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!