Semester Review/Reflection

This semester, we went over units 1-6. As the units progressed, they became more difficult. We started off reviewing scientific notations, conversations, and graphs. We moved on to kinematics, we learned about scalars, vectors, and new graphs. We learned about free fall movement and more graphs. We did equations for falling objects. Then we moved to equations with displacements and Newton's three laws.

Physics so far has been a very enjoyable class. Mr. Blake, you are a very good teacher and you do a very good job teaching us the subject while making it fun and exciting. Physics is also a very interesting class. I enjoy way more than chemistry. The math in physics is more difficult than the start of year.

Some challenges I had were memorizing equations. I had to take some extra time for memorizing the mathematical equations for the test. The unit 5 and 6 have some difficult math equations to memorize. They have a lot of steps to find the answer.

Thanks for a great year in physics!

This was a fun 3 weeks. Here is the lab we did trying to remove friction from the cart. Gio is doing his part to help collect data.

Unit 6 Blog Post

Unit 6 so far has been very similar to unit 5. We are doing the same type of problems involving force diagrams. We are now more closely focusing on problems that have rope tension. We have to find the tension of the rope using fnet equations. A new type of situation that problems have set up are elevators. They will tell you about a person inside and change the acceleration of an elevator downwards or upwards and make you find the force the floor of the elevator exerts on a person inside. We also talked more about Newton's second and third law. Mr. Blake went more in depth on newton's third law, he talked about how when an object hits or touches another object, that other objects touched the original object with the same force in the opposite direction.

In this picture, my friend Jake just fell down the stairs. When his butt hit the stairs, the stairs returned the same amount of force but in the opposite direction. Sucks for Jake.

Unit 5 Blog Post #2

In class today, we learned about Newton's second and third laws. His second law is "The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force of an object while the acceleration of an object is inversely proportional to an object's mass. Newton's third law is For every force, there is an equal and opposite force. Equal in magnitude opposite in direction. Mr. Blake gave us a good example by poking Gio. When Mr. Blake touched Gio, Gio was also touching Mr. Blake according to Newton's third law. For unit 5, we also reviewed more displacement problems using trig. Mr. Blake showed us force diagrams where we would have to draw the weight and any tensions and etc to solve our problem. We also reviewed more on friction. Friction, or friction force, is a force that opposes motion or impeding motion.

In this picture, Gio is trying his very hardest to go down the slip n slide. Sadly for him, there is friction stopping him from smoothly gliding him down the tarp. We were able to help him out by adding water and soap to give riders smooth glide. 

Unit 5 Blog Post

For unit 5, we talked about vectors and scalars again. We talked about real life examples like number of passengers in a plane and displacement of a flight and said if they were scalars or vectors. We went over what a force and a normal force is. A force is a push or pull and a normal force is supporting force that is perpendicular to the surface the object is on. We talked about how to find the displacement of two connect lines. We learned how to use some trig for it. Some trig we learned is SIN, COS, and TAN.
TAN is opposite over adjacent.
SIN is opposite over hypotenuse.
COS is adjacent over hypotenuse.
When using the trig, we use a method to find the displacement. First, we use bureku, which is where we break all the diagonals into X and Y. Second, we add all the values together to get the sum of the resultants. (axes still independent). Third, we use ukerub, which we take x and y sums and create a new vector. The last thing we learned in class is Newton's first law. The law is "An object in motion will tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside unbalanced force."  Or "An object at rest will tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside unbalanced force."

In this picture, are my two little brothers. Like usual, they are basically doing nothing. They are at rest and like Newton's first law states, an object (or objects) at rest will tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside unbalanced force. My brother would rest all day, but my mom (an outside force) will come and yell at them for sitting around too much and they will have to do outside and move around.

Unit 4 Picture #2

On friday, we did a lot of review and activities. The review was talking about equations on objects rolling off an object and falling. In my picture, the pingpong ball is rolling off the table and about to accelerate to the ground. We use DAT equation and find the time it takes and the distance from the table where it will land. 

For our activity, we launched rockets with different amounts of power and timed how long it would take to come back and hit the ground. We had low, medium, high, and super. After collecting the data, we calculated where Mr. Blake should stand so we could hit him with our rockets. Sadly, no one was successful. The picture is of a group testing a rocket and it is plummeting down.

Unit 4 Picture

In class today, we started unit 4. The topic for unit 4 was projectiles. We talked about objects falling and moving at the same time. Two rules about this is the vegas rules of physics:
What stays on the X-axis, stays on the X-axis.
What stays on the Y-axis, stays on the Y-axis.
This is talking about when we write down our given. We have separate columns for the X-axis and the Y-axis so we don't mix up our data. The X-axis is for the horizontal movement of the object and the Y-axis is for the vertical movement of the object. We used the equations from unit 3, but added in y's and x's to differentiate what axis the equation is aiming to solve.

This is a picture of bird droppings. When birds make droppings in the sky, their droppings are projectiles. They are only powered by gravity and they come plopping down on whatever is below. When the droppings are released, they don't only fall, they also maintain the speed of the bird and slowly accelerate in the opposite direction until they are no longer accelerating on the x-axis. They just plummet to the ground below.

^Not my picture.

http://www.albanyrock.com/page.php?page_id=86

Unit 1-3 Summary

In unit 1, we learned about accuracy and precision. Accuracy is nearness of a measurement to the standard or true value. Precision several measurements provide an answer very close to each other. We got to use pendulums. We learned that the time it takes for one complete cycle to occur on a pendulum is cycle. We had to use independent variables (variable that changes the dependent variable) and the dependent variable (dependent on the independent variable).

