New Years Tangerines

this break i went to hilo and while there i picked some tangerines from a tree. i used a ladder to get to the top portions of the tree and a bucket so i wouldnt have to go up and down for every tangerine. after transporting the fruits from the bucket to a bag, there were some tangerine leaves on the bottom of the bucket. while my dad was packing up the tangerines into a box, i was bored and started swinging the bucket around. as i did, i noticed that no leaves fell out and that reminded me of the demo with steve and the bucket. so i made the bucket go around again but this time slowed it down at the peak. at the top, i could hear and feel the leaves separating from the bottom of the bucket and falling from the lack of centripetal force.

Happy New Years All!!

sunday morning

EARLY sunday morning i had to get up and go volunteer at the marathon. my friends and i got there at 6 bc we took an hour to find parking. my friend actually had a parking pass but we could not go through bc it was already 5 and the people on wheelchairs were just passing. when we walked a long journey to the check-in point, i saw so many runners. they reminded me of ants and i got itchy. we got assigned to be security guards at the exit, after the finishers get showered off and get their drinks. it was super muddy and it rained pretty hard a couple of times. bc we were stationed at the finish line, we had more than 2 hours to pretty much do nothing but fool around. i took some random pictures, one of them a person on a wheelchair. i didnt realize until i was fully awake that what i saw in the begining of the race had to deal with torque. the hands of the wheelchairers were the force, pushing clockwise, the lever arm the radius of the wheel. those guys went really fast. i looked up the time for the fastest guy and his time was 1:33:17. the dude who ran it and won finished in 2:17:26.

wash & shine

during thanksgiving weekend, my dad forced me to wash AND wax my car, and his, and my mom's. i was too lazy to put the wax on and wipe the residue off by hand, i busted out this waxer/polisher thing that i found. i was like cool, less work! this helpful tool has a six inch diameter and finished all the cars in around 20 minutes. i looked on the case and it said that the buffer moved at 4000 revolutions per minute. but, when i pushed on the top of the buffer to make sure i got all the wax, i probably slowed the number of revolutions quite a bit. however, when in uniform circular motion, i can calculate the velocity. radius = 3 in= .0762m. the velocity is equal to about 32 m/s.

this past friday i had a orchestra concert. i got there pretty late because during period 1, something was launched into my eye and i could not keep my eye open for more than a couple of seconds so i had to go to the eye doctor. when i got there, the bento that i paid for was gone cuz the chaperones said they gave it away. ya im pretty salty still. getting back to the physics part, while we were doing our dress rehersal, i noticed that my instrument was not as loud as it normally is. then i was like omg! i need rosin. the bow is made of these strings of hair and each time that i rub the bow with the string, the tension causes the strings to vibrate and create sound. but, the bow was clearly lacking rosin bc it was making less sound and had an unclear tone. the rosin creates more friction so that the strings can reatct and have a louder, richer tone. after my portion of the concert was done, my strings were caked with a white powder substance: rosin. this is a picture from way back when. when kate was still in orchestra but i think at this time she was in the higher orchestra bc shes so good.

ouch

i had a bball game yesterday against uh lab. there were so many collisions in that game that i have so many bruises and scratches on my body to prove it. there were many screens and body bumps that were bouncy human collisions. unfortunately i was involved in a sticky collision. so i see this huge post girl beating one of my teammates and heading for the basket so i step in her way to stop her. i was at rest, just standing there holding my ground and she was charging at me pretty fast. then she crashes into me, i literally fly backwards and fall while the gigantic girl lands on top of me. omg. man down. she had a greater momentum than me before because she had more mass and was traveling at a higher velocity than i was. that first collision was a bouncy one. after the collision, i was moving and the other girl slowed down. conservation of momentum shown here. then, i fall to the ground and she then lands on top of me, our final veloctiy 0. these collisions are inelastic because although momentum was conserved, ke was not. some ke was lost and transformed into heat.

to the rescueee

today was a very wet and rainy day. even now at 8 its still raining hard like chris and katie and pretty soon it just might cover the aloha tower. jk. anyways... like every sunday, i had to timekeep for kac in the wonderful palolo gym. it was raining so hard that parts of the ceiling fell down every coulple of games. during halftime and timeouts, kids waiting on the side and watching the game would run out on the court and make the floor pretty wet. this was not good because just like the roof, every coulple of games, a player would slip and fall hard. i think there was 3 people who went down with sprained ankles. pretty dangerous. i was like oh no! every time it happened but then i wisened up. basketball players tend to buy shoes with a lot of ridges because it gives the player more grip so that it is easier to cut. with the ridges, there is more friction with the smooth court. with the dust falling from the ceiling added with the wetness of the floor, the ridges of the shoes began to lose purpose and players were sliding as if they were on ice. before the next game started, i swept the floor with that big broom looking thing, trying to mop up the water and the dust. the coefficent of friction became closer to 1. after that, all was fine. i totally saved the day.

q1 recap

i still think that physics is pretty hard. because i have a hard time understanding the concepts, i need to work extra hard. physics is overwhelming but fun. my tests and quizes have not been so good but surprisingly i have been able to keep my head above water. i think that asking help with the teach and peers have helped me understand these very confusing topics. this quarter has been pretty tough with all these additional work that i have to do for classes but i perservered =) period five physics class is the coolest class that mr k has so i think that this helped me get through this quarter. like this maze, physics has various ways of solving things but you just have to pick the path thats good for you and the one that you like better. i just wish i could get to the doctor soon so my grades for this class can improve.

senior camp baby

on the way to molokai, i had the pleasure of having a window seat right by the right wing and got to see all the cool stuff. it then hit me that the plane totally relied on air resistance to slow the plane down when landing. and then i got another revalation. this was just like those interactive problems in class with the helicopter trying to maintain a certain force.
camp was so much fun. i saw different sides of people that i never knew existed...marc.n... the dorks on the side of me were a few of my tentalow buds. the amazingly talented dark orange team won to no ones surprise. i participated in a game called ski the dirt, which is basically four people on two pieces of wood with rope trying to go around the haystack and back the fastest. my team members and i took off our shoes and socks to create more friction with the wood so that we would not slip when trying to advance foward. when we did not communicate very effectively with each other, there was kinetic friction between the dirt and the wood. after we got the hang of things, we started to lift our feets up at the same time, now creating static friction with the wood and dirt.

