Physics is life, it is all around us in everything that we do. It is how things work, and is full of concepts that we encounter everyday. I can now understand the world better as I know that things aren't just random. Physics taught me that there is a reason for everything that happens in the world. Each having its own rules and methods to give the desired or specific result. I really did enjoy the class, it was both fun and challenging. You taught us very well and I learned more then I had expected. I really enjoyed this class because it focused on real life problems, and ultimately opened my eyes to a new way of thinking. I enjoyed the demos, activities, and labs as there we meaningful, thoughtful, and exciting. I really enjoyed the demos that you showed us throughout the term of physics. All the demos were interesting and many were pleasing to the eye. The showed many cool and unique things that related to life, but was also different in a way that it was new and exciting. I also enjoyed the bottle rocket project, it was really fun being able to design our own bottle rocket and design it to our liking. It allowed us to work as a group and have lots of fun while doing so. I also really liked the reviews as they were really informative and helped us on the tests. There isn't much needed to improve the class, if any, it would be a little more table work time at the end of class, but that isn't really necessary. This class taught me so much about the world. I am glad that it's now truly summer, but I am sad that this class is ending. This would have been so much fun having this exact class with the same teacher throughout the year. It was one of a few classes that I actually enjoyed. It actually was possibly the best class that I have experienced. It truly makes me sad that this is my last blogpost for summer physics 2013. Thanks Mr. Blake, and go puns! haha

Today we learned so much new information, and a lot of it was rather tricky. We continued learning about light, and this time we focused on refraction. We learned about snell laws: when moving from a fast medium to a slower medium, light will bend towards the normal. Today we focused on
problems involving mirrors, light sources, glass, water, and air. We learned a new equation: (n1)(sinangle1=(n2)(sinangle2). We also learned about critical angles, where n1 > n2 and when light goes from slow to fast. Total internal reflection is when the angle of incidence > critical angle.
We also learned about rays which was a bit confusing to say the least. We learned about real or virtual, upright or inverted characteristics. Whether it's enlarged or reduced, and we learned about parallel, focal, and essential rays. Today was a busy day full of new concepts and ideas.

Here is a picture of a laser point that I had, bouncing it off the screen of my laptop.

Today's class was filled with so much new information, and so many unique sights. We continued to learn about lights and mainly focused on reflection. We did a lot of demos and activities showcasing different colors of light and how they work. We learned how light colors are different because of pigments, I do remember learning this in photo and art class, and this made sense to me. We talked about the color chart (Red, Blue, Green) and the complementary colors being (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow.) We learned what colors you will get when you mix two or more, for example if you mix the primary colors together, you will get white. We learned about ROYGBIV, and how white reflects light, while black absorbs it. I learned that you can only see light if it's reflected to you eyeballs. That was really interesting. We learned today that the law of reflection is where the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection, and we learned that normal is perpendicular to the surface. We did a really cool thing with laser pointers and used a fog spray to show the different beams of light in the air. Today was filled with a lot of new information, and a lot of cool effects.

Here is a picture of one of the demos that we did today. We were reflecting laser pointers to show how they reflected off of a mirror. We also sprayed it so that we could see the beam of light in the dark room.

Today we took our unit 9 test, which was again a good balance of challenge and fairness. It was tricky, however a good review of the unit. We then moved on and started learning about light. We learned a lot of terms today, however the two terms opaque and transparent were very important. Opaque is used when it can't go through, yet transparent is when it can. Two opposite meanings and it is rather easy to understand. The velocity of light is (C=3x10^8 m/s) and the velocity of light is faster in space because of the lack of medium.  We learned that light is an electromagnetic wave, which means that it does not need medium. The speed of light is very fast, and we learned specific times that light takes to travel. Light also travels faster than sound. We also learned a lot about different frequencies ( x ray, and gamma rays) and learned that those are some of the strongest frequencies. We also learned about light reflectors, and how different objects reflect light. This was a lot of information that we learned today, but was something that made sense to me.

Here is a picture of a lamp, because it shows how when i turned it on, the light traveled so fast that I could hardly even tell.

We recently learned a lot about sound, and I realized that there is more to it than what meets the eye. We learned a lot of new words and phrases including,  Refraction, which is the bending of waves due to changes in wave medium. Dispersion which is the spreading out of waves. And reflection, which is the bounding of waves. We also did a lab using a tuning fork, which allowed us to test different frequencies as we hit it against our shoes and it made a sound. We then put it to a tube of water and determined the wave length and the wave speed. It was a bit foreign at first but it began to make sense, wavelength (x4 the length) and wave speed (the wave length x the frequency) became a bit easier to understand as the day went on.

Here is a picture of my grandpa's TV headphones, this allows the sound to travel directly to him and this tied into our lesson that we had. 

Today we learned about unit 9, mainly focusing on waves. Waves are made from energy and are disturbances through space or matter. We learned a lot of new vocabulary, and it was a bit challenging because there were so many new vocab words that were foreign to me. We learned about the parts of waves, how they work, and everything in between. We did a lab using slinkys to see how waves worked, we had tasks to do, and measurements to do, and it ultimately taught me and gave me a better understanding on how it works. We learned about frequency which is how many cycles pass through in a second. The new unit for this lesson is hertz (Hz) used as a measurement for this lesson. We were also taught a tricky lesson about vibrating and we learned that when people wave goodbye we are really just vibrating to each other. We saw many examples of waves today from Mr. Blake and Mr. Adams, and they did a lot to help me understand it as well as looking really cool. It showed me an example of nodes, antinodes, and loops. We also did a activity with a bowl and water, I wasn't too sure what was going on but I tried it for myself after the demonstration and I was able to do it. I was pretty proud of myself. Overall, this lesson was new, yet exciting and challenging and I really do learn something new everyday.

Here is a picture of me waving a towel up and down, this is what we did for our activity today only using a towel instead of string or a slinky.

We made a rocket out of a two liter bottle, and that served as the body of our rocket. We then cut another bottle and put it onto that bottle to make it longer. We put four fins onto our rocket so that it would be sturdy and symmetrical, we added a parachute to our rocket to help air resistance and hopefully help it stay in the air longer. Lastly, we added a nose cone so that it would help cut through the air and help it get higher.  The fins and nose cones worked as plan, it allowed the rocket to go up straight and go higher, it was really helpful that it was able to go up that way. The parachute did not work as plan, it was hard to get it to open up at the top, and was really challenging trying to get it to unfold. There were many different problems that caused our parachute to be ineffective. The psi that we launched it at was 60, it seemed like a good amount to launch it at, and was rather effective when we were able to get everything else to work correctly. We consistently kept the water amount at one third of the way full. The amount of air pressure with a third bottle of fuel gave us the best results on day one so we decided that it would give us the best results. This project taught me about air pressure and air resistance, the parachute taught me how air resistance can help slow down the fall, and the launch of the rocket taught me about air pressure and how it allowed the rocket to shoot up. I learned that this was more than just luck, and that using physics "correctly" can really boost the results of your launch. Stability, durability, and the total thought that went into building the rocket, opposed to just making one at random really helped us with this project. I learned how to apply these theories to something that if fun, exciting, and challenging.  

This is a picture of our rocket on day two when it was time for our first launch. Everything was in place and we were excited and ready to go.