In unit 2, we went over kinematics. Kinematics is the study of motion. The important question about motion was "Relative to what?" When someone says something is moving, it is moving relative to them, but to the car the person looking at the car seems to be moving back. Movement is relative to who is viewing the movement. We learned scalar and vector. A scalar is a quantity that has magnitude. Magnitude is best described as muchness of something. A vector is a quantity that has direction and magnitude. For vectors, we talked about displacement. Displacement is the amount of distance from the starting point. We next talked about graphes. We learned potion vs. time graph and velocity vs time graph. We reviewed three important rules:

1. Th slope of a potion vs. time graph is velocity.

2. The slope of a velocity vs. time graph is acceleration.

3. The area under the "curve" of a velocity vs. time graph is distance travelled.

Acceleration is a change of velocity per unit of time.

In this picture, I am flying in a plane. People who look up see I am moving fast. For me, it looks like they are moving backwards. It is all relative to who is looking at what.

In unit 3, we learned about acceleration. We learned about an acceleration vs. time graph. We also learned three equations to help solve for missing variable like time, distance, speed, and acceleration. There equations are:

Equations:                  A.K.A

D= 1/2at^2 + v0t        (d,a,t)

V= Vo + at                  (v,a,t)

V^2= Vo^2 + 2ad       (v,a,d)
We also talked about when you throw an item in the air, it has different speed. The object starts fast and slowly accelerates in the opposite direction. At a certain point in the air, it will stop for a second and start to accelerate downward. Then eventually gain a lot of speed.

This was a brief summary on what we have learned in the last three units. 

Extra Credit Teaching Parents

This is a video of my teaching my dad a small part of the kinematics (unit 2). I talked about motion be relative. I talked about scalars and vectors with examples to show what I was talking about. I also gave an example of displacement.

Unit 3 Picture 2

In unit 3, we learned about acceleration. Acceleration is change in velocity over time. In short, it is meter over seconds squared. For the unit, we had to know 3 crucial equations:

Equations:                  A.K.A

D= 1/2at^2 + v0t        (d,a,t)

V= Vo + at                  (v,a,t)

V^2= Vo^2 + 2ad       (v,a,d)

These equations help us solve for missing information in problems like distance, acceleration, and velocity. Each equation has a purpose to help solve for one of the three missing info. Mr. Blake showed us an effective format to solve problems that involve missing information. We start by writing down the question we are aiming to solve first. Second, we write down all our given information to help us remember what we know, then after, we make a sketch of what the problem is describing. Next we choose an equation that solves for the missing variable and the question at hand. Next we "plug and chug", which is plugging in the given information into the correct equation. Finally we box our answer and go back to check our work.

In class today, we learned about falling objects and how they constantly accelerate. An example we used in class was two falling balls. Even if the balls are different in size and weight, they still fall at the rate (which is 9.8 meters per second squared) due to gravity's pull. In the picture, I am dropping a lacrosse ball and a basketball. As you can see, they are falling at the same rate.

In class we also learned about objects being thrown up and coming back down. We went over how the object on the way up starts fast, then looses speed and goes slow. At a certain point, the object stops and slowly goes down. Eventually it speeds down back to the ground/hand. We learned that the object slowing down when going up is the object starting to accelerate downwards. 

Unit 3 Uniform Acceleration

In class today, we went over acceleration. Acceleration is change is velocity over time or meters of seconds squared. We also learned three important equations: 

d=1/2at^2

V=Vo+at

V^2=Vo^2+2ad

These equations are used for different problems involving acceleration. These equations are also known as Dat, Vat, and Vad. Each equation is used for different problem depending on what you are looking for.

In this picture, I am riding on a skateboard down my driveway. My drive way is slanted letting me roll down. In class we rode down the small slope in front of Bingum Hall to show acceleration. Like when rolling down the slope at Bingum, my driveway lets me accelerate downwards.

Unit 2 Picture

On friday in class, we went over different graphs (potion vs time and velocity vs. time) and how they relate. A really important part of the graphs are rules. The two rules we learned are:
1. The slope of a velocity vs. time graph is acceleration.
2. The area under the "curve"of a velocity vs time graph is distance travelled.
We also went over displacement in more details. We learned that when you move a certain distance, there has to be a direction to make it a displacement, but that distance is relative to the starting point. This picture is of the kinematics worksheet we did for class to review for the test on monday.

Unit 2 Picture

In class, we learned about velocity. Velocity is distance over time. We found out that speed and velocity are two different things. Velocity is the rate of change from a position of an object. Speed is amount distance covered in a certain amount of time. We also learned about kinematics, which is the study of motion. We were informed that motion is relative. The picture is of the Punahou track. This was during a track and field event. When the runners are sprinting next to each other, to each other they look like they are not moving. On the other hand to a viewer, the runners are moving really fast.

Unit 1 Picture

This picture is of me doing the review packet for unit 1. The past two days, we learned about different graph shapes and the algebraic representation for each graph. We went over scientific notations, which was a review from chemistry. We also learned dimensional analysis, which is an organized way to convert. In the review section we learned how to pull information from a graph. We had to find units for the slope, average price of an item, and the mathematical equation that states the relationship described by the graph. In the picture I'm doing the packet page 1 of the review and starting number 2 to study for our physics test tomorrow.

Introduction

Hi, I'm Devon. I'm a lacrosse player and a tennis player. I like lacrosse because it's the best combination on contact and skill found in a sport. I played the viola for Punahou last year. I used to play the violin, but I switched to viola. I was born in New Jersey and moved to Hawaii in the 5th grade. I took biology in freshmen year and chemistry honors in sophomore year. Chemistry honors was very challenging for me. I am taking trig next year. I hope to learn what physics is about and to see if I have an interest in physics.

This is a picture of me shows my silliness and fun personality. I enjoy fooling around, but being serious when I'm required to. I am excited to be in physics.