LONGHORNS OWN ALL!!!

this is my brother ryan. he just turned 12 and according to newton's first law, i can find out his mass. he lives on earth but he may be from somewhere else. he weighs 79.2 pounds which is around 17.82N. so, his mass would be 1.82kg. his favorite basketball player is shaq and he weighs 325 pounds. that would mean that shaq is 73.125N and 7.46kg. when i told him that his mass was only a 5.66kg difference from shaq, he was shocked. his face looked a little something like that. scary isnt it? i told you i believe hes not from here.

how simple

it was another sunday night and i was doing the usual load of homework that i tried to forget about over the weekend. i was doing math and looking at the answers saw that my work was wrong. i started to erase my marks, brushed some of the eraser shavings off the desk and my brother's pencil near the edge fell down. as i was leaning over to pick the pencil up, i suddenly remembered that i needed to do my physics journal. i could have been the blood rushing to my head or the fact that i realized that what just happened was a projectile. the pencil landed around 1cm from the table's top and bounced to a -1cm from the table top. the table's height is about .6m. the vertical initial velocity was zero bc i rolled off from the table. the acceleration for the vertical part would still be -9.80m/s. the initial horizontal velocity can be determined by dividing the displacement(-.6m) by the time. unfortunatly for you blog readers, i did not record the time and if i did it probably would not be too accurate. how cool that this pencil falling down could be journalworthy.

volleyball

so the other night, i watched the uh volleyball game. after a while, i realized that everything that they were doing related to projectile motion; from hitting the ball, serving it, and setting it. each time the ball was hit or set, the ball started out with a different initial velocity and the gravity accelerated constantly and played a part in the y movement. so, this being a projectile motion, the velocity of the ball in the horizontal direction stayed constant while gravity affected the velocity of the ball. until the ball hit the ground or another person, the ball's horizontal veloctiy did not change. the players have to time their approach so that they can hit the ball a little after the ball passes the peak. the y velocity will tell how long the ball will take to reach a point and the x velocity determines how far the ball goes. the setter then has to determine how big or small the velocity of the ball is going to be in order to give the hitter a good set.

physics and bjork go hand in hand

i thought i would really like and do well in physics bc i felt that anything would be better then chem. uh, after the first test, i took the second part back. i found the test difficult and i especially detest those graphs. my life in physics would be so much easier without them. the class is really cool because of the eccentric people (jk) and everyone gets along pretty well. the labs that we do are really hands on and interactive and i understand the concepts, which is good because i did not understand the labs for chem on my own. in class, we are always doing something and we have to stay alert so nothing unexpected will fly at us. hopefully i can improve my grade and understanding in physics. i want to learn more about physics bc i think its interesting to see how big of a role physics is in our lives. however, if im going to pass this class, im going to have to understand these graphs. i feel that the more i go through this class, the more i will like it. this picture relates to how i feel about physics because physics is something new and interesting and will probably stick with me forever. in a couple of years, i still am going to look at something and think of physics. like this picture, once you see it, because its so interesting, it'll stick in your mind forever.

getting nowhere

so today i felt a little inspired so i actually got up and ran by myself. i started at the end of my driveway and ended at kahala mall. i ran in the foward direction the whole way. i would say that was around a mile and a half and took about 20 minutes. my route halfway was slightly uphill and the other part downhill. also, i had to stop a couple of times for cars and stoplights and it was burning hottt. with this information, i could find out my average velocity of my ambitious journey. i have learned that average velocity is displacement divided by elapsed time. i looked up the conversion for a mile to a meter and for every mile, there are 1,609.344 meters. my displacement is 2,414.016m. the elapsed time is 20 minutes, which is 1,200s. so, that would mean that the average velocity is around 2.01m/s. im not sure if this is good or not but i think that the velocity would be larger if i were running on the track. but oh well, who cares. :)

finally going home

on friday afternoon, i found myself taking the freeway to get home. i normally take this route about three times a week. i knew that i would have to speed up as i go up the on-ramp to keep up with the flow of cars. as soon as the light turned green, i floored my gas pedal and went uphill, going from zero to forty five mph in a couple of seconds. as i got closer and closer to getting on the freeway, my car kept increasing in speed. on the freeway at last, i traveled about a mile and took an off-ramp that was also on an incline. knowing that i would have to come to a stop at the end of the ramp, i let go of my gas and coasted. my speed went down, going from sixty five to thirty five going up the ramp before finally applying brakes. when going on the freeway, i had a positive acceleration because i was speeding up in the forward direction (positive change in velocity). on the way off of the freeway, i had a negative acceleration, or deceration, because i was slowing down in the forward direction (negative change in velocity).

the videos are of my mom driving up those same ramps. the first clip shows the positive acceleration and the second shows a negative acceleration. enjoy!