Einstein quote reflection

"There are only two ways to live your life. 
One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is a miracle."

Of the numerous quotations and sayings of Einstein, this is perhaps the most famous and influential. This may be because it is indicative of the human condition and because it so genuinely expresses the contrast between optimism and pessimism. Einstein points out one of the greatest internal conflicts that humans face almost every day in their decisions. This decision is how they decide where to place their mind-set and goals, as well as creating and building hope and determination for a brighter future, and a longer, happier life.

If you look at life, it is truly precious.  To look at life in a negative fashion causes no good things. People only have one life to live, and why should they waste time brooding on the negative aspects of it. People sometimes don’t realize that they have “one life” and each day should be spent wisely. Einstein is trying to tell people that you have to “enjoy the little things” to truly achieve happiness. He is saying that is you treat every small occurrence and victory as something truly great, you will learn to appreciate the big things even more while also increasing your overall vigor and spirit.

            Einstein was not only a physicist; he was a great philosopher as well.  Einstein is overlooked usually as just one of the most brilliant minds of the 20^th century. His personality was very deep and people can learn a great deal from his sayings and work. Einstein was the “whole package.” He was able to break barriers in the scientific and mathematical worlds, as well as create life lessons that can change people’s minds and attitudes in a positive direction.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."


Though Einstein said many influential things that have been recorded in history, this quote is one of his most well known and it is one that I think puts in perspective the importance of being yourself and being a free thinker. In this quote einstein is basically saying that if you are creative and inquisitive knowledge will come along with it. He is basically trying to say that though knowledge is important, it is less important than boundless creativity and imagination.What he is really saying is that our knowledge is limited, and that Imagination is the key to unlocking limitless knowledge.

Momentum team project

In the glog my Team and I created we showed how Physics related to bobsledding. We diplayed how conservation of energy and conservation of momentum affect bobsleigh and we displayed vector diagrmas to further explain how these concepts apply.

Team 2 Digital tool

Reflection: conservation of energy

Part A:

This unit we learned about the conservation of energy. We learned that energy is a conserved substance like quantity with the ability to produce change. I also learned that energy can be moved around and stored in different ways but energy itself is unchanged. Energy does not exist in different forms, it is just stored in different ways. While there are not different types of energy, energy is distinguished by the mechanism that is used to store it, such as kinetic, elastic, gravitational potential, and chemical potential. Each of these is not a different type of energy, just a different method for storing energy. As energy is transferred from one method of storage to another, the total amount of energy remains unchanged (this is conservation of energy). energy can be transferred in or out of a physical system in there ways, working (energy is transferred by forces that cause displacements), heating (temperature differences between a system and its surroundings cause energy to be transferred from the warmer object to the cooler object), and radiation (matter loses energy as it emits electromagnetic radiation and gains energy as it absorbs it). I also learned how to represent the transfer of energy with an energy conservation bar diagram. We used bar graphs to represent the initial and final energies and an energy flow diagram to represent what happens during the process of transferring energy. I also learned about work, which is the amount of change that a force produces when it acts on a body. Work is a scalar quantity and its unit is the joule. The rate at which work is done by a force is called power and the unit of power is watts. Power is also equal to the force multiplied by the velocity. After learning the amount of change that a force produces and the rate of that change, I learned about some different transfer methods of energy, namely kinetic energy, potential energy, and elastic potential energy. Kinetic energy is the energy a body has by virtue of motion and is calculated by dividing the product of the mass and the square of the velocity by 2. The gravitational potential energy of a body is found by the product of the mass of the body, the acceleration due to gravity, and its height above a given reference level. elastic potential energy is potential energy associated with elastic materials and is found with the equation PEe=1/2 k(x*x) in which k is the spring constant and x is the displacement. All these transfer methods of energy can be related with work using the work energy theorem. This Theorem states that the net work done on a body is equal to the change in energy of that body, which basically means that Work=change in KE=change in PE. I could then use all these equations to solve problems in which I was given portions of any equation, put them all together and come up with an answer.

The only thing I have found difficult in this unit was when we got into conservation of energy and had problems in which we were figuring out velocity and only being given mass force and displacement. It ocnfused me to come up with the equation for the of the final energy but once I did that I was able to solve the problem much more easily

I feel my problem solving skills have gotten better in this unit, just as they have in units past. The problems we get require us to use critical thinking bacuse not all of them can be approached the same way, and the more practice I have gotten at solving these problems the better my skills have become.


