"We Represent the Lollipop League"

Cutting the balloons off of their ribbons.

Cutting slits to make inhalation faster.

End products of our music videos.

This weekend we went to Nicole's baby shower where there were super fun games, good food, and of course, balloons decorating the place. So, of course, as teenagers, Elysia, Erika, Laurie, and I sucked up some helium and made our voices squeaky. Up until this past week I wouldn't have thought anything of it, other than pure fun, but now, after a week of learning about sound, I realized that it's physics! We get such squeaky, high pitched voices because the air around our vocal cords is changed by the helium gas which is lighter than our usual oxygen/nitrogen blend that we use when we talk/sing. The lighter helium gas causes the natural resonance of our vocal tract to change, creating a faster vibration, which results in a higher pitch than normal. Too much inhalation of helium can be dangerous, i.e. making breathing hard, but a little bit once in a while is (hopefully) innocuous. In these brief moments where we were under the influence of helium, we managed to make a few music videos, the one above was the best one, I wonder if that was really how they got the Lollipop League to sound like that...?

Electric Meter

Work It, Jesse!

I know that this journal entry is a week late, but I hope these videos will make up for it. Here we have Jesse making himself happy...by creating current and light! The big coils of conductive wire were attached to an ampmeter, and when Jesse moved the coils in and out of the horseshoe magnet a current was created that we could see on the ampmeter, and also in the bulb that apparently lit up for a brief moment. The change in the magnetic field inside the coil as it moved in and out of the space between the poles of the horseshoe magnet induced an emf that caused a current. This phenomenon is called "motional electromagnetic induction: Moving a wire through a magnetic field induces an emf." Current flows because "the motion of the wire causes the electrons in it to be moving in a magnetic field, and the magnetic field exerts a force on the moving electrons that is directed along the wire." The faster Jesse moved the coil in and out of the magnet, the more current he produced. Alex couldn't do it because he didn't have as much energy as Jesse did. Jesse was apparently able to create enough current to make the tiny bulb light up, but I was recording so I didn't get to see it :( . There are four factors which affect the emf:

"1. The strength of the magnetic field. The stronger the field, the greater the change in field strength as the loops move by, and the greater the induced emf.

2. The speed of the wire relative to the magnetic field. The faster one passes by the other, the greater the emf.

3. The area of the loops. The greater the area enclosed by each loop, the greater the emf.

4. The number of loops of wire. Increasing the number of loops increases the total area through which the field passes. This, too, increases the induced emf."

I hope you found the videos entertaining and the entry informative! =)

Sorry it's so late, Mr. Kohara. :)))

Baking Time!

Once again, I only just realized that we had a physics journal due over this long, three day weekend. Luckily, I didn't realize this at 11:30 pm like I usually do, and I had some time to look through all of my pictures. I don't know where my camera charger went, so I couldn't take any new physics pictures, shucks. However, I noticed a baking/birthday theme in my pictures and decided to go with it! I looked at our online textbook, and found that heat is thermal energy transferred between objects because of a difference in their temperatures. Energy flows from the object with the higher temperature (the hot oven coils) to an object with a lower temperature (the dough for cookies, cakes, or cupcake mixtures). This heat (measured in joules by physicists) causes the dough to rise, and we get the yummy treats you see up there! I think most of them were yummy, I'm not sure about Julia's cake with the real flowers, toothpicks, foil, and what looks like toothpaste on it, though. But it's the thought that counts (thanks Julia!).

The Power of the FORCE (fields)

Once again, I realized at a very late point in time that we had a journal due this weekend. Searching through my pictures and racking my brain for new concepts we learned in physics, I came upon a birthday candle from Elysse Tom's birthday at California Pizza Kitchen when we were in 9th grade or so. I just went to another birthday dinner tonight with a similar singular candle in celebration of the birthday girl's special day, however, I did not take a picture of it as I did here. In any case, as I came upon this picture I remembered when we talked about force fields in class. When Mr. Kohara turned on the light bulb in class, there was a definite "glow" around the glass of the bulb, which we identified as the light's force field. Even when we could no longer see the tiny rays of light emitting from the bulb, they were still there, going on forever and ever.

So that I would keep with the pattern of my other journals, I tried to look for a number of other pictures to show an example of force fields. I came upon one where I was taking random pictures at Chili's, and one of them happened to be of the various lights, torches, and neon signs that Chili's has. I'm not sure if the "glow" is a result of the force field, or of a slightly shaky camera, but I thought this was an example. Another picture which I really liked was the first picture, which is of a scoreboard of an 'Iolani against, perhaps, Punahou game, in which we won! This must have been a basketball game, it was probably 3 years ago or so. In this picture, the rows of lights making up the numbers on the scoreboard have force fields which can be seen by the various red and green glows being emitted from the numbers.

Good thing I take pictures of such random things! And GREAT thing I take physics so I can analyze them so thoroughly! =D

The Phsyics of Kicks

This past weekend, as I was wasting time before going to work, I was looking at all of my pictures from this school year. I came upon the pictures above are of Erika, Gavin, Jon, Jon, and Me when we went out to the soccer field to kick around the ball. I had no idea we had to do a physics journal this weekend until Erika told me so, and before I knew this I was actually looking at the pictures of us kicking the ball with a physics eye! I recalled in class when Mr. Kohara attempted to demonstrate how a system's angular momentum is "zero" as long as there is no outside torque acting on it. The demonstration was slightly convincing, as he threw a football and told us to watch his feet, and even made Grant and Gavin do it to prove that he wasn't just exaggerating it for the sake of physics. Although I could see what he meant I never fully believed it until I came upon our pictures and realized how when we kicked the ball, our arms went in the opposite direction. Even when Gavin was heading the ball in the last picture, his left leg sticks out behind him. I'm not sure if that's an example of angular momentum being "zero," but it seems like it! Or, at least, he's trying to balance his forward movement of his upper body with the lifting of his leg, thus being an example of center of mass and how different positions change where the center of mass is, causing Gavin to feel the need to use his left leg to compensate his header. I just realized why we would need to keep our angular momentum at "zero" (I never realized it before), because if we didn't we would keep on going in the direction we were spinning! Like momentum, once you get some angular momentum, you tend to keep it. Without our upper body spinning the opposite way, we would keep on spinning in the same direction after the kick! Wow I finally get why helicopters need both rotors! Thanks, Physics! :)

ChristMas Tree CM

Today my dad, my mom, and I carried up our 8-9 foot noble fir chrismtas tree from my garage up the stairs and into my living room. When we got there after much struggling on my dad's part, and relatively little on mine, we had to put the christmas tree into its stand. Our first concern was that the trunk of the huge tree wouldn't fit into the stand, however, that fear was quickly abated when it fit fine, however, soon after we discovered that making the tree stand straight up and keeping it there would be our real problem. After many"1-2-3 lift"s in efforts to screw the tree in straight, we came to the conclusion that the tree was too topheavy to stand on its own. In the second picture you might be able to see how we kept the tree up, by tying a fishing wire from the tree's trunk to a nearby window shutter. That solution worked, as the tree is still standing now. But why did we have to resort to this barbaric form of tree standing? Because the tree's center of mass must have been out of the range of the tree stand's support area. If the tree's CM had been within the support area of the stand we would not have had to use the fishing wire. Now that the tree is up, the next problem is how to decorate that wire to make it less obvious. Any suggestions?