While at the park the other day, I took a picture of a kid kicking and chasing a soccer ball. This demonstrated perfect physics as the ball was being affected by both the boys force and friction from the court surface. Because the boys legs produced a larger force forward than the friction did backwards, the total net force was in the positive direction. While the soccer ball traveled forward, inertia caused it to keep moving although the boy's force had stopped acting upon it. The surface that he was kicking it on had much less friction than a normal soccer playing surface, allowing the kid to apply less force and still accelerate the ball quickly.

Airing it Out

This past Saturday I went to the University of Hawaii football game against Charleston Southern. It was a pretty tight game the entire first half, especially since Colt Brennan didn't play the entire time. I did get to observe a lot of projectile motion, especially since Hawaii threw the ball for the majority of the game. I realized that Tyler Graunke, the backup quarterback, was missing a lot of his throws because of the angle he was firing the football at. Usually to get the most lift and distance on the ball, the quarterback needs to throw it at roughly 45 degrees above the horizontal. On the first play of the game, Graunke threw a deep pass that was intercepted because his angle was much lower than 45 degrees. Luckily, he finally realized that he needed to change his throws in the second half, and put some in the endzone.

Today I witnessed something that I have never really thought about before. As I passed by the gate to the parking garage of the hospital, I realized that the gate had a lot to do with physics. First off, the gate's velocity remains constant while going up and coming down. The only time the velocity is zero is when it reaches the top, and stays there until the car passes underneath. Gravity's acceleration really has no effect on the gate as it is electrically powered. Also, the displacement of the gate remains the same from the beginning of the day, to the end because it always returns to its final resting position. I never thought something so simple could have physics involved.

Physics 101

So far, I feel that physics has been challenging but fun. Although I know it will probably get more intense as the year goes by, I think I will be able to adjust. I like the amount of homework and its difficulty because it has helped me to learn most of the concepts. I had a little trouble applying it to the test but I believe it will come around. I am excited about doing new labs with concepts that I never really thought about before. I am anxious to see how I will perform on the next test because it will be crucial to my grade. I'm not really afraid of anything that could be coming up except for the semester final. I enjoy physics and math, and hopefully I will be able to put them together to have a successful year with my classmates.

The Drop

While my brother and I were watching tv at home one day, my brother started throwing things at me. When he threw a baseball and a mini-basketball at me, it occured to me that I could use both of those objects to show gravity's equal pull on all objects. When I told my brother that they would surely land at the same time, he didn't believe me and bet me a dollar. I decided to prove it to him by showing him first hand. Gravity has equal acceleration on all objects at -9.8 m/s2. Although the much smaller baseball had a different mass than the larger basketball, they both landed at the same time. I knew that air resistance can slow down certain objects, but it didn't affect the baseball or the basketball when I dropped them. My brother still never paid me for losing the bet. Hopefully the next entry I write will be more interesting.

It's in The Game

Today, I played in a basketball game in which velocity was in the works. It is pretty amazing to me that just about every time a sport is played, physics becomes a part of the game. Especially in basketball, everytime the ball is dribbled, passed, and shot, velocity, acceleration and speed are all factors. People in general never usually think about all of th physics involved in sports and I never really thought about it until now. There were many chances to show physics throughout this game, but this picture was the clearest of them all.
As I shot this ball the velocity slowly decreased but was still positive as it reached its peak and then became more negative as it headed for the basket. The speed of the ball also decreased as the ball headed towards its peak, and then increased as it went towards the basket. This is assuming the positive velocity is up and negative velocity is down. I don't remember if I made this shot, but I do remember that we lost the game. Too bad.. : (