How many? part I

As i was sitting in my room thinking of PCH I realized there are a lot of monkeys in my room. This blog will be part one of a x amount of blogs series called how-many-monkeys-I-have-in-my-room blogs.

Today we will be looking at a rather curious monkey i received from family fair a couple of years ago(one of the better prizes). This particular monkey has two springs for arms and hangs on my mirror/closet door. In the first picture the monkey is in equilibrium because its weight is equal to the two componentized spring forces . When no outside forces are acting on it, the net force on the monkey is zero.



In the Next picture I pulled the monkey down away from equilibrium so that it has spring potential energy upwards. Since the monkey will travel upwards once I release it, the amount of spring force is greater than the weight.



Once the monkey reaches the top part of its amplitude, the spring potential energy maxes out but in the downward direction. Thus the net force is the weight and the spring force going in the downward direction. Here ends part I of the monkeys series.











PS Notice any holday activities u might want to go see

Extreme HULIing

This past Thursday was a very windy day. For those of you who failed to notice this, basically, fail. One of the most noticeable effects of the wind and rain was the massive (for Waikiki) waves at Waikiki Beach. Although I was given the chance to paddle with the Varsity guys, mainly because everyone else above me wasn't there for unknown reasons(e.g. theatre, sick, robotics, didn't want to, drafted elsewhere, run swimming, missed the bus, etc.), the waves still looked pretty discouraging. AS we paddled through the channel, our boat started taking on a lot of waves. In a few seconds our boat was completely filled and we were forced to bail out. Our boat's mass increased, but our volume stayed the same, so our density increased. Thus our boat started to sink.

very long swim


Now the physics part comes in as we tried, in vain to huli our boat (For non-paddlers huli means to flip it.) After forty or so attempts at flipping the boat it became obvious that the buoyancy force wasn't significant enough to hold the boat up and allow us to bail out the water. The equation Fb=pVg meant that our mass was somehow different because the volume of the boat was still the same. After about an hour of flipping swimming the boat out and flipping some more, the waves proved too much for our crew, two kayakers, and another crew to flip over our one boat. As we decided to swim back to shore, I was stuck with the job of supporting the water-filled back because i was the swimmer. I realized that the back was water-filled when the rest of the boat would ride the wave and it would sink far below it. So on the day of the buoyancy test, buoyancy seemed to be against me in the classroom and at practice.

Christmas parade on Black Friday

Every year on Black Friday, my lion dance association would participate in the Liliha-Palama parade. Why a Christmas parade has two different lion dance groups performing isn't the problem. The problem this parade was the massive amounts of wind we had this weekend. The Force of the Wind (let's call FTW) was strong enough that it almost overcame the force I applied to my Lion (FML). AS the FTW increased I found it harder to keep my lion head up with sufficient FML. So in response to the FTW I applied a rotational force in order to maybe get some tangential acceleration in the desired direction. The tangential acceleration force plus the FML was enough to overcome the FTW and allow me to move my head sideways against the chilly winds.



Lesson learned: If you raise a kite-like object, whether or not it has mass, it will behave like a kite and catch the wind. And I really wanted to got to the Cicadian rhythm presentation.:(

Away to Maunalani Nursing home

This weekend I went to read stories to the elderly with Iolani storytellers (Spoonful of Sugar)- why we read children stories to sleeping, Japanese-speaking, angry elderly is beyond me. The drive there is actually pretty precarious. The path I took up the mountain was Wilhelmina Rise, which was a pretty steep straight road. Only around the top did I notice that the sign for Sierra Drive was reoccurring very frequently. Only when I arrived at the nursing home did it hit me that Sierra Drive was a smoother, winding path up the mountain. Feeling rather dumb for taking the steeper, narrower path, I was reminded by the physics term of work.
Work in Physics is defined as the amount of force used over a distance. I almost did the same amount of work going up the steep path than I would've on Sierra road, because the increase in force on the stupid path is compensated by a decrease in distance traveled. Moral of the story is, if you want to punish your grandparents and put them in at Maunalani nursing home(or any nursing home), take the flatter way up the mountain to avoid climbing it.

go around not up

Real Life LAB

On Friday after we finished the rod lab, I hung out in the room to kill the remaining 10 minutes of class. I mean how much homework could I have significantly done in 10 minutes. I started trying to do the ruler lab with the foo rulers, but realised eventually that the non-flatness of the rulers prevented them from stacking perfectly. I then turned my attention to the meter sticks. No one was using them so I grabbed the three that were out and the remaining nine to attempt the lab in real life. AS I started balancing the rulers, each bottom one meeting midway of the top weight, i eventually realised that this was going to be epic! I started having the distance, but soon reached the point where the rulers couldn't be aligned up perfectly with the half, so I did what every good physicist does. I eyeballed it. When I finally stacked up the ten rulers to the utmost balance, I started pushing the bottom ruler out slowly. A centimeter and a time. After several minutes, I reached the gold metal part of the ruler and couldn't push it forward anymore without risking tipping over my beautiful tower of rulers. So there stands my creation extending at 172cm off away from the table!

Luce physics

First of, I want to thank all of you who came to support IDP's production of A Commedia of Errors! We raised over $4.00 x 10^3!!! But for those of you who didn't come, Ihopeyoufallinapitanddie, but anyways you guys won't understand what I am about to say, or the title of the post for that matter. In the play, Dromio of Ephesus has a large kitchen wench called Luce. When the two Dromio of Syracuse ends up guarding Antipholus of Ephesus's door, The two Dromios have a battling out over entrance. When, a midst the arguments, Luce shows up inquiring to know what's going on, she mistakes Dromio of Syracuse to be her husband and the Dromio outside to be a lolygagger...lollygagger...lollygager...trickster.

