Friday, January 7, 2011

Superposition

The principle of superposition applies to when more than two waves are travelling through the same medium at the same time.The waves are undisturbed but the displacement is changed to the sum of the waves.
There are two types, constructive and destructive. For example, when two waves are coming at each other, constructive is when the waves are on the same side of the axis, so that when they pass over each other, they will build more in their direction.
 
While for destructive interference, the waves are on the opposite side of each other and one will subtract the other and the resulting wave will be smaller.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Blog,

I do not know why there is a big blank space between the first and second post.

Energy

There are numerous types of energy that can be transformed back and forth. These include thermal, heat, gravitational potential, elastic potential, chemical, electric, magnetic, and radiant energy.Out of these, the first two, thermal and heat are part of kinetic energy. They are the energy of motion. The faster an object moves, the more energy there is. The rest of the energies is potential energy. This is the energy that is stored or energy that is not in use at the moment. They have the potential to do "damage" in the future.
Examples of kinetics would be if a ball moved faster or a person runs faster, they would have more kinetic energy.
Potential would be if a boulder was at the top/tip of a mountain and it was about to drop, it would have a lot of potential energy, but there is no kinetic energy since it is not moving.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Cannon

Today, our class received an assignment on cannons. Basically we need to build a cannon from a maximum of 5 pop cans and try to see which one will go the furthest. I do not know how we are supposed to make a base for the cannon if the tube thing is going to use 3 cans and only 2 left for the base. The cannon will be fueled with ethanol and the ball will be two Styrofoam cups taped together. Hopefully the cannon that we build will work.
Here's a HANDDRAWN picture of what the cannon will look like, (copied from the sheet).

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Newton

We began learning about Newton's laws and 4 different types of problems.
Equilibrium problems is when the object is not moving and the forces are equaled out.
Angles are included. Usually it's an object in the air that's connected to beams or strings. This needs to counter gravity to make the net force 0.

Incline is when there is a slanted surface. Usually to calculate how fast the object is going and how much force is in the x direction. The fbd needs to be shifted and gravity needs to be changed into x and y. There is usually friction force which is part of fx.

Pulleys, there are usually no friction. Tension is the same. It usually calculates how fast the object is accelerating and the force on the string that is connected to the two objects.

Finally, for trains, it is similar to just making the pulleys into a straight line. There is a force applied and then the person needs to find out the tension between the cars. The force applied is the most then decreases after each tension along the train. There is usually friction. There is no Fy.

Monday, November 8, 2010

I BALANCED AN EGG

Woo, it's Monday Nov, 8 today. I was bored, so I went to try balancing eggs to get ready for tomorrow challenge. And..I actually did it. Took around 10 minutes for the first one. Pictures below.



Then I was able to balance two. 




 After two I just gave up and went to do my homework.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Projectile Motion

To calculate projectile motion, we need to use sin, cos, and tan. Usually there is an angle. The question usually asks about the time of flight and the horizontal distance from the start.
The big five equations are used to solve these.

Here is an image showing what each part is equal to. Theta is the angle of the path to the horizontal. horizontal distance is range in x and the height is in y.