis. Its the same "plug in and calculate" idea but with quantities of the x and y axis. For example, Something traveling from the ground into the air at a certain angle then back down to the ground. You would have vertical and horizontal velocities, forward acceleration and downward acceleration and so on. Vectors are drawn as arrows. You can solve these by graphing or trigonometry. A vector has magnitude (size and unit) and also direction, unlike a scalar unit. I compare these to transportation, such as cars, boats, and aircrafts. These things can all be measured with a vector unit, they have a magnitude and direction (ex. 40 m/s east)

Last Unit2: Everyday Travel

A few weeks ago, our class finished up the unit on kinematics. Included in kinematics is motion, distance, displacement, and speed. When you are riding in a car, you are in the middle of physics. Here is a picture of the odometer and speedometer in the car. The speedometer shows the speed at anytime during travel. You may be going down the freeway at 60 mph, then hit traffic, and youre stuck for five mintues. Finally traffic opens up and you reach your destination with a final time of 40 minutes. Average speed equals total distance travelled over total time, so if you travelled 15 miles in 40 minutes, the average speed would be 37.5 mph. Although you may have been going 60 at some points because of the stop in traffic the average speed turned out to be 37.5 mph. The odometer shows total distance travelled since it got on the road. If you leave your garage and travel 15 miles then return and park in the same place, your displacement is zero because you are back to where you started. This is how distance, and speed play a key role in something we do everyday. It might not have much meaning but it is there and is around us everyday.

This week in physics we are finishing unit 2 on kinematics. In class we learned about velocity, gravity and acceleration. Velocity is defined as the rate and direction of change in the position of an object. Acceleration is the rate of change of velocity. In class we learned many different examples, like a "spam sandwich falling from a 200m deep well", in this case this is my brother throwing a football up in the air. The ball is a little less than 10m high. Kinematics helps us find how hard he had to throw the ball in order for it to reach that height. At this position in the picture the ball was just at its slowest moving point in the air and starts to fall down. We learned that the cycle of the ball flight starts fast, then slows, then stops, then slow back down, fast, and stops back from where it took off. Gravity is always on, its constantly holding us on earth and pushing objects in the air back down, that is why the ball thrown in the air comes to a complete stop for just a little while. The gravity is always constant, its the velocity that varies throughout the flight of the ball. This is a good example of physics and it shows how kinematics can relate to something you see everyday.

Kinematics allows us to use mathematical formulas to show the motion, velocity, or acceleration of an object. A ceiling fan stays in the same place, the fan itself cant move, but when it is powered the blades spin to produce air to cool the room down. If the fan is turned on the velocity of the revolutions can be found using formulas. Because the fan turns in circular motion the distance measured would be the circumference of the fan. The fan is more complicated than measuring something moving in a straight line, but there are still ways that kinematics can apply.

Kinematics translates to the study of motion. Things like speed, distance, time, velocity etc. All of these things have one thing in common, and that is that it deals with the movement of something. Like a surfer. A surfer is waiting in the water for a wave, when it comes he takes off on it and rides as far as he can. He ends up about 20-30 yards from where he took off and a little bit to the left. How far, at what speed, and time did he travel from his take off point to where he got off the wave. Kinematics is the study of all of those things and hopefully I can learn more and get a better understanding so maybe its a scientific way to finding which is the best wave to catch.

For this assignment we had to physically take a picture of something that we can relate to the world of physics. It shouldnt be that hard because the world is pretty much based on physics, but within our picture there must be a relationship between two variables. So I chose to take a picture of my drums. The two variables are the drums itself and whatever you use to play it, sticks, brushes etc. I love the drums, and whenever I have to play, I usually get told to either quiet down or stop playing. When listening to music and playing, you want to hear the music and yourself, so the if volume on your ipod is high the louder your playing tends to be. If you hit the drum head harder there is a direct effect to the sound that comes out which is louder, and the softer you hit it, the quieter the sound. The faster the sound, or the slower all are directly effected by the speed you hit the drums with the sticks. All of those different variables effect the sound that comes out of the instrument and can be explained by physics.

My name is Ekolu Kahoopii, I am from Kaneohe, and I have been here since 7th grade. In 7th and 8th grade I passed science both with Bs. In 9th grade I passed with a B also, andlast year in chemistry I passed with a C. Science is not really something I like, the previous classes I had were boring. I have College algebra, and Trigonomotry this year and I hope to gain a new view towards science, and a better understanding of physics. The picture above is a picture of my home, the eastside of Oahu. I pretty much chose it because it represents me because its where Im from, it represents my family, and it represents what I'm about.