In this picture Luce attempts to bar the door shut using her extremely rotund hindquarters. As she thrusts out towards the door, she has to remain stationary, so she has to thrust out her huge "assets" as well. This obeys the conservation of momentum, since the slightly lighter upper side moves in the opposite direction and faster speed than the lower portion in order to keep the overall momentum 0.

As seen in the equation Mb(Vb)+ Ma(Va)=0
Mb= mass of the arse, Vb= velocity of the hindquarters
Ma=Mass of Luce's "assets", Va= velocity of Luce's "assets"

Halloween knife trick...

For those of you who are among the many that didn't come to the Homecoming dance on Saturday, probably due to trick-or-treating, I brought a...*pleading fifth amendment*. Anyways this... thing was used multiple times that night, which almost had a full moon by the way. After stabbing multiple people, one of the weaker dying ones saidd that the "stab" really hurt. It didn't bother me then, but now i have to blog about what i did this weekend. So in the terms of impulse, there was a larger J on the person- let's call him Freddie- due to the fact there was a larger force applied in the same amount of time. Now recall J=F*T , that means Freddie's liver and heart experienced a rather larger J causing him to experience more pain. In this picture you will notice blade is still outside of Freddie mailnly because of the smaller F applied, but in the second one the knife made a completly inelastic collison with Freddie resulting in his immense pain. The larger force spread its momentum to the more of the other cells resulting in freddie experiencing more of this pain sensation.



*Subtle message in the pictures. can you find it?

Physics at the beach

During class day at Kailua, we all had lots of fun, some more or less than others. While I was pondering over whether that stinging on my arm was a jellyfish or a sunburn, my toe made contact with a rock, scratching it with immense pain. Later I discovered two good Samaritans pulled the rock out of the water and discovered a crab! An as they raised that crab menacingly up to me, i was struck by how that crab's former home changed my foots momentum. As I was walking through the water, I was at a somewhat, sorta, kinda, in a sense, moving at a constant speed. When I struck the rock the impulse of the impact causes a quick change in momentum, thus resulting in a large change in force leading to my toe being stricken with pain. If I took my time before kicking the crab's home i would've experienced less force on my toe and the crab probably would still be at rest at the bottom of the beach.

After about 12hours or so at school on Saturday, Advance Theater had its production of a collection of children stories to a bunch of over-sugared, over-excited little kids. In one of my costumes for Puss in Boots, I was dressed up as an ogre and Hanul graced my humble costume with his magnificent drawings. As I looked at the snake he drew on my arm, I realized it is like a spring. As a massive force was applied to the snake, there was a change in its position along the x-axis (or the y-axis in this case). The large net force continued to act on the snake until another incredible force balanced it out. When these two large forces cancel each other out the snake spring is in a position where it can't be compressed anymore. This equilibrium point is not the spring equilibrium, but the point where the two great forces cancel each other out. Oh the performance was great, with only one little girl scared to tears (sorry).

Dragon Corkscrew

As I looked at the some of the tricks we perform for dragon dance, I realized how friction plays a factor in reducing energy. The dragon to the left shows that as the dragon coil circles down the line, the energy decreases due to friction and the overall circle gets smaller. The decrease in the height of the dragon is due to the decrease in change of potential energy. The friction between the air and the dragon causes the players in the back to encounter more force against their motions. As the spiral moves along the dragon's length, the distance of friction acting on the dragon increases, while the work stays the same. But evident in the decreasing size of the spiral, there is a decrease in overall energy of the system due to friction, air resistance, and the guys in the back being tired out. They were probably tired out from doing the other work double ten weekend requires.

Moon festival lion dance

This weekend was August 15 on the lunar calendar and thus Chinese celebrate the annual moon festival. Zhongqiujie,中秋节, is one of the most celebrated holidays in the Chinese calendar because it was during this time the Chinese farmers gathered their harvest in the light of a new moon. During the reign of the Yuan dynasty by Mongols, Chinese rebels spread message of a revolt through the moon cake, and on the night of the moon festival, villagers slit the throats of all the barbarian soldiers and gained their independence.
In order to celebrate the moon festival, my lion dance group held our annual party complete with lion dance. One of the tricks can be seen to the right, when the head player is lifted by the tail player to make the lion taller. The top performer experiences a tremendous net force upwards in order to be lifted 6 feet off the ground. The potential energy of the head player increases, while the normal force exerted on the tail player increases.

Water Polo physics 101

water polo was disappointing this week. We lost to Kamehamaha and they were probably the worst team we played thus far. Come on its simply drive down and shoot down at an angle below the horizontal not like how Baba is doing to the left by passing it above the horizontal at an angle. I mean come on the goalie wasn't much of a reaction force against the net force of the ball, but we still managed to miss a ton of shots because we didn't shoot and pass as well.
Speaking of PASSING we need to throw the ball so that it only goes up the y-axis about as high as a foot above the receiver's head. Kam guys were passing so-so and didn't even have a lot of force when they shot, yet still won by 4. Seriously is it so much to ask to drive down the pool and push up on defense, like the normal force to their mass x gravity.

STRESS!!!

After 3.6 weeks of self-inflicted strain in multiple courses, AP Physics remains my strongest class. Hopefully the rest of the year will refrain from the three hardest classes having tests 3 days in a row. But the literal pain of these courses will soon be the norm and can start achieving those higher grades. PCH is going to be the primary focus, since the work in this class is more manageable than the confusion in that.
I cannot wait till the end of the year when both of my APs are done and I can focus on PCH. When all the agony from these classes are over, if I live that long, I will probably sleep a week or so from the crash. There is going to be a lot more anxiety for the future tests, and I predict many more people will stay in the room on evens as the year slowly drags on. I think this should be just about one hundred fifty characters doc.