My little sister and her friends like to play with sprinklers in our front yard. Watching them playing with the water made me think about physics and what we learned this chapter. The sprinkler shoots water up into the air in eleven different streams, all pointed at different angles. The center stream of water shoots the water up the highest distance into the air, and thus the water from the center stream spends the longest time in the air. Although the other streams of water don't stay airborne as long as the center stream, all of the streams have the same Vo value. The streams other than the center have x velocity values, while the center does not. Not to mention, all the streams of water are projectiles and thus travel in a parabolic motion.

bouncing bowling ball

When an object is in a projectile motion, it generally looks like a parabola. As we learned this week, a projectile always has two elements: vertical movement and horizontal movement. Last night at our junior class bowling event, I watched as one of my classmates hurled the ball halfway across the lane and I thought to myself, "wow, that is a vector". Before the ball hits the lane, the ball has a parabolic motion. Its horizontal speed is constant while the vertical speed is lowest at the peak and speeds up closer to earth. After the ball hits the lane, however, it is no longer a projectile because it is not in the air. There is no longer any vertical movement because the ball is rolling on the ground. The horizontal speed is minimally affected because the grease on the lane reduces friction. This means that the ball will still have a lot of speed and erego a lot of momentum when it smashes into the pins.

My attitude toward physics so far is that it is a fun, hands-on learning experience. Although it is at times confusing, especially when involving correlating graphs, the satisfaction of gaining the knowledge in the end is instantly gratifying. Scalar values are always easier to deal with, and starting vectors adds to some of the confusion for me. Kinematic equations have been somewhat challenging, as i have never been great at memorizing equations and formulas. Discovering physics has made me feel like a huge smiley face because i am happy to be learning!

beach volleyball

This weekend i went to the beach with my family. As my cousins and I played voleyball on the sand, i noticed how the volleyball experiences change in velocity, acceleration, and displacement. When a volleyball is served, it goes through a negative acceleration as it moves up at a slowing pace, reaches its peak, and moves down across the net at increasing speed (9.8 m/s squared). This sequence of changes in acceleration and velocity in the ball continues until one team fails to return the ball, at which point the ball bounces, rolls, and slows to a zero velocity.