Phinal Physics Phun (the one you've been waiting for)

Finally it's the end of a good year and it's time for the blog yo have been waiting for. *drum roll* The Hair-combing blog. Now doc! mentioned at the beginning of this weekly chore that we could do anything we want including brushing our hair. Now I am here to discuss this physical activity that involves electrostatics, kinematics and optics. In the Electrostatics arena combing one's hair is similar to brushing electrons off of atoms to create and electrical difference. Now the reason brushing our hair with a comb doesn't create a shock like rubbing latex against it is the fact that the plastic combs people use now a days cannot create an electrical imbalance due to the nonconductivity of the material.
In regards of kinematics, hair combing creates two-three-dimensional forces. If was brushing short hair as seen above, the comb creates a torque on each individual strand of hair with the base of the strand a a pivot. If one was brushing longer hair, the comb would create tension and friction within the hair follicles.


The third area of hair physics is the optical effects of hair. Hair tends to have a nice sheen to it when brushed properly (easier to see in longer hair). This effect is similar to a butterfly's thin-film wings since a single strand is slightly reflective. A bunch of the strands perfectly aligned create a reflective surface where light bounces off and makes the hair appear to shine on its own different colors. AS the light bounces off and has different amount of path differences, different colors appear. Well until next year doc! this will be my last words.

Rock Band Physics

On Saturday as I was hanging out with my lion dance friends, we were playing Rock Band, pool and poker. Now as I watch my friend sink the eight ball to lose, I noticed how the horribly the singer was on the mic. I realized then and there that this is similar to the harmonic motion of sound waves. Due to his vocal cords vibrating, the voice coming out of his mouth was horribly out of tune. The difference between the wavelengths in sound cause what is known as dissonance. This scratchy sound was then picked up by the receiver in the mic, which converts sound energy into different currents of electrical energy to tell the Xbox what to do.

Apparently Rock band is tone deaf because it only measured the big differences in pitch and not the dissonance. This raises the question why was I out at eleven in Chinatown with friends when exams are coming? I am preparing to sell apples in Waikiki.

Truck Physics

This weekend my lion dance group had to go pay respects to our late sigong, over the Pali at Hawaii memorial cemetery. On the way there some of us were sitting on the back of a Chevy Silverado. AS I was sitting there, I realized that the wind was blowing really hard against my face. Now the frame of reference from my pint of view was that that I was stationary while the wind was blowing, but in reality the truck was accelerating at at about 15mph/s for three seconds from a still. As I sat there I realized I had a revelation: I needed to do a blog. I saw how my had would feel differently depending on how I held it in the wind. Now assuming the wind is moving (or I am moving) at a constant acceleration each time I took the photo, the air pressure against my hand would be constant. Now the experiment comes from varying surface area acting against this constant pressure in AP=F to determine the amount of drag force.
An open had has about .022 meter squared,


a closed hand has about .0066 square meters,

and a flat hand has an area of .001. As the area becomes smaller the force acting on my hand would become smaller and smaller. This is why cars are designed to have minimum surface area to face oncoming wind drag.

1 scrip for 1 malasada

A while back in electrostatic, doc! told us the story of when we grow up to sell apples in waikiki for 5 cents an apple. Well that moment might be closer than you think. This past weekend at Iolani Fair I noticed a sign for the junior's malasada booth. The sign you see below is the price board for malasadas in differnet quantites. Now the original purpose of the apple story was to say that the electric potential of a particle was one Newton per coulomb. These particles in space have verying amounts o electro poential depending on where the charge is placed in space. If the charge were placed closer to the particle the elctic potnetial would go up. But the amount of force acting on the particle would increse with the charge of the particle to maintain the certain Newton per coulomb ratio in the electric potential. This picture shows that story by illustrating that no matter how many malasadas one buys, it will always be one malasada for one scrip. Pretty darn stupid.

Me magical physics Stick!

This past Friday after the robotics team demonstrated their bot for the PSA, we started fixing up the robot to prepare it for family fair demonstrations. AS we combed the bosch for miscellaneous loose or broken parts we stumbled upon a stick. Now this "stick" was a decorative neon light that was placed near the front of the bot.



As you can see the inside of the neon light was broken, but it still demonstrates many properties on why it is the magical physics stick. First off notice that the wire forms a spring. The spring was created from wrapping the wire tightly around the tube and then untangling it to form a thing of harmonic motion. Next is the solenoid properties of a spring made of wire. A solenoid is a tightly wrapped coil carrying a current in one direction. If one was to run a current in one direction through these wires a magnetic field could be created flowing in one direction on the inside. Now this couldn't possibly happen in real life due to the duel nature of the wire carrying the "in" and "out" current

The last property of the magical physics stick is the refraction caused by the glass all around the tube. As light passes through a material of higher index it causes the light to bend as well as diffract. One example ids how the wire hole from inside of the glass seems to be higher then where the wires actually come out. Another observation is how the inside of the cube end forms total internal refraction by reflecting the light off its inside and preventing it from being completely transparent. So these are the properties of me magical physics stick.

Cool Magnet toys

This past Saturday after the AP English workshop me and a couple of other special individuals went to chill in doc!'s room. As I walked around waiting for a functional computer, I stumbled upon a rather cool toy. It was a bunch if individual magnetic balls that were about gram each.

I started experimenting with these balls by rolling them on the table by swinging a chain magnetic balls creating a fluctuating magnetic field. In response to the rotating field the stationary ball started rolling in the towards the chain till it eventually flies up and catches on.

In another experiment I mounted the balls on the board and lo and behold the horizontal structure I formed didn't fall down despite the weight of the structure being like 70+ grams. When you think about it it makes sense, When the ball on the table had enough magnetic force to overcome its weight when it was about 10 cm away from the chain, 70 balls together would have an amazing amount of attractive force to each other and the board. Despite the weight on the ones further from the board pulling the entire structure down, the force between the force between the balls was strong enough to hold it all up. These are really cool doc!

By the way Bobby if you are reading this the labs are done and you don't need to go to Doc!'s room on Sunday

MOTGOR and friends

This past Saturday was the IDP's Dramathon. It was a solid 9 hours worth of fun laughs, drama, and talents. The 9 hours post-SAT helped little to relax my brain. Anyways the Dramathon ended with the performance of two bands. The first band was Micah and his friend whose name escapes me. The Second band came from the forge of Valhalla to bring the godly gift of rock to us mortal humans, MOTGOR. After blowing away the crowd (quite literally after they started the first song), they invited Micah and friend to jam with them in their last song. With the combined might of the three guitars, one bass, one set of drums, and one singer, the sound wave overcame the first few rows, even the some of us wearing earplugs. It then occured to me as Anders ripped away at his guitar that the reason they are so loud is because the sound wave from each guitar adds more amplitude to the existing sound wave of the one guitar. AS such the sound of 5 musical instruments blasting away makes a loud end to a tiresome day.

MOTGOR!