Did You Hear That?

• Helpful Information:

• LIGHT is a WAVE... light is an electromagnetic wave caused by a moving charge. 
• Light can travel in space which has no particles
• Light travels at it's fastest speed in space where there are no particles. 

• SOUND is a WAVE... A mechanical LONGITUDINAL wave. 
• sound needs a medium or material (air, water, helium) to travel in. 
• Sound waves bounce the particles of the medium in which it is traveling together in order for the wave to move. 
• LONGITUDINAL wave because the medium/material is moving in the same direction as energy. 
• Sound waves stretch and bounce, almost like a centipede, making sound a COMPRESSION wave.
• BEST DEFINITION: the longitudinal movement of air molecules 

How do musical instruments work? Instruments move air through sound waves

          Now that we understand that basics of what sound really is, lets try and grasp how that relates to the creation of MUSIC. The difference between the noise we hear when we drop something on the floor and the culmination of sounds we hear when we listen to our favorite song is very simple. When we hear music in the way we do, it is because music is made up of a combination of waves with different frequencies that are mathematically proportional. These different areas of frequencies in which standing waves of sounds occur at are called harmonics. Noise is not mathematically proportional. But what does "mathematically proportional" actually mean, especially in terms of music?

          In class, we analyzed the frequency of  different sounds using the FFT Labquest equipment. This is an example of some of the data we were able to get after just .3 seconds of recorded sound. 

As you can see, i labeled the "Fundamental Frequency" which is the lowest frequency that a standing wave occurs. This "Mathematically Proportional" music because each harmonic is a multiple of this sound wave's Fundamental Frequency. 

                     (Note: Amplitude is not what we are worried about. Amplitude just means "loudness")

What's the difference between a woodwind & a stringed instrument?

Here's a simple illustration of their differences from my notes:

What is a Rainbow?

These photos were taken in front of my Dad's restaurant, Hidive, on the Embarcadero at Pier 28 1/2, San Francisco. 

Common knowledge of rainbows usually consists of the fact that they appear after it rains, they always have the same color pattern, and hopefully there is a pot of gold at the end. But if one tried to explain what a rainbow really is, in regards to Physics, what would they say?

Things We Need To Understand:

- Visible light is a very small section on the Electromagnetic Spectrum. 

- Every color is a representation of a different wave frequency (visible light is about 10^-6).

- Common knowledge of reflection and refraction of light.

- Dispersion happens when visible light passes through a triangular prism, and the visible light is separated into its different colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. 

 

After a nice mist of San Francisco rain, this rainbow appeared (at one point it was a double rainbow). What actually happened, that the physical eye does not allow us to see, was a series of refraction and reflection in the lingering water droplets in the air. Like we say in class, light does not just refract through water, but it also reflects light. Light waves refract when they cross over from one medium to another. Once the light is inside the water droplet, it reflects and then crosses from water back to air. This just means that light travels faster in air than it does inside a water droplet, therefore it slows down inside the water droplet so it can still maintain on the Path of Least Time. Every single frequency of the visible light spectrum (the colors of the rainbow) has a different wavelength, causing each light ray to reflect and refract in different directions. When light refracts for the second time through the series of water droplets, it's direction changes so it is coming towards observers on Earth. Because of this initial difference of wavelength, which causes the angles of refraction and reflection to vary, the final refracted ray of blue light will be slightly different then the location of the final refracted ray of red light. The overall amount of refraction between the incident light rays and the refracted rays directed to the observer's eyes is between 40 and 42 degrees due to different wavelengths. When theses light rays refract at such an angle, a rainbow is formed with its consistent order of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet light.

Electricity & Magnetic Fields (Standard 6.1)

How is electricity generated by moving magnetic fields?

From our electrostatics unit, we know that electricity can be defined as simply as the movement and transfer of electrons. we also know that certain magnets repel and attract due to a magnetic field (B). A magnetic field exerts a force on moving charges. Also, any moving charge has a magnetic field that surrounds it. In the photo below, a horse shoe magnet is underneath a piece of paper in which we sprinkled powdered iron onto. The lines show the magnetic field:

The magnetic field that surrounds a magnet applies a force to the electrons in an object which causes them to flow, or an increase in current. This increase in current results in more electricity.

Electrostatics... Zappppp!

