Unit 1 Blog Reflection

Unit 1 was a very intriguing unit, we started off with Newtons 1st Law, which covers the idea of inertia, or the tendency of things to resist changes in motion. Newton said that an object in motion or at rest will remain in that state unless acted on by an outside force. This force in its most simple form could just be a push or pull. Force can be gravitational, electrical, magnetic, or simply a muscular effort. So, you're probably wondering what its called when more than one force acts upon an object? Or maybe not, but it is called the net force. When an object is at rest or moving at a constant speed it has a net force of zero which means that the object is at EQUILIBRIUM. Once we understood these concepts we moved on to learning what exactly is going on when something is in motion. Well, there are a few things that one can take into account, like the distance an object traveled and how long it took it to get there (this = speed or distance/time), the direction something is moving and the speed at which it is moving (velocity), or the accleleration of an object (change in velocity). Acceleration is found by the equation a = change in velocity/ time interval. Once you find the acceleration you can plug it into the how far and how fast equations. The how fast equation helps you find what velocity something has by using the acceleration and time (the equation is, v=at). Lastly, the how far equation uses acceleration and time to find the distance in meters that an object traveled [the equation is, d=1/2a(t squared)]. This unit had some things that were fairly hard to get a complete grasp on. Such as, the fact that when something has decreasing acceleration, the object will still be increasing in speed. Because, normally when someone thinks of acceleration they think of speed, so one assumes that because the acceleration decreases the speed decreases. But that is just not the case. I believe that this unit has helped my problem solving skills. It has taught me that even when you don't exactly know the answer you must take your time and think about it in order to understand it. Try to figure out what exactly it's talking about, and what is the most efficient way to reach the answer. Physics has a lot of conceptual aspects, so you really must learn to think things through when answering questions. One connection I have made is between physics and precalculus. When you roll a ball at a constant velocity each interval of time, let's say each half second, the distance between where the ball was and where it is when you record the time goes up by the same amount each time. Meaning that this can be represented by a linear equation, and can be graphed by using a scatter plot. This means, I'm learning physics and precalculus at the same time!

Physics 2011: may the force be with us

This upcoming year in physics I would like to learn the main principles of physics and exactly what physics is all about. Coming into this class I pretty much have no idea what to expect or even what i'm going to be learning about, but I hope by the end of the course I will have a solid undertstanding of the concepts we will be learning. Physics has a lot of real world implications, I mean basically everything has some sort of physics applied to it. That is why I think it is very important to learn about physics, because it helps one get a better understanding of the things going on around them. Coming into physics this year the only questions I have are what exactly are we going to be studying and does are we going to be doing many projects throughout the course of the year? Some of the goals I have for physics this year are to most importantly recieve good grades, but to also make sure I have a complete grasp of the information taught during this course.