Blog #2

Sunday afternoon rolls around again, and as usual I have successfully procrastinated the whole weekend, in an attempt to have something to do for this assignment I simply dropped a tennis ball of my balcony, original isn't it?  As all things in free fall, the ball has projectile motion, as it falls down it accelerates at a constant rate of -9.8 m/s^2 due to gravity.  Due to gravity it has increasingly negative y velocity as it falls, but since it had no initial x velocity, when it hits the ground it has the same x velocity, 0.  This is because x velocity is constant throughout projectile motion because gravity only works in the vertical direction, not the horizontal.  For simplicities sake, I said that the ball had a initial x velocity of 0, but in reality because she slightly pushed it off the ledge, it did have a very small amount of initial x velocity, which explains why the ball fell in a parabola shape instead of a straight line, as the x velocity determines how far the object travels.  Well that's all for this week, time to start my homework.

Acceleration in Action

Acceleration in Action.  Making a right turn outside my local 7-11, this white car shows physics in a real world application.  Coming to a stop at the light before he makes his turn, his velocity is 0.0m/s, then turns right and accelerates while getting onto Hawaii Kai Drive.  He needs to accelerate to match the flow of traffic, but can not accelerate too much as Hawaii Kai Drive is notorious for speed traps!  Physics is applied everywhere in the real world, all you have to do is look for it.