Part B:

The things we learned about conservation of energy are very relevant in real life situations. For example, te physics principles of the conservation of energy are clearly demonstrated in roller coasters. when you are at the top of a ridge in the roller coaster you have x amount of potential energy. When you go down, at the halfway point you have the same amount of energy but now half of it is kinetic and half potential. the instat before the tracks level out and you are almost at ground level, you still have the same amount of energy that you had at the top but now it is all kinetic energy as you are moving (except for a small amount that is internal energy due to friction). Roller coasters clearly show the law of the conservation of energy and demonstarte that energy is only stored in different ways, it does not change forms and is neither created nor destroyed.

physics and Recoil Voki

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Dyanmics Application: How is Newton's third law responsible for recoil?

this is a Glog I created to show how recoil is attributed to Newton's third law of Motion. The glog explains why there is recoil and it also talks about why bigger and more powerful guns have more recoil.

edited Dynamics application Glog

N2L and friction reflection

In this unit I learned about Newton's second law of motion and about the force of friction. Newton's second law states the for a particular force, the acceleration of the object is proportional to the net force and inversely proportional to the mass of the object. The direction of the force is the same as that of the acceleration. In equation form this is simply: F=m(a). I learned how to apply the knowledge of the second law to determine mass and value of forces when an object is accelerating. When calculation the sum of the forces for an object that is accelerating just set the sum equal to ma instead of zero. I also learned about apparent weight and discovered that the apparent weight of a body is the force the body exerts on whatever it is resting on. Another thing I learned about is pulley systems and add wood machines. This is where there are two connected objects hung over a pulley, with one possibly resting on a table. I was able to create net force equations for these systems and then find the value of different variable. The final thing I learned about was the force of friction, I learned how to calculate friction and the coefficient of friction (expressed in mu). To solve for variables in these types of problems we used equations from both kinematics and dynamics.

What I have found difficult about what we have studied is the problems containing the coefficient of friction. In these problems you use equations from this unit and the last. Sometimes the answer is not apparent at first but when you keep substituting you are able to cancel out variables. I feel that as I get more practices with these types of problems I will be more comfortable solving them.

My problems solving skills are good in my opinion, and I feel that they have improved over this last unit. During this unit I have had to look at not just what we are learning currently but equations that we learned in the beginning of the year. I had much larger set of possibilities from which I had to choose the rights way to solve the problem. I think I have gotten better at doing this and I look foreword to more opportunities to hone my problem solving skills as the year progresses.

Inertia

Part A

In this unit I learned about the first of Newton's three laws of Motion. Newton's first law is stated as: "An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force."Derived from Newton's first law is the concept of translational equilibrium. Translational equilibrium only occurs when the vector sum of the forces acting upon a body is zero, this is a statement of Newton's first law of Motion for objects at rest or moving in a straight line at a constant velocity. We can use translational equilibrium to calculate the magnitude of the forces acting on an object because equilibrium can find out the sum of the forces in each axis and set them equal to zero (because the vector sum of the forces is zero). Using this concept you can solve problems, for example if you are given the applied force, the mass, and the angle of the applied force to the horizontal you can calculate ∑Fx and ∑Fy and set them equal to zero to obtain the values of the other forces. 

What I had trouble with most was determining the x and y components of certain forces because I couldn't decide whether it should be the F sin theta or F cosine theta. Before, I assumed that the y component would always be sin because it was the vertical component and the x component, which is the horizontal component, would always be cosine. When I did these problems, I realized that the relation was geometric. I found out that if you are calculating the force that is opposite from the angle you use sin (SOH opposite/hypotenuse) and if the you are calculating the component of the force that is adjacent to the angle then you use cosine (CAH adjacent/hypotenuse). Whether to use sin or Cosine has nothing to do with which component you are calculating (x or y, vertical or horizontal), it only has to do with its relation to the angle of the force.

My problem solving skills have drastically improved since the start of the year, and I feel that this unit has also contributed to my ability to look at each problem from a number of different perspectives to find the appropriate solution. At first, the problems seemed very difficult, but as I wrote out my data and drew a FBD I realized that the solution was not as difficult as it initially seemed.

Part B

What we have learned is very important in the real world. For example, forces and angle must be taken into consideration when baby car seats are manufactured. to make sure the baby does not fly foreword when the car is braked, the manufacturers strap the baby into the seat tight enough to offset inertia. Another example is the runaway truck ramps on free ways with steep gradients. If a truck is moving on a plane that is inclined downwards and its brakes fail it continue in motion unless and unbalanced force acts on it. The emergency ramp serves as that unbalanced force because it is slanted upwards enough to slow the truck to a stop.

an example of a runaway truck ramp