Samuel Cox

Professor

Phys1010

9/1/2021

Application of Physis in your life

All these entries were made to show case what I learned and how they are applicable to

my everyday life. Included in these entries are specific examples of where in our life and world

physical principles are shown and why they happen.

Week 9/3. In Monday’s class we went over the syllabus and had some discussion on how

physics is everywhere in our everyday life. One classmate mentioned how our center of balance

comes from our eardrums, and apparently there is a way to make somebody become unbalanced

through sound. Forgot what it was called but it was a type of migraine. We can’t turn in

assignments late with out getting a 25% reduction per day, I wish assignments were due on

Sunday and not Friday. In Wednesday class we went over some history of physics like Aristotle

(384-322), Copernicus (1473-1543), Galileo (1564-1642), and Newton (1642-1727). Big

takeaway’s, concept of inertia, Galileo dropped things off buildings. Also quickly went over net

forces, vectors, and equilibrium.

Week 9/8. Didn’t have school on Monday because of Labor Day. We went over different

types of friction like coulomb and viscous friction. An everyday item we use that has viscous

friction would be coffee press, harder force harder friction, and lower force lower friction. Also
went over newton 2nd law acceleration fish sign force. Briefly went over acceleration and weight.

Something funny I learned was that in the us customary system they measure mass in Slugs.

Week 9/13. Class on Monday we went quickly went over newtons 3 laws. But a new

topic we went over was momentum. This was interesting its somewhat related to movement like

the continuation of it. The formula for momentum is mass times velocity. And if you have no

velocity, you have no momentum. Most intriguing thing we related it to was how a semitruck

and a regular car can have the same velocity but have completely different momentum. A

semitruck is about 16 times as heavy then a regular car, so they can be going the same speed but

the semitruck has 16 times as much momentum.

9/15 Wednesday. Today in class we went over different types of energy. There are quite a

few different types, but the ones we went over are work, potential, kinetic, and the idea of

conservation. Work is equal to force times distance. Potential is equal to weight times height.

Kinetic is equal to ½ mass times velocity squared. The most interesting topics we went over was

how many things are incredibly inefficient with energy in a mechanical perspective. Like how

cars are only 20% efficient, and that’s being nice. And often going faster is you end up using a

lot more energy. Like mass and you double speed, going twice as fast you are using 4 times as

much energy.

9/20 Monday. We started off going over how the exam on Wednesday will go. With

review on everything that will be on it which took quite a bit of time. Class had to talk about

conservation of momentum again, confusing concept, very dependent on situation. After review

we went over rotational momentum (new). Great example he related it to are vinal records. The

quality of the track gets worse the closer you get to the center; this is because the record has less

space to play songs in the same amount of time.

 9/22 Wednesday. Had our first exam in class.

9/27 Monday. Had review over our first exam, remember friction is dissipative work.

Went over rotational motion again. Most of our stability comes from center of mass. Centripetal

force was a new topic to learn, velocity squared times radius of turn. Very easy to relate to

turning in car, faster you go more force u have and bigger radius (wider turn) less force.

9/29 Wednesday. Went over gravitational pulls and how everything that has mass has

gravity. And the universe has gravitational constant which is G=6.67*10^-11 with units of

N*m^2/kg^3. One of the biggest concepts to understand is that the bigger the radius gets the

smaller the gravitational force. And the closer the objects the greater the force. The moon has in

of mass to create a gravitational pull on the earth’s waves. And black holes have such great and

condensed mass, even light cant escape its gravitational pull.

10/4 Monday. Went over projectile motion in class. Simple concept, horizontal and

vertical velocity/acceleration are independent from each other. This concept is important for

satellites once they get in of velocity and go outside the atmosphere they will go at a constant

velocity since there’s no air in space. And gravity won’t bring it back to earth because the

velocity is keeping it in orbit.

10/6 Wednesday. Talked about atoms in class, a little surprising to me I thought atoms

were more related to chemistry. Atoms have the nickname of “building blocks” cause they some

of the smallest things we know that make our world. One of the biggest take a way’s I got was

that mass and weight are not related. A good example is hydrogen and helium, hydrogen only

has one proton and helium has two. Even though helium has twice as many protons it’s still

smaller than hydrogen.

 10/11 Monday. An important term we learned is density. Density is equal to mass divided

by volume. With way molecules are arranged in states of matter something easy to say is solids

are in extreme order and gasses are in extreme chaos. Next big topic was elasticity, and 2 big

terms for it are tension and compression. Tension is force apart and compression is force

together.

10/13 Wednesday. Went over pressure. Unit of measure is pascal (metric). Pressure is

equal to force over area. Stress is equal to how much pressure to something can take before it

breaks. Air pressure decrease is altitude, since there are less molecules the higher you go. The

reason a water bottle explodes on airplane is because when there is less air pressure, the

molecules in the water bottle have more space to move so they expand making the water bottle

explode. Principle of floatation. A floating object displaces a weight of the fluid equal to its

weight.

