Blog 24

In this week of Physics we learned about the differences between a series circuit and parallel circuit. Here are the differences:

SERIES:
- 1 path, 1 current
-Vtotal - V1 + V2 + V3 ...
- Req = Rtotal = R1 + R2 ...

PARALLEL
- Constant Voltage
- Ivsource = I1 + I2 ...
- 1/Req = 1/R1 + 1/R2 ...

I also learned that our houses are wired in a parallel circuit. This is good so every appliance, or "resistor" may run using all of the volts it needs. If our houses were wired in a series circuit, then we could only be able to run a few to one thing at a time because everything would have to share a total voltage.

Blog 23

In the previous week of Physics class, we have been talking about saving electricity. I have went home and had a discussion with my dad about saving electricity. He was open to it of course, as it would save him some money, and we thought of a few ways we could do this. Sometimes we fall asleep with several appliances left on. We could save a good deal of electricity by making sure to turn off things before we doze off. There are some days where someone falls asleep and the TV is watching them. Also sometimes the lights are left on all night wasting energy. Another thing I could do is to shorten my showers a bit. I usually take long, hot showers and although relaxing, I could shorten them at least a little bit.

Blog 22

Adding on to Unit 11, we dug further and learned more about electricity. I learned that current is the number of charges passing a point per second, or the rate of flow of charges. Current can be represented by the variable "I" and is measured in Amperes or Amps. One Amp (A) is equal to 1 Coulomb per second (I = q/t). Recapping from last week, voltage is the amount of work that each charge will do as it goes through the circuit; it can be thought of as the amount of "push" on the charge. So voltage is the amount of energy per charge and current is the amount of charge per second. A great example of this are these ceiling lights. Electrons (charges) are carrying energy (joules) and are passing through the lightbulb. As each electron passes through the bulb, it drops off and supplies a constant flow of energy, allowing the bulbs to stay lit.