Physics

Saturday, December 5, 2015

CTF Photo Project

Title: A Spoonfull of Physics

Category: Contrived

Topic: Gravity and force normal

Description: There are many forces happening in this photo, all off them balancing each other out. In order to more easily explain this photo I electronically color coded the spoons. Ok to start off the two blue spoons are held in the cup because the rim of the cup acts inward towns the center of the cup, therefore keeping the spoons from falling down while in the cup. The blue spoons hold up the green spoon, the blue spoons act as force normal pushing up against the green spoon, while the green spoon is pulled down by the force of gravity, this balances the forces between the blue and green spoons. Then the orange spoon is balanced on the green spoon. The orange spoon then has the red spoons balanced on both sides of it. The two red spoons act down towards the ground while the orange spoon, since it is balanced on the green spoon as well, acts up. All these forces cancel out making the structure able to stay up.

Title: Seesaw

Category: Contrived

Topic: Gravity and force Normal

Description: This picture can be explained with simple physics. First off, the rock lays on the table, the rock being pulled down by gravity and the table pushing up on the rock. This keeps the rock from falling through the table or flying up. Then a ruler is placed on the rock with a hackysack on each end. The hackysacks are around the same mass so they balance out the ruler when placed on both ends. The two hackysacks are pulled down by gravity while the ruler holds them up, then the rock holds up the ruler. So if I were to carefully pull one side down, when I let go it would return to its previous state. This is also how a seesaw works. Two people get on each end and one person pushes up off the ground, which brings the other person down. If they were to not push up agian the seesaw would return to its horizontal state.

Title: Living on the edge

Category: Contrived

Topic: Tension and force normal

Description: In this picture a boot is being held on a ledge by a piece of string. That string is experinceing a force called tension. This tension is created by the shoe naturally wanting to fall off the ledge, but since the string is tied to it and the ledge, it cannot fall down. The force normal also keeps the shoe from falling down through the ledge. Looking at the picture, the force of the tension is pulling the shoe to the left, and the force of normal and gravity are canceling each other out. Since the shoe is not completely over the edge it cannot fall because force normal is still acting on it. If I were to remove the string the shoe would fall over cause gravity would overcome the force normal towards the front of the shoe. If the ledge did not exist the boot would swing down.

Title: Hanging by a branch

Category: Natural

Topic: Tenson and gravity

Description: In this picture there is a plant that has begun to lean but hangs onto the fence by its branches. The plant has begun to lean because of gravity. The plant grew more leaves and flowers away from the fence and towards the sunlight. Because one side has become more heavy gravity is acting more on that side and is pulling it down. In order to avoid completely falling over the plant has grown vines around the fence to keep itself up. When the plant leans the vines holding onto the fence experience tension. Gravity is pulling the tree down while tension pulls it up. If the tension was not there the plant would fall to the ground. Even with the tension the branches bend towards the ground because of all the weight on the end of each branch.

Title: hanging by a rope

Category: Contrived

Topic: tension and gravity

Description: In this photo there are several glass covered lamps being held up by ropes. This shows a very simple physics topic. there are two forces acting on this, gravity and tension. Gravity acts down, pulling the lamp towards the ground. While tension pulls the lamp up. These two forces keep the lamps from flying up or falling down. The string is pulling upwards on the lamp while gravity pulls downward on the lamp. This balances the two forces. These glass coverings for the lamps are very heavy so the force of tension has to be very big in order to counteract the force of gravity.

Friday, November 6, 2015

Rocket project report

OGroup members: Jake Greenlee, Carlos Martinez, Kieran Day. Rocket name: USS Yav

Rocket Project

Materials:

1) 2x 2 liter bottles ($3 each)

2) 1 crystal geyser sparkling water bottle ($3)

3) duct tape ($3)

4) cardboard (already had from Amazon boxes)

5) toilet paper (already had)

6) kite string (already had)

7) table cloth (already had)

8) small weight (already had)

9) 2x squishy pool toy balls ($1 each)

Picture of materials minus the weight, 2 liter bottles, and tablecloth

Procedures:

Step 1) Obtain all materials and dump liquid into a separate container.

Step 2) cut 3 fins in this fashion and tape them onto one of the 2 liter bottles.

Step 3) cut the middle section out from the 2nd 2 liter bottle. Then duct tape it to the 2 liter bottle with the fins (tape it on the bottom side).

Step 4) make cuts on the other side of the middle section (this will later be used to fit the front part of the rocket onto the bottom).

Step 5) cut the bottom of the sparkling water bottle off.

Step 6) place your weight at the tip of the bottle.

Step 7) Stuff toilet paper in the bottle. Then place a whole roll in the bottle (without the cardboard)

Step 8) put the bottle with the toilet paper into the middle section on the 2 liter bottle. Then squeeze the cuts from the middle section together so that the hole of the middle section surrounds the bottle with the toilet paper. This will make the middle section smaller so that the top of the rocket does not fall out during the flight up. Then proceed to tape around the middle section cuts which you have just squeezed together.

Step 8) cut 4 equal measures of kite string.

Step 9) cut a circle out of the table cloth for a parachute.

Step 10) cut peices of duct tape and place them at 45 degree intervals around the table cloth parachute. Then punch holes in the duct tape.

Step 11) tie each end of the kite string you cut to one hole. Making sure that each string is tied on the opposite side of each other.

Step 12) tape the strings now tied to the parachute to the sparkling water bottle with the toilet paper.

Step 13) place the egg into the toilet paper. Scrunch the parachute into the sparkling water bottle. Then connect the two rocket peices together.

Ta da. You have built the rocket

Results:

Practice launch: our practice launch was successful. The rocket went really high (probably 100-105 ft). Then it successfully deployed before landing. We didn't put in egg in the rocket though.

Final launch- our final launch was semi successful. We went pretty high 85 feet according to Mr. Yav. The one thing that didn't work though was the deployment system. The rocket did not separate during its descent. Despite the deployment systems failure the egg survived. I think that the deployments system failed due to the extra weight of the egg. Some other factors would be wether. There was only a small amount of wind, but it still could have affected our results. One last variable could be the amount of water we put in. We filled 3/8 of the bottle with water.

Conclusion:

I can conclude that my rocket was semi successful. Although it did not separate, the egg survived the full impact. We think it didn't seperate because of the extra weight that the egg added. One thing I would add next time is a mechanism to increase air resistance on the way down. It would have to not activate on the way up though. I also think that if there was more wind it would have separated. This is because the weight on the tip would pull down while the increased air resistance due to the wind would pull up. I also think that making the rocket longer would have been better due to the increased stability during flight.

Calculations: