Tides!

Tides are altered by the effects of the moon and sun which causes for the earth's water surface to change. These changes occur with the changing position of both the moon and the sun. Spring tides experience extreme high and extreme low tides with neap tides experiencing only moderate and average high and low tides. While in Venice Italy, many of the stores often have to deal with rising tides and worry about how the tides could one day "swallow up their stores." This is why the city of Venice builds concrete barriers to protect their precious property.

Lift Up The Bags

As we learned in physics class, balancing out weight distribution over the body is important in order to maintain balance. The same can be said when it comes to carrying or lifting up a backpack when rested upon one shoulder. When putting a heavy backpack on one shoulder, your body compensates that weight by lifting the opposite shoulder up. As seen in the pictures of my Dad on our past summer trip to Italy, their shoulders were semi leaning so as to compensate for the weight of their backpacks. The weight distribution resting upon each shoulder is different, so the body must compensate for this difference by shifting and altering the shoulder levels.

Open The Door With Torque

On most household doors, there are two points of torque. One with the turning of the handle to open and release the door and also the points of torque on the hinges which allow the door to move and open. While visiting Rome this past summer, the Roman Forum had many old but well maintained buildings which were used in old roman times as their democratic center. One of the buildings which I took a picture of had these large metal doors which were the originals (over 1000 years old)! They only however had one point of torque because the handle was only a pull handle so there was no torque at that point. On these doors, the point of torque was only on its hinges. As you can see though, as Mr. Kohara explained in class, the handles of the doors are placed on the opposite side of its hinges, so as to increase its lever arm distance, thus increasing its efficiency!

Merry Go Round

A couple years back, I went on a trip to Seattle to visit my Uncle Jack. While there, we went to a park where there was a merry go round in the center of the park. My sister wanted me to join her on the ride. Now looking at the pictures I realize that when the horse goes up, you are increasing your potential energy relative to the ground and when the horse goes back down, you are decreasing your potential energy. Your kinetic energy on the ride however stays constant, as there is no increase or relative decrease in speed.

Shoot the Charlie's in the Trees!

Another blog from Vietnam. At the end of the Cu Chi Tunnel Vietnam Tunnel Trails, our entire group was given the option of going to a live firing range and shooting real weapons. I chose to shoot an AK-47. What we recently learned in physics is the relationship of momentum (mass x velocity) and how in each situation, an equilibrium between objects must be met. Therefore, the firing of the bullets from the AK-47 has a small mass but a large velocity; because the AK-47 has a large mass, the recoil will be much less than the bullet (large mass, small velocity). This is why when shooting a gun, the gun pushes back in the opposite direction of the bullet. We can say that this action "equals" out the momentum equation.

For safety reasons, at the firing range in Vietnam, they anchored the guns down into the platform so that 1) people won't pick up the gun and start randomly shooting others 2) so that people won't get hurt with the gun recoil.

Pro-Bowl Shenanigans

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to have 50 yard line tickets to the Pro Bowl. My Dad knew one of the NFL's Director of Media Associates and she was kind enough to give us those free tickets. We were sitting right above John Madden and Al Michaels!

During the game I was fooling around with my Dad's camera and snapped this shot of the NY Giants punter. When I looked at the aftershot through the lens, I instantly thought...I'm gonna use this for my blog! When the punter drops the ball, it falls to the ground with gravity at a rate of 9.8 meters per second. This means that once the ball is dropped, he must quickly bring his leg forward to kick it before it hits the ground. That has to be fast. The ball falls to the ground at that rate of acceleration each second if you calculate out the resistance factor. After one second, the ball would have fallen 9.8 meters; after two, the ball would have fallen 19.6 meters.

Superbowl Commercial

Just like every American should, this past Sunday my dad and I watched the Superbowl. What was different about this year's one was the commercials right after the first half. For those we were instructed to "pull out those 3d glasses" for some intense fun! With these glasses, the picture seemed to be jumping out of the television set into my living room. How you may ask? Well, to confuse the brain and make it appear that it is seeing something in 3d, the television is actually projecting two sets of images from the set. Using the glasses helps to separate both of these images so that one eye will see the first image and the other will see the second. While 3d technology at first sounds very complicated, all it is doing is tricking the brain into seeing something that does not exist.