"Working Out"

In the picture, I am holding a three pound weight. I am not doing work because I am just holding it. But when I picked it up off the floor, I did work. It took force for me to lift the weight off the ground to the point where I was holding the weight to take the picture. It was until we learned the concept of work in physics that i really understood what it meant when i always say, "I am 'working out'." Every time I lift weights for sports, I always say that I am working out, but I did not actually know what I was saying until this past week. Work is equivalent to the force times the distance the force travels. Because I am lifting the weights, I am doing work. I would not be doing work if I was just holding the weights, which is also retarded because that defeats the whole purpose of lifting weights. I realized that work is not only implied to when I lift weights, but in everything I do. I am doing work when I lift my text books. I am doing work when I lift the couch up so my mother can vacuum underneath it. However, I am not doing work when I hold a friends drink while he ties his shoe. But thanks to physics, I now know why life is not that easy. Its because we are always doing WORK!

Newton's 3rd Law

This past week, Mr. Kohara taught us something that blew our minds. We just could not believe the words he was saying to us. He said that every time you exert a force on an object, that object will return an equal and opposite force back. This is the act of Newton's 3rd Law. At first I was "tripping out" at what Mr. Kohara was saying but then began to realize the validity of this law. This past weekend, we had a baseball tournament. I did not realize until now that through baseball, we are performing Newton's 3rd Law of Motion. That also made me realize that its not only baseball, but many other things in our daily lives that perform the 3rd Law. Back to baseball, as a pitcher, I pitch or throw the ball to the catcher where the hitter tries to hit it. When I was pitching, I randomly remembered what Mr. Kohara said during class and smiled. I realized that every time I threw that ball, the ball pushed an equal and opposite force back at me. How weird is that?! A small baseball pushed the same amount of force on me as I did to the ball! That is hard to believe. But, the reason why the ball travels in the direction I push the ball is because its mass is a lot smaller than my mass. The balls mass is so small that even if it exerts the same force as I do, the ball will accelerate in the direction I force it to go. Since my mass is larger by far, my hand will not accelerate backwards as my mass is too great for the ball's mass.

The Drive

Every morning, I drive to school. For most students, their drive is not long. But since I live on the other side of the island from school, my drive averages an hour to an hour and a half each time! Pretty soon, "no can handle". Nah... can handle. Anyways, as we are always surprised at how much physics is related to our daily lives, I realized that each time I drive to school and back, I am causing my truck to accelerate. Acceleration is the difference of speed. Every time I press the gas petal or brake petal or turn the wheel, my truck is accelerating! It starts off when I pull out of my drive way. Though the acceleration of pulling out of my drive way is not as great as when I accelerate on to the freeway. Coming out of Wahiawa, I have to accelerate quickly from about 25 mph to roughly 60-65 mph which is the flow of traffic. The reason why I have to accelerate quickly is because the on ramp merges to the left and the cars behind me are also accelerating quickly. So I do not want to be the one holding traffic up by accelerating slowly. Then, as I am driving, I hit traffic. That is when i have to hit the breaks and slow down. Although I am slowing down, I am still accelerating. Because traffic is stop and go, I have to accelerate faster and slower repetitively. Then when I reach school, I decelerate to a stop where I reach school.