Blogpost #14

This week, we had an egg drop experiment in which we had to create a device that would protect a regular sized egg from an approximately four story drop to cement. Creating a good device depended heavily upon the basic aspects of physics. Impulse, air friction, force, and mass all had to be taken into account. The video above depicts the device created by my partner and me being thrown off of Akahi Dining Hall. We wrapped the egg in a strip of tempur pedic mattress and placed it in an empty jar, along with cotton balls. We then placed the sealed jar in a ziploc filled with more cotton balls and surrounded by bubble wrap. Our idea was that all our materials would absorb most the impact of the device colliding with the ground, which would keep the egg safe. We had to be sure that it wouldn't bounce too, because that would put more force on the egg. In the end, our egg survived. 

Blogpost #13

This weekend, my dorm went camping. So, I brought shampoo and conditioner in two identical (except in color) containers. However, the bottle containing conditioner (the one on the right)has more mass because there is a lot more conditioner in it, as opposed to the bottle containing shampoo. If I were to roll both bottles down a hill at the same velocity, the conditioner bottle would have a greater momentum. This can be deduced because the equation for momentum is momentum = mass times velocity, or p=mv. Since the conditioner bottle has a greater mass, its momentum would be greater than the shampoo bottle. 

Blogpost #12

The picture above depict two skateboards, with no wheels. Whoops. Anyway, let's pretend there are wheels on the skateboards. They are identical in every way except in that the second one has a mass (15 lbs) on it. If the first skateboard were to roll towards the second (at rest), then after the collision, the first would stop and the second would roll slowly in the same direction the first was moving in. This would be an inelastic collision because they would not stick together when they met. This would be similar to the experiment we conducted this week in our lab. 

Blogpost #11

The unit we're focusing on now mainly focuses upon momentum. Linear momentum is defined as the product of the mass m and velocity v of an object. To put it simply, momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of a specific object. This picture depicts two apples, the one on the left slightly smaller than the one on the right. If these two apples were to be rolled at the same velocity, the momenta of the apples would be different from one another because they differ in mass.