my final post :(

            I can't believe that this is going to be my last post for physics :(! The six weeks of physics has gone by so fast and I can't believe it's over! We certainly learned a lot in just six weeks.

            According to Wikipedia physics is the branch of science concerned with the nature and properties of matter and energy. But to me physics is the study of how and why things happen everyday. It's learning about the world we live in but in a scientific way.

            I actually started off in this class kind of worries because it was so much work at first but once I got used to it physics became so much easier! I really enjoyed taking physics and all the fun labs that we did! I can't believe it's over and I'm so sad that we have to leave this class :(! Mr. Blake was such a great teacher and I wish he could teach all year!!!!! Physics had so many great labs including the slip n slide, bottle rocket, and all the laser labs!

            I learned a lot about how science applies to the real world and how every action we do is affected by science! I learned so much about how the world works around us. Every unit whether it be kinematics or lasers was very detailed and interesting and each lesson applied to what happens everyday!

            I really liked how Mr. Blake made even the most boring lessons seem really interesting. The class went fast and we did so many fun labs and that was great to do! I also liked how we were tested fairly about the things we really learned.

            I don’t really have any suggestions to change the class because it was such a great class alone. I'm going to miss all of our classmates, Mr. Blake, and even Jon! Ill always remember the funny and amazing times we had as a class and all the memories that we made together!! We had such an amazing six weeks of summer and I wish I had more time with everyone! I'm going to miss everyone so much! Until next year J 

   Here are some pictures that we have from our physics experience :) 

   

Upside down!

            We walked into the classroom today and there was a HUGE mirror in the classroom but the thing is the mirror was an inverted mirror. So the ground looked like the ceiling and everything was turned upside down!

            Again we worked with lasers and mirrors today but we learned many things too! Including the characteristics of images! They were real vs. virtual, upright vs. inverted, and magnified vs. reduced! Real meant that the light converges at one point and virtual is when the light doesn’t converge at the image it almost looks like the light is going through the mirror to the image. Upright is when the image appears right side up and inverted just means that the image is upside down! Magnified is when the object or image appears bigger than it really is and reduced is the opposite is when the image appears smaller than normal.

            We then began learning about refraction. Refraction is the changing of direction of a wave due to changes in wave speed due to medium. We learned that along with refraction came the index of refraction. The equation was N (index of refraction)= speed of light in a vacuum (3 X10⁸) / speed of light in a medium! We also learned that if two objects have the same index of refraction that they disappear. Refraction allows you to hide or view different objects. We learned that the larger the index of refraction , the slower the speed of light in that medium! We also learned that If a light is going from a faster to a slower index that the way the light bends will be towards the normal, but if the light is going from a slower to a faster index then the light will bend away from the normal.

            Finally we ended the day by learning about converging lenses, when it makes light converge, and diverging lenses, when the lenses makes light spread out.

            This is a picture of my friends and I that we took in the inverted mirror. We flipped it right side up though so that we could see what it looks like. The actual picture is actually upside because the mirror is inverted. 

baby you LIGHT up my world like nobody else!

            Today in physics we continued learning unit 10 and we learned about light! Light only travels in a straight line and if the light doesn't get to your eye you can't see! Just like when sound contacts matter light makes little vibrations! Light also has a natural frequency so when it doesn't like a frequency it vibrates at it spits it out and moves it to another. We also continued learning about the electromagnetic spectrum, which is the range of different wavelengths based on types of known waves. The first we learned about were Radio and TV waves. FM stands for frequency modulated. Cell phones have ultra high frequency. The next section we worked on was microwaves and infrared. Microwaves have frequencies in the gigahertz range. They also have the frequencies for the resonance of water!

            Next we learned about infrared. This section is just below the red. Infra means below and red means red. These frequencies are most absorbed by water. The next part of the EM spectrum is the visible spectrum. The frequencies of this part of the spectrum are visible to humans. This is the color part; or in other words ROYGBIV. Red has a longer wavelength but a lower frequency and violet has a shorter wavelength but a higher frequency. We finally learned about UV radiation. This is like the sun rays. We continued by learning about X-rays and gamma ray too!

            We had so many demos using lights and lasers today it was AMAZING! I felt like we were in a spy movie!!! IT WAS AMAZING! We learned about complementary colors and the primary colors of light, which are red, green, and blue. TODAY WE DID SOO MUCH AND IT WAS SOOO FUN! 

            This is a picture from the lasers that we worked with today! The lasers were so amazing and reflections using lasers were soo cool!

Do you see what i see??

            Today began with a test 0.0!!! But it was today went by so fast! We did two, lab practical's that only took about 30 minutes and they were very easy to understand! We then began working on our song projects! Our group actually finished writing all the lyrics! We also started Unit 10 about Electromagnetic waves and color!

            Even though our lesson was quite short, it was very informative! Electromagnetic waves are transverse waves and they travel at the speed of light! The speed of light is 3 x 10⁸  that’s like going around the world 7.5 times in one second or its like going to the moon back in 0.5 seconds.

            Did you know that a light year is actually the distance that light travels in one earth year! The speed of light will be constant within the medium it's in. Light acts like a particle when it contacts solid matter! It tries to be two things! :O

            We learned two new words transparent and opaque. Transparent is when the wave is able to pass through the medium. Opaque is the opposite of transparent, that means that the waves will be able to pass through the medium such as a door. 

             These balloon hats are both transparent and opaque. The orange yellow and dark blue balloons are transparent because the light washes are able to pass through the balloon. You can see through the balloons which means the light waves are able to pass through the medium which in this case is the balloon material. The light blue balloon is opaque because the light isn't going through the balloon so that means that the light waves are able to go through the medium.