10/18 Monday. Class held online. Did not attend.

10/20 Wednesday. Took exam in class, don’t know how I did. But have hope I did good.

10/25 Monday. Learned about calories and Calories, don’t know why they chose the

same word for two different amounts. But a calorie is how much heat it takes to change a gram

of water by one degree Celsius. 1 calorie is equal to 4.19 Joules. Also went over how most things

expand when heated and condense when cold (big exception of water). An interesting thing you

can see everyday that relates to this is power lines. In the summer power lines are much droopier

then compared to the winter.

10/27 Wednesday. We discussed about heat transfer in class. There are three main ways

it’s done conduction, convection, and radiation. Lots of talk about conduction which is heat
transfer through surface contact. Q=KA (deltaT/deltaX). All materials have a different thermal

conductivity. Copper is 400 and iron is 230, you may sometimes see copper bottoms on

pots/pans and that’s because it has a higher thermal conductivity. Now diamonds are interesting,

they have a thermal conductivity of 2300. Anything completely made of diamond would

immediately, become the same temperature of what its in contact with.

11/1 Monday. Convection and the difference between free and forced. There will always

be free convection happening, and with forced convection it is really any outside wind force

acting on whatever. Also talked a little more about phase changes, with how temperature is a big

factor in this. A good example we can relate to is why we see water drops on our windows; this

is because of the temperature difference on the window. With a double pane window, you won’t

see as many droplets as with a single pane window.

11/3 Wednesday. Got our test scores back and reviewed the questions. Went over

different vaporization points for different elements. Some vaporization points are very small

which is why you never see the element as a liquid, such as helium. Also went into

thermodynamics again, first law is E1-E2=/\E. /\E is Q(heat) and W(work).

11/8 Monday. Learned about vibrations and waves. I now know what a HZ is, which is

the number of cycles in a wave that happen per second. A high energy one would be 330 and low

would be 82. Also briefly went into frames per second that the eye can see. LED lights don’t

lower its brightness, they just start flashing instead of being constantly on. The reason it looks

dim and not flashing is because it’s flashing faster than your eye can see.

11/10 Wednesday. Started off with transverse waves and longitudinal waves, they are

both how waves are made/transferred from a surface and have 90-degree difference from each
other. Learned how sonic booms work, Sound waves have a certain limit to how fast they can

travel. So, when a certain object goes faster then the waves of sound, it passes them and creates a

sonic boom. Once you make the sonic boom nothing else will happen if you continue going

faster.

11/15 Monday. Learned more about frequencies. Frequency is proportional to k constant

divided by mass. Resonance is when the forced frequency is matched to the natural frequency, a

good example of this is when you see in movies a fancy glass cup break because of the singer.

Also talked about musical tones and fundamental elements, they often interchange with each

other in the real world.

11/17 Wednesday. Class cancelled.

11/22 Monday. Electrostatics, which is electricity at rest. Positive and negatives are

attracted together. And two positives or negatives repel each other. Learned about what atoms

are. The nucleus is positive and surrounded by electrons. All electrons are identical, with protons

being 1800 times bigger. Atoms usually will have a zero net charge. An interesting fact on why

lightening never strikes the same place twice, is because where it struck before will be negatively

charged so it won’t ground at that spot like it wants to.

11/24 Wednesday. Learned about conductors and insulators. Conductors are conductive

because they lots of free electrons in outer shells, so electrons can move from atom to atom

easily. It’s like passing a torch down a line. Insulators do not have free electrons, so they are not

conductive. Nowhere for the electrons to flow. A super conductor has no resistance at all for

electrons to flow, only way to make a super conductor work is at zero degrees kelvin.

11/29 Monday. Online class.

 12/1 Wednesday. Learned about how light works. A reflection is just light bouncing off

whatever surface, almost everything is reflective to a degree. Learned about additive primary

colors, which are red, green, and blue. If you put all of them together you get white. The sun has

lower and higher frequencies, the lower frequencies happen when it takes longer for the sun to

reach earth. So, during the evening, we get lower frequencies and during noon we get higher

frequencies.

12/5 Monday. Went over famous scientists and their experiments that proved the

existence of certain things. Ernest Rutherford had a gold foil experiment where he proved an

atoms nucleus existed. He did this by shooting positive particles through a sheet of gold foil, and

if none of the particles bounced back there is no positive center. But because a small number of

particles reflected, that meant the bounced back from a positive core.

12/8 Wednesday. Got a better explanation of atomic structures and how atomic shells

work. When electrons jump from outer shells to inner shells it makes them emit light, and when

jumping form inner shells to outer there gaining energy. All electron shells do not gradually get

bigger but make jumps to bigger shells, very discrete.

Conclusion. All these entries show what I learned and how physics is involved in our

everyday lives. Physics is in everything we do, and how everything works. If you are curious on

how something works or why it happens, the answer will be found through physics.