Bubbles!!

As a young boy i had a life goal, just like any other boy.  But mine was different, unlike the other boys who wanted to become president or become a professional athlete, my goal was to become the man who blew the biggest bubble ever.  This goal came about because of a book i received when i was 3.  The book was entitled, Guiness Book of World Records.  In that book there was already someone who had created an enormous bubble.  When i saw it i marveled at the amazing colors that the bubble created and i wanted to make an  even bigger one.  Although that dream i had is not what i am interested in doing now, bubbles are still a part of my life, thanks to physics.  Recently, i learned exactly how bubbles get their color.  This occurs because of the 2 different walls of the bubble.  When a wave of light hits the outer wall of the bubble it reflects back to our eye, but some of the wave penetrates this outer wall and bounces off the inner wall of the bubble and back to our eye.  On the way back to our eye the waves of light interfere.  When there is constructive interference we see color and when there is destructive interference we do not see color.  This is why bubbles are so nice to look at and fun to play with.

Mirrors

This chapter in physics we learned about mirrors, light, and lenses.  I thought this was an especially interesting topic because it is something everyone sees on an everyday basis.  We all use and see lights everyday, we all have mirrors all over are houses and even in our cars and most of us use glasses or contacts on a daily basis.  But, we do not all know how all these things work.  That is the problem we solved in physics during the past week and a half or so.  The aspect that interested me the most is mirrors.  I see mirrors everywhere i go.  I have mirrors in my bedroom, my bathrooms, in my car and they are also all over the place.  A fun fact that i learned is that we only need a mirror that is half of our height in order to see a full view of our body in it.  This means that in the future when i buy a mirror it will only need to be about 3 feet long.  I also learned why the side-view mirrors on my car say "objects may appear closer than the are."  This is because the side-view mirrors are convex mirrors.  This means that they bulge outward.  Because of this bulge it makes the light it is reflecting diverge.  This essentially means that it grabs a lot of light from a big area and puts it into a smaller image which we see.  They uses these types of mirrors on cars so you can see a wider range.  They also use this in parking structures so you can see around the corner.

Temperature and Heat Blog

Everywhere i go i see cracked roads and sidewalks.  It has been this way ever since i was a little kid.  I always used to ask my dad and mom, "Why is the sidewalk cracked over there?" and they would always reply, "I don't know, that's a very good question."  Over the past couple of weeks i have finally gotten my answer.  Mr. Heyler taught us in physics about thermodynamics which is about heat and stuff.  Somewhere in the chapter it talks about how gases, liquids and solids expand when heat is added to them.  The equation that illustrates the change is represented by: change in length= initial length*coefficient of linear expansion*change in temperature for solids and change in volume=initial volume*coefficient of volume expansion*change in temperature for liquids and gases.  This explains why the sidewalk has cracks because when it gets hot the concrete expands because of this law of thermal expansion.  When it cools off then the crack is still there.  This is why I see cracks in our roads and sidewalks everywhere.    

Football Game

This weekend we played Kamehameha in a football game.  While the game was going on i realized how much physics was involved in the game.  It reminded me of the time in class when Mr. Heyler was talking about the physics of football.  He was telling us that if you threw a ball at an angle and then threw the ball at its complementary angle then the ball would travel the same distance in both cases.  i remembered this when we had to kick a field goal and i reminded my friend of this concept, he then made two field goals.  The balls were not able to be blocked because he kicked them at a higher angle rather than kicking a line-drive and the ball going the same distance.  I also told our quarterback about this concept which allowed him to throw nice passes that were not able to be intercepted by our opponents.

driving

The other day while i was driving i came upon a yellow light.  i thought to myself should i stop or speed up and run through it before it turns red.  this made me think about the problem i had done for physics homework.  i was trying to calculte in my head what i should have done, except there was not nearly enough time for that,  in the end i ended up just stopping because by the time i finished thinking the light was already red.  this is one of the many things i have learned already in physics.  i know this will be a fun-fiilled year and i will learn a lot.