Blog 15

In this last week of Physics, we all participated in the "Egg Drop Lab". In this lab each group became independent and had the task of creating an Egg Drop Device with a purpose to protect the egg from damage after dropping it off the top of Akahi. My group's device was fairly simple and consisted of fairly common household materials. It starts with a sandwich sized ziploc bag filled with pillow stuffing. This is where the egg is placed. It's left open so upon impact the cushion can compress (and the air has somewhere to exit).This ziploc bag is then placed into a plastic bag filled with crumpled pieces of paper. It was placed on the very top so upon dropping the paper would absorb some of the impact. Underneath the paper balls (but still in the plastic bag) was a sealed ziploc bag filled with water. We chose to do this as another measure of absorbing impact. As it hits the ground, the force will be directed to the sides of the ziploc bag as the water bursts out of it. This ziploc bag also served well making our device bottom-heavy so the wind didn't man handle our device. This allowed our device to drop how we intended it. We chose these materials because they were common and inexpensive.

Blog 14

In this week of Physics, we have gained a deeper understanding of momentum. There are two types of collisions: elastic and inelastic. An elastic collision is a "bouncy" collision where the two colliding objects repel from each other. An inelastic collision is a "sticky" collision where the two colliding objects stick together and form one mass. For example, if I were to slap these two velcro pieces together, they would stick together, thus being an inelastic collision. But if I were to roll two rubber balls together like in my previous blog, they would bounce off of each other, thus being an elastic collision. I have also learned that impulse is the change in momentum.

Blog 13

After last week's physics classes, I have concluded that momentum is equal to the product of an object's mass and velocity. There's no specific unit for momentum, simply "kg m/s". In this picture, a small, multi colored ball is stationary while a larger, blue ball is rolling towards it. According to the law of conservation of momentum, momentum cannot be created or destroyed. This means that the larger ball's momentum didn't come out of no where. Before it was at rest like the small ball, but when I pushed it and increased it's velocity, I simply transferred momentum from my hand to the ball. Also, when the larger ball will come in contact with the small ball, the momentum will transfer over to the smaller ball. Since the smaller ball's mass is much less, but the momentum is the same (ignoring friction), the smaller ball will travel at a higher velocity than the higher ball did.

Blog 12

For this Physics blog post, I will be writing about momentum. I always thought of momentum as what inertia is. Inertia is an object's capability to continue in the state that it's in. Inertia is also directly proportional to the object's mass, so things with a greater mass have a greater inertia. After looking up momentum, I found that it's the force/speed of movement, measured as a product of an object's mass and velocity. From this I can conclude that both an object's mass and velocity are directly related to its momentum. For example, when I was running on the beach, you could measure my momentum by finding my velocity and multiplying it by my mass. If I were to run faster or if my mass was greater then my momentum would increase. If I were to slow down or if my mass was less then my momentum would decrease.