The biggest idea of electrostatics is the idea that whether an object is positive, negative, or neutral is a matter of the object's movement of it's electrons. Protons never move, but charge is based on the movement of electrons. Similarly to what we already know about energy, electrons are not created or destroyed, just transferred. Something that really surprised me was the definition of what a neutral object is. A neutral object just has a balanced amount of electrons and protons rather than nothing at all. But this does not mean that a neutral object can't react with another object. As our class saw when we put a plastic comb that had gained a charge from the friction created by brushing hair, next to a stream of water. We saw the following result:

Why does the water seem to move towards the comb? 

Because (let's say) the electrons in the comb begin to react with the protons in the water. This results in the opposite charges of the two object to repel each other which makes the protons and electrons polarize, or separate from each other. 

Can a neutral and a charged object ever have a repelling force?

NO because protons and neutrons will always polarize in such a way that creates an attractive force (since only the electrons move). Either electrons are being pushed away, or being pulled towards a charged object. 

Now that we understand charge, what is voltage? And how do we give charges energy, like when we "charge" a battery?

Voltage can also be referred to as Electrical Potential Energy. Lets think back to when we studied Gravitational Potential Energy (Ug). An object had potential energy when it was at a height above the earth. This makes sense because if an object is lets say on top of a cliff, it has POTENTIAL to fall off the cliff and plummet towards the ground. Same idea with voltage. Voltage gives charged objects a distance between eachother. All voltage is is building a (hypothetical) mountain of energy that gets transferred into other things. VOltage puts charges in such a place that stores energy. 

Helpful analogy: What voltage does for charge is the same as what height does for Potential energy.

Greater voltage or charge means a greater electrical potential energy.

The greater the height or mass of an object means a greater Ug.

Potentia So when we plug in our ipads before we go to bed and it only has about 14% left, we plug our charger into the ipad, and the charger into some sort of wall outlet. The wall outlet only provides a certain amount of Voltage for objects. In the U.S, it is about 120V. 120V would be too much for our little iPads, so the charger only uses about 5.1V for charging. This wall outlet provides a height, or a distance between charges. Yes they are neutral, but their job is to separate charges in such a way that creates a charge.

But what determines if an ipad or any other device charges quickly or not? Whats the difference between the energy a lithium battery we put in our remote controls provides from a fancy white iPhone charger? Check this article out for more information on the advancement of our Electric Potential Energy!
A brief discourse on batteries (and the new iPad!)

Projectile Motion

Description of Lab:

-In this week's lab, we analyzed the motion of a basketball when it is thrown in the air and moves from left to right, up and down. We used the apps Video Physics and Graphical Analysis to record the ball's movement in a video, and then to see what the graphs of the x-component and y-component of the ball's motion looked like. 

Here's a motion map of the ball's path:

-This is an easy motion and direction for us to understand because we see and therefor understand projectiles very often in everyday life. But what if we separate the ball's vertical and horizontal directions? For all the other visual learners out there, the meanings of what the velocity and accelerations in both directions are explained in the graphs below:

X-Dimension

Y-Dimension

Here's a photo of our first ideas of what a projectile is and how the X and Y dimensions play a significant role in understanding the path of a projectile's motion:

Forces in Two Dimensions and Circular Motion

What does "2D" mean anyway?

Forces in two dimensions is a fancy way to say that we are analyzing some type of scenario and remembering that the situation is not just flat on a piece of paper. Two dimensions can be thought of as a diagonal line, which has an x and y component, or a North/South (vertical) and a West/East (horizontal) component.

How can we get something to move in a circle?

It's funny to me how something as simple as running in a circle, or swinging a hover disc around on the ground can be related and so similar to things orbiting in space. This is impossible because both scenarios have the same physical idea that to get something to move in a circle, there must be a force towards the middle of the circle or orbit. Let's think about that. If we have a hover disc that is turned on (to get rid of the friction with the ground) and we are holding the string attached to the top of it, how do we make it orbit around where we are sitting? In this week's lab, we discovered that by exerting a force on the string and pulling it towards us, the hover disc began to orbit us in a circle. As you can see in the picture below, the force is being exerted towards the center of the hover disc's path. Note that the diagonal lines show a two dimensional force with an x and y component.

What does it mean to be in orbit? 

This central idea about forces towards the center of an objects orbital path applies to satellites and even planets orbiting in space. Regarding the International Space Station in space, the Earth's force of gravity is still acting on it, pulling it towards the center of Earth. But then why are people in the space station floating and appear weightless? Because of the speed the station in traveling at, it is in constant free fall. Since the Earth is round, the space station appears to be orbiting the Earth, when it is really falling while being pulled to it's core.