Week 8 Reflecton

This week we worked on forces both balanced and unbalanced.  I personally had to be part of a group that was giving an example of balanced forces.  Me and three other members of the football team had to lay against each other and try to lift our selves off of the chairs that we were sitting on.  It was actually kind of cool how well it worked.  The reason that we did this was in order to show how can't always be balanced alone.  We balanced  only because half of our body was on someone else, if someone else were to try to do what we did alone it would never work.

The only way that you can know if something is going a constant velocity is if the forces are balanced.  If the forces are not then the object being effected will either speed up or slow down.  For example if I'm 10,000 feet in the air on an airplane and jump out since gravity is pulling me down and nothing is keeping me up, i will continue to move faster and faster until i reach what is called terminal velocity.  Once i pull my parachute then i will drastically slow down because again the forces are not even.  The force that i am getting pulled down by (Earth) is being more balanced by the pulling up of my parachute, so i fall slowly.

I also got my grades from this quarter.  I am very very pleased.  I have an A- in the class and am very happy with my progress.  I got all 3s and 4s mostly 4s.  I only got one or two 2s which i thought was understandable.  I feel like i could do better still.  I am going to work even harder next quarter to do better and continue learning in team physics

Reflection 6

This week we began learning about friction and how to make force maps.  Friction is a resistance for objects to slide past each other.  We learned this by watching dry ice go across a table.  The dry ice has no resistance because it isn’t actually touching the table meaning there isn't any friction.  The ice emits off a gas which lifts it off the table.  Thus no friction is created, in order to make friction you need to have something touching another thing.  They need to be touching each other.  We also watched a video on gravity rooms they work by having something on a ramp so your mind plays tricks on itself and you have no idea what to think.  Water will go at an angle, you will walk on an angle and everything seems off.  This is related back to what we are learning about forces. Forces are just something either pushing or pulling something.  Gravity is just Earth pulling on us.  That’s why everything has to go down; the forces acting upon it make it do that.  But the way we are able to stand up is because our force pushing down is equal to how much earth is pushing us down.  If one wasn’t perfectly equal then we wouldn’t be able to stand or the opposite we would catapult into the sky. 

 

Week 5 Reflection''

This week we did another assessment and learned all of the formulas.   We also spent a couple of days trying to T-Bone one buggy car with another.  The reason that we did this was to fine tune all of the things we did so far.  Like measuring how far we had to go in order to get to the "X" in the middle, using all of the formulas as in y=mxb, v=vi, etc.  All of these things helped me to, in a way, study about the assessment.   It worked because I got all 3s and 4s.  I'm pretty proud of myself and i believe that I'm doing pretty well in the class so far.  As always I'm looking forward to what we are going to learn this week, especially since we are starting a new unit and i get a whole new group.  I love meeting new people and i love learning, which is a pretty good trait to have in school i believe.

The way that we figured out how far the buggy cars needed to go was by calculating how many centimeters each car went in one second, how far the two starting lines were away from the ending point, and how many seconds/centimeters we needed to put the cars in order for them to crash.  The experiment went rather well, on the second try our two buggy cars managed to smack right into each other and i felt rather proud that they did.  The whole experiment, i discovered later, was designed to make us use all of the formulas and other things we had learned in order to do and solve our experiment.  After the crashing of the cars we had to white board the results and how we got them.  So like I said, everything we've learned so far.

Hopefully I’ll continue to get better at what I do in the class and master the ways of the graphs and formulas.  This next week I’m hoping that we start to drop stuff off of roofs, I love seeing things break.  As always I’m looking forward to this next week of learning and can’t wait to see what it holds in store.

Week 4

This past week we started to go deeper into graph making.  We learned how to find velocity and graph it.  Which is just a simple equation V=Displacement/Time.  We then learned how to find area from that on a graph.  It was tricky but after a few trys it was easier.  I'm still no master at it, but im hopeful and i feel that with more practice ill continue to get better and better at it.  My team is struggling with it but i am hopeful that they will also start to understand it and master it.  The assessment this week also went well as i got all 3s 3.5s or 4s.  I'm very glad with this score as it shows my understanding and, not to toot my own horn, mastery of the subject.  As always I'm very excited for this next week and can't wait to see what it will bring and what more amazing things i will learn in Team Physics

Week Three

This week we learned more about how to make an experiment out of nothing and it is continuing to get easier and easier. We has to do an assessment and I can already tell that I did well on it. I knew how to do it and i feel very confident about it.
We are growing as a team and I am very excited and hopeful that everyone in the class will learn to like and respect one another's opinions and be able to have concencus'.

Blog Week 2

This past week we were trying to learn how to make experiments out of nothing.  We learned how to take data on what we were doing, and how to graph our data.  We learned the steps to make an experiment ex. What do we observe, what can we measure, and what can we change? 

The experiment we did this week was how much distance a car travels in a certain amount of time?  Our groups each got a little rc car and measured how much each car went after a certain time.  Our group had the times of 5,10,15,20, and 25 seconds.  After we gathered how far the car went after that amount of time we then went to graphing our data.  We needed to then make an equation of how to find any amount of distance ours being y=mx+b.  Y=distance m=slope x=time and b=0.

The past week we had done similar things and are still attempting to learn the basics of how to make up an experiment from scratch.  I believe that i am getting better at doing this, but still need more work at it.  I am excited at learning more and even more excited to find out what we will be doing in the upcoming weeks.

Week 1 Physics Reflection

When i first showed up to class i was half an hour late.  First day of class and already i was late.  Immediately i knew that this class was going to be different.  We were given a piece of paper with a word on it and were supposed to find the words that go with it.  I had Mars so naturally i had a planet.  I went to the planets but the table was full.  I didn't quite understand and was forced to think more into not only what else my planet could be, but what the other planets around me were.  Mercury stood out to me, not only is Mercury a planet, but it can also be a metal, and a type of car.  After finishing this activity I started to understand what this class was going to be about, taking time to figure out and solve problems even if its something simple like finding out what table your word goes to.

The second day was even more odd.  We were supposed to find out on a six sided cube what the unseen number on the bottom was.  Visible were the numbers 1-5.  As a class we began to discuss and try to figure out what the number was.   The whole class was discussing and giving opinions about what this hidden number was and why their thoughts were right while everyone else was wrong.  After all the hubbub Mr. Abud told us that as a class we had to come to a common consensus.  As one large team we decided that the hidden number was 6.  Mr. Abud showed the mystery number, and wouldn't you know it?  The bottom was empty.  Nothing was there.  Unlike other classes the goal wasn't the answer, it was the steps our team made to come to the conclusion and how we were forced to make a decision as a class.

This class is going to be very unorthodox i can tell.  Instead of a regular homework assignment, we have to tweet.  It seems to me that this type of class is one step towards the future.  We use our smart phones, tweet, blog, even the assignment i'm doing right now is completely different than i'm used to.  The class seems like it's going to be different but still a lot of fun.