Can you hear me?

            On Friday we continued learning about waves! Of course we had a mini quiz to review what we had learned the day before… haha but nonetheless we continued learning. The theme of the day was SOUNNDDDDDD waves :)! We first went over reflection, refraction, and resonance! Reflection of waves happens when the waves bounce off an object. Refraction is the changes in wave direction based on the wave medium! Resonance is increase of amplitude of oscillation of an electric or mechanical system exposed to a periodical external force whose frequency is equal to or some multiple of the natural frequency. That was a long definition :P ! Natural frequencies depend on the physical being of the object so the frequencies change for different objects even if the object may be made of the same thing but the size is different. Resonance only occurs when you push the object at the right time.

            We also learned that sound waves are longitudinal waves which means they have areas of compression and rarefaction! But that also means they need a medium to go through. If we were in space you wouldn't hear us talking because there is no air, there is nothing for the sound waves to go through! The human range of hearing can go from 20Hz- 20,000Hz. But as we age we tend to lose our range of hearing. That’s why usually only young people can hear every mosquito ring tone when it is played. All sound travels the same speed IF they are at the same temperature. If the temperatures differ then the speed of sound differs. The hotter the temperature the faster sound travels. In room temperature sound travels 343 m/s. But light travels 300000000m/s !!! THAT IS FAST!

             Dance has been a part of my life ever since i was two. I never knew how important sound waves were. I have danced at different dance studios and some studios have sound boards that absorb the energy from the sound so that it doesn't cause echoing in the studio. I never noticed that and always thought that the board were for decoration but i guess if there weren't boards then the energy and the sound would be bouncing all around the studio and it wouldn't be productive.

            

lets create WAVES

            WAVESSSS! That was today's lesson! We began today by talking about what types of waves there are in our life! We came up with sound waves, waves in the ocean, radio waves, and even microwaves! We also had a mini vocabulary lesson on terms having to do with waves, of course we looked up definitions on the web but we had to translate them to English. Some of the terms included vibration, wave (of course), wavelength, frequency, Hertz, wave speed, transverse wave, longitudinal wave, compression, and rarefaction! By the time we learned all these term my brain was hurting!!

            We then did this AWESOME slinky lab :D! We had objectives to complete and we had to race to see how fast we could do them! We had to create waves in the slinky or the metal spring and use the waves to knock certain boxes away. Then we did this other lab that we had to calculate the velocity of a string that was put on different frequencies.

            Finally we ended the day with graphs GAHHH that was so confusing for me >.< the waves were going in opposite directions and it got complicated when they collided and had multiple waves. Today was such a busy brain day! Our whole class went CRAZY by the end of the day :D

            This is a picture that I took at Bellows Air force base! I noticed that there were some waves in the picture and I remembered that we were talking about wave height and how Mr. Blake used to measure the wave from the back but now the waves are measured from the trough to the crests!

Shoot for the stars!

  Today was the final launch day! We were ready from the beginning to launch! Our rocket consisted of two, two liter soda bottles. One was cut at the top and the bottom so that it made a cylinder that was open on both sides. We attached the second bottle to the bottom of the first using orange duct tape. We then duct taped the whole bottle so that it would increase stability of the bottle. We used two bottles so that it would increase stability as well. Then we added 3, 5-inch fins to the bottom of our rocket! We then added 3 small, 2.5- inch fins to the top of the bottle to help keep the cone on longer and keep it stable. We added the other fins so that it increased even more stability. Stability for us was the key because if our rocket were to be  wobbly in the sky then it wouldn't be good. We also created a trash bag parachute so that it would decrease the velocity on the way down. We used a orange athletic cone as our cone and used clay to increase mass to keep the cone on longer and to help increase velocity of our rocket. We used about half and half water and pressure because you need enough pressure to get it high but you need water for fuel. We used about 1 liter of water. We used duct tape to tape our parachute to the inside of our bottle. This is a picture of our rocket drawing with the labels of what was inside the rocket.

          

            The first launch of the day we only got about 6.47 seconds which was ok for us but we wanted even more! So we launched again and got about 8.6 seconds and we were happy it got better but we realized our fins were starting to rip off the rocket so we replaced them with the extra set of fins that we made! The fins were light enough to help the bottle but sturdy enough to not get flimsy! We added a little more mass and then went in for the third try. At first when we launched our rocket didn't go that high so we got sad but then we realized that the wind was pulling our rocket up because of the lightness of the rocket! Soon the rocket went up up up and over the trees! It kept going it went out of the rock wall in Punahou and we were happy but scared because what if the rocket landed ON THE STREET AND CAUSED AN ACCIDENT!! It finally landed and Mr. Blake and Jon told us our time was 41.2 SECONDS! WE WERE SO HAPPY! We thought getting to 10 was impossible but 4x that amount was unheard of!

Our average for our amount of launches was 15.9 seconds WOOOOOO!!! And our max time was 41.2 seconds and the class average was 6.32 seconds!

            I learned that mass greatly affects how your rocket works because when we had not enough mass in our cone that the cone wouldn't stay on…. But when we put enough mass the cone stayed on longer! We also learned that if the parachute didn’t have enough "jelly fish" effect then the rocket would come down too fast. Our parachute kept getting tangle and it was frustrating because we had to start over and undo the parachute and re-tie it! >.<

            I actually got frustrated a lot but I was so happy that we got 41.2 and really enjoyed doing this project! :)